Simply Scoring and Visualizing Portfolio Heterogeneity for Selected Problems

Organizations may seek diversification as a desirable characteristic of a portfolio, be it of research projects, research laboratories, supply vendors, task team personnel, or financial investments. Decision makers typically gauge such diversity subjectively. The very subjectivity of such decisions can make achieving consensus difficult and can open the decision makers to charges of unfairness. An objective measure of heterogeneity can simplify and speed such analysis while girding the decision makers against charges of bias. In this paper we develop and demonstrate a simple heterogeneity measure capable of addressing disparity and balance, two components of interest in measuring heterogeneity. We also note that dynamic 3D visualization, either with 2D projection or true stereoscopic pairs, is easily implement in a spreadsheet.