Homework Three

1* "How long till we (U.S.) are more energy efficient in our homes and offices?" was the question I asked in class on Wednesday. We used the Delphi method to discuss how long it would take before this would happen. Before the discussing was done we took a pole and hear is the results: 50,55,60,60,100,200,200-250,infinity,infinity,infinity, don't know. So when finding the median range of this set of numbers it would be 200 years before we would be more energy efficient. Then there was a pole taken after the discussion which were: 60,60,65,100,100,100,100,110-150,150,200-250,infinity. So then taking the median range would now be 100 years before we become more energy efficient.


2* According to the internet and Wikipedia "The Delphi method is a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of independent experts. The carefully selected experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator provides an anonymous summary of the experts’ forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments. Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members of their panel. It is believed that during this process the range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the "correct" answer. Finally, the process is stopped after a pre-defined stop criterion and the mean or median scores of the final rounds determine the results."
(stated at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_method)
The only difference between the two is that my teachers was more easier to read and understand because he broke it up in parts. Other then that they pretty much say the same things.


3* Some of the weakness that we saw in class was that your questions has be to be blunt and to the point otherwise it is very difficult to get a accurate guess of how long something will take to get here or happen. How can you fix this maybe making sure that when doing the Delphi Method that you have an example of both to show how hard it can be. Other then that I don't know of another way to fix it. I can see a risk of an agreement when discussing the questions because I could see it rising when we had class. How to fix this I am not sure that you can fix this besides making sure it don't get out of hand.

Tara