Expect Value™
WEB-BASED SESSION DESCRIPTIONS

Model Building and Basic Outputs
This session provides the foundation for building models in DPL. It uses an Excel-based financial model as the example case from which a DPL model is built and analyzed. The session involves presentation of slide materials by the session leader and worked examples done by the attendees. The focus is on teaching you how to develop DPL models from spreadsheets and generate the fundamental DPL outputs of a probabilistic analysis.

Duration
Three hours

Who Should Sign-up
This session is intended for those who wish to use DPL to build and analyze decision analysis models and/or risk analysis models and who have little or no experience with DPL.

Suggested Prerequisites
Familiarity with decision analysis or risk analysis is helpful. No DPL experience is required but participants should be familiar with Microsoft Excel and Windows.

Session Topics
  • Building influence diagrams from Excel models
  • Creating symmetric decision trees
  • Conducting deterministic sensitivity analysis using Tornado diagrams
  • Analyzing decisions using decision Policy Trees and Risk Profiles

    Sensitivity Analyses and Further Outputs
    This session builds on the Model Building and Basic Outputs session. It provides further instruction on how to develop DPL models directly and covers the range of outputs available in DPL. Slide material is presented by the session leader and examples are perfomed by attendees. The focus is on teaching you how to make the most of the advanced analysis features and processing power of DPL.

    Duration
    Three hours

    Who Should Sign-up
    This session is for those who have taken the Model Building session or have some experience with DPL and are looking to learn about some of the additional features and outputs of DPL.

    Suggested Prerequisites
    Participants should be familiar with building models, conducting analyses and interpreting results in DPL, either through taking the Model Building session, or equivalent experience.

    Session Topics
  • Comparing Risk Profiles
  • Probabilistic sensitivity analysis using Tornado and Rainbow diagrams
  • Using DPL's Policy Summary
  • Understanding and using DPL's two-way sensitivity analysis features
  • Using the Time Series Percentiles feature
  • Tracking multiple attributes

    Dependence and Asymmetric Trees
    This session focusses on a few more advanced DPL modeling techniques. Specifically, it covers introducing dependence between variables in the influence diagram and using DPL's decision tree development environment. Hands-on worked examples are used to show the various techniques to account for dependence between variable in your decision model and how to build decision trees directly in DPL.

    Duration
    Two hours

    Who Should Attend
    This session is for those who have taken both the Model Building session and the Sensitivity analysis session or have signficant experience with DPL, and are looking to learn more about some of the more advanced features of DPL.

    Suggested Prerequisites
    Participants should be familiar with building models, conducting analyses, conducting sensitivity analyses and interpreting results in DPL either through taking the three-hour sessions above or equivalent experience.

    Workshop Topics
  • Introducing dependence
  • Value-wise and probabilistic dependence
  • Advanced conditioning
  • Building decision trees from an influence diagram
  • Manipulating decision trees
  • Creating asymmetric trees
  • Developing pay-as-you-go models

    Real Options Analysis with DPL
    Real options are a useful to technique to model management flexibility when considering a development project or new business venture. Real options can be modeled in DPL using downstream decisions (i.e., decisions that occur after some uncertainty has neen resolved). This session demonstrates the techniques used in DPL to model real options.

    Duration
    Two hours

    Who Should Attend
    This session is for those who have taken have signficant experience with DPL and are looking to use real options techniques in their business to model uncertainty and management flexibility in valuing strategic investments.

    Suggested Prerequisites
    Participants should have experience with building models, conducting analyses, conducting sensitivity analyses and interpreting results in DPL.

    Workshop Topics
  • Real options overview
  • Downstream decisions
  • Learning models
  • Risk neutral probabilities
  • Valuing a real option in DPL

    Spreadsheet Conversion and DPL Code
    Many DPL application involve linking a model to a spreadsheet. While the fastest way to development this type of model is to link DPL to the spreadsheet, larger models may suffer from long runtimes due to the need for Excel to recalculate repeatedly. Spreadsheet conversion dramatically improves runtimes. This session discusses spreadsheet conversion and uses hands on examples to show the techniques needed to convert a spreadsheet to DPL code. DPL's graphical user interface is the easiest way to build models in DPL for most type of models. However, there are certain applications where using DPL code may be more efficient. In addition, having a familiarity with DPL code makes working with converted spreadsheets easier.

    Duration
    Two hours

    Who Should Attend
    This session is for those who have taken have signficant experience with DPL and have a need to improve runtime of large models or wish to pursue more advanced modeling techniques in DPL code.

    Suggested Prerequisites
    Participants should have experience with building models, conducting analyses, conducting sensitivity analysis and interpreting results in DPL.

    Workshop Topics
  • Converting spreadsheets
  • Good spreadsheet programming techniques
  • When to use DPL code
  • Building recombining models with lottery optimization

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