I track the term "decision making". Like most terms the more you think about it, the more you realize that it is used rather loosely. The word "decision" itself is really a noun but is often used in its verb form. As a noun, it is the result of a process (to be discussed in a minute) that is a call to action. I have decided to marry Adele. I have decided to walk through the doorway. I have decided that, indeed grass is green.

When people use the term "decision" they often mean the process of making a decision. I am making a decision about which restaurant to eat at. The team is working on that decision. We often qualify the activity of choosing a course of action by using the term "decision-making".

Decision-making implies that a choice is to be made - i.e. there must be two or more alternative courses of action. However, often the process is about justification for a single course of action and the activity is focused on convincing someone that that this is right course to take. (think politics and decision making processes used in attacking the Bay of Pigs and Iraq).

I came across another curious use of "decision-making". I found a web site titled "Test Your Decision Making" that has you do a short and very simple exercise to guess the rule that governs the sequence 2,4,6. This is on the Yale University web site. The answer is simple (it is a sequence) and the explanation centers on "To test a hypothesis, try to disprove it." I frankly found the discussion confusing, but it at least it was about testing hypotheses (potential courses of action) in order to choose the best. However, the point about testing each one until I found a counter example seems daunting for anything other than simple, toy problems like the one presented.