Peter Davidson Consultancy Ltd

Visual Choice - Behavioural Choice Modelling Software

Visual Choice is our bespoke choice modelling software, which models people's choices. It offers a comprehensive Windows based graphical user interface, to provide an easy to use environment in which to design and estimate discrete choice models and apply people's choices in real-world predictive models. It is especially tailored to modelling complex hierarchies of nested choices, used at the cutting edge in transport demand models. Featuring the following:

Choice nest modelling - build any hierarchy of dependent choices and run your model

A simple yet powerful way of designing choice models, so they can be connected into complex hierarchical nesting for detailed transport modelling. You can graphically design your choice nests and work through their complexitites to check them and apply them in your transport model. The choice nest can take individual people, trip ends or matrices to produce people's decisions as trip matrices depending upon the choice hierarchy. The software is fast: capable of swiftly running complex nests of choices for transport models such as trip frequence, mode, time period, destination, peak spreading and route choices.

Integrated development environment

Everything you need to visually develop, add, view and edit models and files:

Discrete chouce logit to estimate your model coefficients

This estimates the coefficients of the logit model utility function, using maxmimum likelihood logit model estimation for the following types of logit model: multinormal, nested, cross nested, mixed, latent class and dogit. Its graphical user interface helps you set up the estimation specification as well as visually selecting different model types with a variety of features. Model types can be switched in or out with the click of the mouse. It takes as input a file of attributes, another of decisions, a problem specification file and it outputs a log file containing the coefficients and statistics for the model being estimated.

Stated Preference to measure choice

Discrete choices are sometimes obtained from stated preference or stated choice experiments which can required complex statistical designs. Visual Choice can generate these designs to your specification. The graphical interface helps you set up your choice speficiation. You then select the type of design (e.g. orthogonal or efficient design), interactions etc. and Visual Choice will give you the design. If you supply a template (or use one of ours), Visual Choice will even output the games for you.