a pessimist's approach to choosing among management alternatives under uncertainty by (a) noting for each management alternative the magnitude of the worst possible outcome (i.e., when faced with the least desirable state of the world for that alternative) and (b) selecting the management alternative with the best worst-case value (which could be the highest or lowest, depending on whether the outcome attribute of concern is a "good," such as present net worth, or a "bad," such as the number of escaped fires) —note to determine the lowest-valued attribute or worst-met standard and follow this decision rule, a very high degree of comparability is needed among the attributes within each alternative and among alternatives —see maximax, minimax regretThis definition last updated 07/14/2008