Decision::Markov - Markov models for decision analysis Copyright (c) 1998-2002 Alan Schwartz . All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. DESCRIPTION This module provides functions used to built and evaluate Markov models for use in decision analysis. A Markov model consists of a set of states, each with an associated utility, and links between states representing the probability of moving from one node to the next. Nodes typically include links to themselves. Utilities and probabilities may be fixed or may be functions of the time in cycles since the model began running. PREREQUISITES Decision::Markov expects to find some core perl modules, notably FileHandle and Carp. INSTALLATION perl Makefile.PL make make test make install REVISION HISTORY 0.02 Sept 2002 - Test script improvements 0.01 March 1988 - Initial concept. FUTURE PLANS I'm planning to wire this up as the back end to CGI scripts for teaching Markov models using web-based simulations. Future revisions may include some other ways to display the model, and perhaps a Monte Carlo routine that will run the model X times and produce useful statistics (mean, variance, 95% CI, etc.) There may also be other Decision:: models in the future, such as Decision::Tree, Decision::Influence (influence diagrams), Decision::Utility (utility assessment) and Decision::Bayes (Bayesian updating of priors based on diagnostic tests). But I may not get to them soon. Feel free to get there before me!