Decision Trees are a decision analysis tool used to model complex decisions.   While I typically use the more general influence diagram paradigm via Analytica, there are many situations where a decision tree greatly clarifies a decision problem in a way that an influence diagram can’t quite capture.  So, naturally I went hunting on the internet for some decision tree software.

One of the better decision tree programs that I have found is Silver Decisions.  This website is a free open source project allowing one to construct and compute decision tree problems.  The computational engine allows for a variety of backward induction criteria to “prune the tree.”  Its very well done and highly recommended.  Here are some examples on github.

For a quick and dirty reference to decision trees see Kirkwood’s very short set of notes.