A Statistical Testing of the Consistency Index in Analytic Hierarchy Process

Signi cant research has been devoted to the consistency index of the Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP) from several perspectives. Critics of the consistency index in AHP state that the critical value of consistency index depends on an average of the random index based simulation study using a 9 scale comparison matrix. We found that the distribution of the consistency index followed the skew distribution according to the dimension of the comparison matrix based on a simulation study with a 9 scale comparison matrix. From the simulation study, we suggest a consistency index quantile table to assist the decision-making process in AHP; in addition, we can approximate the distribution of the consistency index to the gamma distribution under the limited assumptions