Optimizing Dynamic Online Surveys

Fair, Issac and Company, Inc. Mathematics, 2001-02

Liaison(s): Stacy Sanders ’99, Gary Sullivan
Advisor(s): Lesley Ward (Fall) Jerzy Filar (Spring), Hank Krieger
Students(s): Jennifer M. Lindsay (TL), Emily Kajita, Shane Markstrum, Justin Okano

Fair, Isaac and Co. is interested in developing a method for constructing dynamic online surveys. Our team’s goal is to construct an algorithm which will choose the next survey question based on previous responses, in order to maximize the amount of information about the respondent in the fewest number of questions. When predictions are made based on the respondent’s information, the algorithm will adjust its parameters for both correct and incorrect predictions to be more accurate for future survey-takers.