(a) Imagine that a close friend has been diagnosed with heart disease. The physician recommends bypass surgery. The surgery should solve the problem. When asked about the risks, the physician replies that a few individuals die during the operation, but most recover and the surgery is a complete success. Thus, your friend can (most likely) anticipate a longer and healthier life after the surgery. Without surgery, your friend will have a shorter and gradually deteriorating life. Assuming that your friend’s objective is to maximize the quality of her life, construct a decision tree for this scenario.

(b) Suppose now that your friend obtains a second opinion. The second physician suggests that there is a third possible outcome: Complications from surgery can develop which will require long and painful treatment. If this happens, the eventual outcome can be either a full recovery, partial recovery (restricted to a wheelchair until death) or death within a few months. Draw the influence diagram that represents the situation after hearing from both physicians. How does this change the decision tree that you created in part (a)?

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