Talk:Optimal decision

	Business and economics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Economics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Economics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EconomicsWikipedia:WikiProject EconomicsTemplate:WikiProject EconomicsEconomics articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Statistics Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Statistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of statistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.StatisticsWikipedia:WikiProject StatisticsTemplate:WikiProject StatisticsStatistics articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.

Mathematics Mid‑priority

	Mathematics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mathematics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mathematics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MathematicsWikipedia:WikiProject MathematicsTemplate:WikiProject Mathematicsmathematics articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-priority on the project's priority scale.

Notation for expected utility[edit]

Currently the article uses one piece of notation for two different things: $U_{D}(d)$ means both utility and expected utility. It is standard in the optimization literature to denote expected utility as the expected value of utility: ${\text{E}}U_{D}(d).$ I fixed the notational inconsistency by inserting the expectations operator, but this fix was reverted by Winterfors without explanation. Can you explain why? Loraof (talk) 16:10, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your edits, I reverted this particular one because

{\text{E}}U_{D}(d).

gives the impression of being an expectation over the space of possible decision

D

, when the expectation is taken over the space of possible outcomes

O

. I agree that including the expectation in the notation might be a good idea, but it needs to be clear on what variable it operates.Winterfors (talk) 18:23, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]