Patent ID: 7072794

Claim:
An intrinsically valid statistical method for the analysis by a decision maker of inexact ordinal data having one or more variables to compare populations comprised of at least one object, the method comprising the steps of: (a) partially ordering data by determining for all pairs of data the order of a first datum compared to a second datum as (i) superior, (ii) inferior, (iii) equal, or (iv) undecided, wherein for tuples a partial ordering comprises the first datum to be superior if for each variable the first datum is superior or equal, and for at least one variable, the first datum is superior; (b) factorizing the partially ordered data; (c) generating a score for each datum based on the partial ordering; (d) estimating an information content for each of the scores; (e) generating a weight for each score based on the information content; (f) aggregating the scores and weights of all data using statistical methods for weighted rank scores, wherein the statistical methods comprise ranking, positioning, comparing, discriminating/regressing, and clustering; and (g) deciding which category the inexact ordinal data should be assigned to, thereby allowing the decision maker to act on the assignment to the category.