Which statement best describes the role of weighting criteria in a decision matrix?

• A. To normalize all criteria to a standard scale.
• B. To reduce the number of criteria considered.
• C. To reflect relative importance of each criterion in the final decision.
• D. To eliminate less important options.

Answer: (C)

Weights express how important each criterion is relative to the others, so the final score reflects the priorities you care about. By giving higher weights to more important criteria, the decision matrix becomes more sensitive to those factors and the overall ranking aligns with what you value most. Normalization brings different criteria onto a common scale, which helps comparisons but doesn’t assign importance by itself—that’s the role of the weights. Weights don’t reduce the number of criteria or eliminate options; they adjust influence, not the size of the choice set. For example, if cost is more important than speed, you’d assign a larger weight to cost so a cheaper option rises higher in the final decision.