Open AccessEliciting expert beliefs in substantial practical applications
Author(s) -
O'Hagan A.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of the royal statistical society: series d (the statistician)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1467-9884
pISSN - 0039-0526
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9884.00114
Subject(s) - expert elicitation , computer science , capital investment , operations research , management science , psychology , actuarial science , artificial intelligence , statistics , engineering , mathematics , economics , finance
The practical elicitation of expert beliefs is considered through two contrasting examples. The first example concerns elicitation of engineers' prior beliefs about various quantities relating to the future capital investment need of a water company. Prior beliefs needed to be elicited about very many quantities, but only in the form of prior means, variances and covariances. A computerized procedure was required that could be routinely used by engineers, unsupervised. The second example is a single, application‐specific elicitation of the beliefs of hydrogeologists about properties of certain rocks. A full probability specification was ideally to be obtained from a two‐day intensive, supervised, elicitation with several experts together. The two different approaches used for these problems are described and contrasted, but a common principle of trying to identify and elicit separately the various sources of expert uncertainty is identified