Question

A machine shop owner wants to decide whether to purchase a new drill press, new lathe, or new grinder. As shown in the following table, the profit from each purchase will vary depending on whether or not the owner wins a government contract, with the owner estimating a probability of .60 of winning the contract:

	Profit if win contract	Profit if lose contract
drill press	$40,000	$-8,000
lathe	$20,000	$ 4,000
grinder	$12,000	$10,000

Before deciding which item to purchase, the owner needs to decide whether or not to hire a military consultant to assess whether the shop will get the government contract. The track record of the military consultant in predicting whether companies would win government contracts is as follows: For 90% of the companies that won contracts, the consultant had predicted they would win, and for 70% of the companies that lost contracts, the consultant had predicted they would lose. [adapted from Taylor (2004)]

(a) Assuming the consultant would not charge for his assessment, determine the optimal strategy based on the expected value criterion, and state its expected value. (Draw then solve the Decision Tree below)

(b) Determine EVSI (with the consultant regarded as the sample information).

(c) If the consultant were to charge $5,000 for his assessment, what would be the optimal strategy and its expected value?

Answer 1