Definition. weighted-sum scalarization [boyd2004convex, Section 4.7.5] [ftip-005P]

For objective vector \(v\in \mathbb R^m\) and nonnegative weights \(w\in \mathbb R_+^m\), the weighted-sum scalarization assigns the score \(w^\top v\). Optimizing this score selects a point according to the declared weights.

Changing \(w\) changes the research question. A single weighted score can hide tradeoffs among evaluation groups or task families.