Vern Edwards

That's because you're reading the statutes. Don't do that. Read the applicable regulation --- FAR or RFO FAR class deviation. Whichever applies in your case.

I'm glad you brought that up. The following is from the book Decision Analysis and Behavioral Research, by Ward Edwards (no relation) and Detloff von Winterfeldtn (1986), page 20: Italics added. Note that in that formulation the numbers do not represent facts, but judgments based on facts. When I entered government service with the Air Force, source selection teams used numerical scoring. That was abandoned in about 1980 after a number of bid protest decisiond based on faulty use of numerical scores. We went to the adjectival/color raing system still in use today by DOD and some other agencies. But adjectives and colors do not facilitate aggregation of judgements. Note that the bid protest decisions were not based on the impropriety of using numerical ratings, but on the lack of know-how and the incompetence of the people who used them. No matter what rating system you use, adjectival, color, or numerical, you must be able to explain the basis for the rating assigned, and you must assign ratings consistently. The purpose of assigning ratings is simplification of complex information, and when you are evaluating on the basis of multiple factors, numerical ratings provide the greatest degree of simplification. I have made that point many times in this forum, but only the thinkers seem to get it.

@joel hoffman So could I say that you used ratings to summarize and simplify more complex information?

@joel hoffman Why did you assign ratings to the MEAT of the evaluation? What did the ratings do for you that the MEAT didn't do??

Don, This blog post is incomplete. You say why you wouldn't use ratings, but you don't say why you would. Why would you use ratings, if ever, and what kind of ratings would you use? And if you would ever use ratings, how would you use them?