Question
What is Pugh matrix?
Quick Answer
Weight your criteria and score options systematically when multiple factors matter.
Example: You're choosing between three job offers. Each has a different salary, commute, growth trajectory, team culture, and technical stack. You can't hold all five dimensions across all three options in your head simultaneously — Cowan's 3-to-5 slot limit guarantees it. So you build a matrix: criteria down the left, options across the top, weights assigned to each criterion based on what actually matters to you right now, and scores filled in cell by cell. The offer that 'felt' weakest turns out to score highest because it dominates on the two criteria you weighted most heavily. The matrix didn't make the decision — it made visible what your intuition was averaging incorrectly.
This concept is part of Decision Frameworks in the How to Think curriculum.
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Go beyond the answer
This topic is part of Think With AI — a guided sequence of 16 lessons.
After completing this path you will use AI as a thinking partner without judgment atrophy: your mental models and assumptions externalized where AI can challenge them, recurring decisions routed through explicit frameworks, decisions captured with their reasoning so both you and the AI learn from outcomes, and a clear line around the judgments that stay yours.
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