Importance of Hierarchical Structuring

Humans have difficulty dealing with more than seven - plus or minus two - factors at a time.  To overcome this cognitive limitation, objectives can be structured into a hierarchy of clusters of elements.  One of the axioms of AHP is that the elements in a cluster should be within an order of magnitude of importance with one another.  

Plex:  A Plex is defined as an element and all elements below.  The plex of the goal is the entire hierarchy.