Online Tool Store
· 4 min read
How to Compare Options With a Weighted Table
Heshan Fernando
Co-founder & COO
Four vendors, six criteria, and a meeting on Thursday. Someone builds a spreadsheet, everyone scores everything out of five, the totals get added up, and the option that wins is the one the person who built the spreadsheet already preferred.
That’s not dishonesty. It’s what happens when weights get chosen after the scores are visible, which is the default way these tables get made.
What a weighted table is actually for
The arithmetic is trivial: multiply each score by the importance of its criterion, sum, divide by the total weight. Nothing about that is hard.
The value isn’t the number at the bottom. It’s in two things the process forces.
First, naming the criteria. Writing down what actually matters — and discovering that two people had entirely different lists — is often where the real disagreement surfaces, before anyone has scored anything.
Second, the disagreement between totals and priorities. When the highest-scoring option isn’t the one that wins on your two most heavily weighted criteria, that gap is the decision. Either the weights are wrong, or the winner is winning on things you said you didn’t care much about.
A table that produces a clear winner with no tension usually means the decision was easy and you didn’t need the table.
Why people get stuck here
- Weights set after scoring. The scores are visible, so the weights get tuned until the preferred option wins.
- Criteria that don’t discriminate. Six criteria where every option scores identically add noise, not information.
- False precision. Scoring out of a hundred implies a confidence nobody has. Out of five, or a three-point scale, is more honest.
- The missing criterion. Two options tie, and the reason is a factor everyone is thinking about and nobody wrote down.
What a good comparison table looks like
Weights fixed before any scoring
Agree what matters and how much, in a separate step, ideally with the options hidden. Then score. This one change does more for the quality of the decision than anything else.
Few criteria, all discriminating
Five or six that actually separate the options beat fifteen where most score the same. If every option scores 4, the criterion isn’t telling you anything.
Per-criterion winners visible
Show which option wins each criterion, not just the totals. A total hides the shape of the result, and the shape is the useful part.
| Practice | Weak Version | Better |
|---|---|---|
| Weights | Set after seeing scores | Agreed before scoring |
| Scale | 1–100, false precision | 1–5 or three-point |
| Criteria | Fifteen, mostly identical | Five or six that discriminate |
| Output | Single total | Totals plus per-criterion winners |
Common mistakes to avoid
- Adding a criterion mid-scoring because one option is doing badly.
- Weighting cost at 40% and then choosing the expensive option anyway — if that’s the outcome, the weight was wrong.
- Scoring criteria that are actually requirements. A requirement is a filter, not a scored dimension; options that fail it shouldn’t be in the table.
- Presenting the total as the decision. The table informs judgement; it doesn’t replace it.
- Letting one person score everything, which produces a table of one person’s opinion with extra steps.
How to do it with Model Comparison Table
The Model Comparison Table builds the grid and does the weighted arithmetic in your browser.
- List the options and the criteria that genuinely decide the choice.
- Set the weights before you score anything, and write down why.
- Score each option, ideally with more than one person.
- Read the per-criterion winners alongside the totals.
- Where the totals and the heavily-weighted criteria disagree, discuss that gap rather than the total.
Other planning and decision tools are in the tools directory.
Frequently asked questions
Should weights be set before or after scoring?
Before, always. Weights chosen with the scores visible get adjusted — usually unconsciously — until the preferred option wins. Then the table justifies a decision rather than informing one.
What if two options tie?
A tie usually means the criteria are missing whatever actually differentiates them. Add the thing you keep thinking about but haven’t written down; that’s almost always the real criterion.
Is the highest total always the right choice?
No. A weighted score summarises your judgement — it doesn’t replace it. The table’s real job is to make disagreement visible so it can be discussed explicitly.
Final thought
Fix the weights, then score. If that feels like it slows the process down, notice that the slow part is agreeing what matters — which is the decision, not an obstacle to it.