From Max Bazerman’s “Judgement In Managerial Decision Making”
By contrast, it would be easy to set up a linear program to avoid this error. Indeed, Dawes (1971) did just that in his work on graduate-school admissions decisions.
Dawes used a common method for developing his linear model: he first modeled the admission decisions of a four-person committee. In other words, he systematically analyzed how the committee made its admissions decisions, relying on three factors: (1) Graduate Record Examination scores, (2) undergraduate GPA, and (3) the quality of the undergraduate school. Dawes then used the variable weightings he obtained from modeling the experts in a linear model to predict the average rating of 384 other applicants.
He found that the model could be used to rule out 55 percent of the applicant pool without ever rejecting an applicant that the selection committee had in fact accepted. In addition, the linear
Strategy 1: Use Decision-Analysis Tools model was better than the committee itself in predicting future ratings of the accepted and matriculated applicants by faculty! In 1971, Dawes estimated that the use of a linear model as a screening device by the nation’s graduate schools could result in an annual savings of about $18 million in professional time