This book is an outgrowth of formal graduate courses in multiple-criteria decision making (MCDM) that the author has taught at the University of Rochester, University of Texas at Austin, and University of Kansas since 1972. The purpose is, on one hand, to offer the reader an integral and systematic view of various concepts and techniques in MCDM at an "introductory" level, and, on the other hand, to provide a basic conception of the human decision mechanism, which may improve our ability to apply the techniques we have learned and may broaden our llJ.ind for modeling human decision making. The book is written with a goal in mind that the reader should be able to assimilate and benefit from most of the concepts in the book if he has the mathematical maturity equivalent to a course in operations research or optimiz­ ation theory. Good training in linear and nonlinear programming is sufficient to digest, perhaps easily, most of the concepts in the book.