Patent ID: 7395185

Claim:
An intrinsically valid statistical method enabling a system for use by a decision maker to act on populations comprised of at least one object based upon the analysis of inexact ordinal data having one or more variables, comprising the steps of: (a) producing an at least partial ordering of inexact ordinal data by determining for all pairs of the inexact ordinal data the order of a first datum compared to a second datum as (i) superior, (ii) inferior, (iii) equal, or (iv) undecided; (b) factorizing the partially ordered data; (c) generating a score for each datum based on the at least partially ordered data; (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 at least one of ranking, positioning, comparing, discriminating, regressing, and clustering; (g) performing a decisional assessment comprising at least one of ranking the order of populations, positioning an object to a particular population, determining whether populations differ, discriminating the boundaries of populations, and determining the regressional relationships between populations as part of the analysis of the inexact ordinal data and outputting numerical results from the decisional assessment step for display and review by the decision maker to enable action by the decision maker; and (h) the decision maker effectuating a decision to carry out an action on at least one population based on the decisional assessment by the system arising from executing step (g).