Value of information
Calculate how much it is worth paying for more information before making an engineering decision.
What it's for
Before you commission the analysis, the spike or the survey, this puts a number on what the answer would be worth. Sometimes the honest result is that you already know enough.
New decision-science differentiator beyond the site's current prediction and attribution claims.
What you give it
Inputs split into evidence read from your connected systems, calibration your team owns, and numerical controls that affect precision but never the result's meaning.
| Field | Type | Role | Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| options | array of objects (2 fields) | Evidence | Yes |
| research_cost | number ≥ 0 | Your calibration | Optional |
| scenarios | array of objects (2 fields) | Evidence | Yes |
Each options
record
| Field | Type | Required |
|---|---|---|
| id | string (non-empty) | Yes |
| payoffs | object | Yes |
{
"options": [
{
"id": "migrate",
"payoffs": {
"flat": -3,
"high_growth": 12
}
},
{
"id": "stabilize",
"payoffs": {
"flat": 4,
"high_growth": 6
}
}
],
"research_cost": 1,
"scenarios": [
{
"id": "high_growth",
"probability": 0.55
},
{
"id": "flat",
"probability": 0.45
}
]
} What you get back
This is the actual output of running the example above — computed by the same function the platform calls, not an illustration.
{
"assumption": "EVPI assumes supplied probabilities and payoffs are decision-relevant; imperfect research is worth less than EVPI.",
"best_action_now": "migrate",
"evpi": 3.15,
"expected_value_now": 5.25,
"expected_value_with_perfect_information": 8.4,
"maximum_rational_research_spend": 3.15,
"method": "expected_value_of_perfect_information_v1",
"net_value_of_research": 2.15,
"option_expected_values": [
{
"expected_value": 5.25,
"option": "migrate"
},
{
"expected_value": 5.1,
"option": "stabilize"
}
],
"research_cost": 1,
"research_worthwhile_at_supplied_cost": true,
"state_contingent_actions": [
{
"best_option": "migrate",
"payoff": 12,
"probability": 0.55,
"scenario": "high_growth"
},
{
"best_option": "stabilize",
"payoff": 4,
"probability": 0.45,
"scenario": "flat"
}
]
} How it works
Decision analysis — Turn uncertainty, cost and risk appetite into a defensible choice, with the reasoning left inspectable.
- 1 Calculate how much it is worth paying for more information before making an engineering decision.
- 2 Evaluate the method-specific diagnostics and gates returned by the function, then abstain unless the declared decision clears them under locally governed thresholds.
Before you trust it
Every tool in the catalog ships with the conditions under which its answer is meaningful — and the conditions under which it should abstain instead of guessing.
Assumptions & guardrails
- Actions, outcomes, utilities, evidence boundaries, uncertainty representation, and accountable ownership match the actual decision.
- The result structures a governed choice; it does not replace accountable judgment or authorize action outside the declared decision boundary.
Minimum evidence
- options: required and organization-defined
- scenarios: required and organization-defined
How to validate it
Backtest the chosen action against simple feasible baselines on held-out scenarios, sweep costs/constraints/risk tolerance, and require constraint feasibility under adverse inputs.
Calibrating it to your org
Same for everyone
The mathematical kernel, validation rules, method version, and JSON output semantics are organization-independent; no tenant-trained coefficients or company benchmark is embedded in the function.
Specific to you
- metric/outcome definitions, entity grain, observation window, costs, thresholds, priors, and constraints represented by the function inputs
Calibration workflow
- 1 Define the management decision, target outcome, aggregate unit, privacy boundary, cadence, and prediction/intervention horizon for this organization.
- 2 Build a tenant-scoped historical cohort using only information available before each prediction or decision; preserve zero periods, censoring, assignment probabilities, and unresolved outcomes when the method requires them.
- 3 Estimate statistical parameters on training history, but obtain costs, utilities, risk tolerance, practical-effect thresholds, capacity, and policy constraints from accountable decision owners.
- 4 Validate on later time windows or held-out aggregate units at the deployment grain, against a simple baseline and the function-specific validation strategy.
- 5 Deploy only if the returned decision clears evidence, overlap, calibration, robustness, and guardrail checks; warning, unsupported, schema-gap, and fallback decisions are abstentions.
- 6 Monitor realized outcomes, data drift, coverage, and decision regret; recalibrate at a governed cadence or after a detected regime/definition change, never merely because a stakeholder dislikes the result.
Call it from your AI
You don't wire up 388 tools in your MCP client. The GitRevio MCP server exposes 18 tools, three of which let an agent search the catalog, read a tool's schema, and run it — so the assistant finds this one on its own.
gitrevio_capabilities_search
{ "q": "calculate how much it is worth" }
→ finds "value_of_information"
gitrevio_capability_describe
{ "capability_id": "value_of_information" }
→ returns the input schema and agent guidance shown on this page
gitrevio_capability_run
{ "capability_id": "value_of_information", "arguments": { ... } }
→ returns the result shown above Works in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Continue.dev, Goose and Aider. See the MCP server.
Related tools
Analyze coordination entropy
Quantify privacy-safe cross-team seam complexity, concentration, latency, and failure load.
Optimize robust intervention portfolio
Choose a dependency-safe action portfolio that balances expected and worst-case outcomes.
Analyze deep uncertainty minimax regret
Apply Savage minimax regret when scenario probabilities are not defensible, compare maximin and equal-weight choices, and use PRIM-style iterative peeling to discover compact context boxes where the robust choice remains vulnerable.
Audit aggregate metric reversal
Detect Simpson's-paradox-style sign reversals between an executive aggregate relationship and its weighted within-stratum fixed-effect relationship, with whole-stratum bootstrap uncertainty and practical-magnitude gates.
Audit informative metric missingness
Audit whether aggregate metric availability is associated with a governed outcome using permutation inference, bootstrap intervals, practical effect gates, and false-discovery control.
Audit joint metric dependency drift
Detect changes in cross-metric dependence with empirical-copula ranks, random-feature permutation inference, sliced Wasserstein magnitude, and FDR-controlled pair diagnostics.