pairwise-comparison

name	pairwise-comparison
description	Tactic: rank gaps through relative comparison rather than absolute scoring, suited to hard-to-quantify situations
version	1.0.0
category	hypothesis-formation
type	tactic
campaign	gap-prioritization
sops	["gap-pairwise-judgment","consistency-check","priority-synthesis"]
dependencies	{"sops":["consistency-check","gap-pairwise-judgment","priority-synthesis"],"tactics":["hypothesis-formation-scoring-matrix-construction"]}

Pairwise Comparison

When absolute scoring is hard to perform reliably (vague gap descriptions, incomparable dimensions, large rater bias), establish a gap ranking through pairwise relative comparison, then ensure the judgments are contradiction-free via a consistency check.

Orchestration Intent

Absolute scoring requires raters to assign a value to each gap independently, which is easily affected by anchoring effects. Relative comparison ("A is more worth prioritizing than B") has a lower cognitive load and yields more stable judgments. This tactic implements an AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) style pairwise-comparison flow: first collect relative judgments for all gap pairs, then check judgment consistency, and finally synthesize the final ranking.

Inconsistent judgments (such as a cycle of A>B, B>C, C>A) are detected by the consistency-check SOP and trigger a correction round, until the consistency ratio CR < 0.1.

Available SOPs

SOP	Responsibility	When to call
gap-pairwise-judgment	Make a relative-importance judgment for each gap pair (1-9 Saaty scale)	Mandatory, first step
consistency-check	Compute the consistency ratio (CR), identify contradictory judgment pairs	Mandatory, after each comparison round
priority-synthesis	Synthesize final priority weights and ranking from the pairwise-comparison matrix	Mandatory, after CR passes

Orchestration Pattern

Default (standard flow)

1. gap-pairwise-judgment: perform comparisons for all N×(N-1)/2 gap pairs, producing a comparison matrix
2. consistency-check: compute CR; if CR ≥ 0.1, flag contradictory judgment pairs and return correction suggestions
3. (If correction needed) re-call gap-pairwise-judgment for the contradictory pairs only, up to 3 rounds
4. priority-synthesis: synthesize the final ranking once CR < 0.1

Simplified (gap count ≤ 5)

• Same as Default, but with fewer comparison pairs (≤10 pairs), usually passing the consistency check in a single round

Deep (gap count > 15)

• First use scoring-matrix-construction for preliminary screening, reducing gaps to ≤15
• Then run the standard pairwise flow
• priority-synthesis additionally outputs a sensitivity analysis (which gaps' rankings are most sensitive to a single judgment change)

Minimum Yield

• A complete N×N pairwise comparison matrix (all gap pairs judged, no gaps missing)
• A final consistency ratio CR < 0.1 (hard constraint, cannot be skipped)
• A final priority ranking (including each gap's normalized weight)
• A correction history (if contradiction correction occurred, record which judgments were modified and why)

Yield Report

After execution, report to the calling strategy:

• Gap count / number of comparison pairs / correction rounds
• The final CR value
• The top 3 gaps and their weights
• The least stable gaps (cases where the weight gap with an adjacent gap < 0.05)

Available Tactics

Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.

Tactic	When to use
hypothesis-formation-scoring-matrix-construction	Tactic: orchestrate multi-dimensional scoring SOPs to build a comprehensive assessment matrix for all gaps

Available SOPs

Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.

SOP	When to use
consistency-check	SOP: Check the transitive consistency of a pairwise judgment matrix, identify inconsistent entries, and suggest corrections
gap-pairwise-judgment	SOP: Make a criterion-by-criterion relative priority judgment between two gaps and output the preference result
priority-synthesis	SOP: synthesize all scoring data into a final gap priority list and attack-path suggestions