Most of us make dozens of decisions every day without thinking too much about them. Some are small, like what to eat for lunch. Others have a much bigger impact on our future.

Think about a decision you're facing right now. Maybe you don't have all the information you want. Maybe there is some randomness, such as the weather or other people’s behaviors, involved. So you ask questions, do some research, gather whatever information you can, weigh your options, and ultimately make the best choice possible. 

The challenge is that you'll never know exactly how things are going to turn out. That's one decision-making skill many students don't spend much time developing: making thoughtful decisions in the face of uncertainty. 

The Real World Doesn't Come With an Answer Key

Most of us spend years in the classroom learning how to find the right answer. With assignments, tests, and projects, there's usually a correct solution waiting at the end and little or no uncertainty (unless we didn’t study).

But outside of school, many of the decisions people face don't have one obvious answer. Should a city spend money on roads or public transportation? How should a business respond when customer preferences start to change? What's the best way to manage limited resources during a drought?

Reasonable people can look at the same information and come to different conclusions. That's because many real-world decisions involve trade-offs, uncertainty, and constantly changing factors.

Why Waiting for Certainty Doesn't Work

Maybe you're deciding whether to change your major, study abroad, or take an internship. You can talk to professors, friends, family members, and career advisors. You can spend hours researching online. But none of those things can tell you exactly how the experience will unfold.

Eventually, you reach a point where there isn't another article to read or another person to ask. The information you've gathered is helpful, but it won't make the decision for you.

At some point, the decision is yours to make.

How Math Modelers Approach Decisions

Let's say you're helping plan a large campus event. You need an idea of how many students will attend, how much food should be ordered, and how many volunteers are needed. Oh, and what happens if it rains?

Nobody knows the answers ahead of time. All you can do is gather information, look at what happened at similar events, make some reasonable assumptions, and prepare for different possibilities. This kind of thinking is at the heart of mathematical modeling.

When you’re operating with a mathematical modeling mindset, you don't wait until every unknown disappears because that rarely happens. Instead, you work with the information you have, test different scenarios, and use what you learn to make a well-informed decision.

Even if your decision is not perfect, perhaps you can add a margin of error that reassures you. Or perhaps you realize you’ve minimized the chance of a big error while being comfortable with the possible little errors you can’t eliminate.

The goal is to make better decisions with the information that’s available.

Good Decisions With or Without Certainty

Strong decision-makers understand that they're never going to have all the information they'd like. The difference is that they don't let uncertainty keep them from making a decision.

They also understand that making a good decision doesn't guarantee a perfect outcome.

Looking back, it's easy to judge a decision based on that outcome. But that's not always fair. A decision can be well thought out and still lead somewhere unexpected. What matters is whether it was the best choice you could make with the information you had at the time.

A Decision-Making Skill for the Rest of Your Life

Throughout your life, you'll face decisions that don't come with one clean and simple answer. All of the choices you make can shape your future, yet few of them come with guarantees. But they still have to be made.

Mathematical modeling gives students experience working through the kinds of questions, from contest problems to everyday decisions, that don't have one clear answer. The specifics may change, but the process doesn't. And you're practicing the same decision-making skills you'll use long after graduation.

One of COMAP’s partners focuses on decision-making education, whether math is required or not, and much of decision-making education overlaps with a modeling mindset. If you want more, check out Alliance for Decision Education.