State parameters are things that affect a study that you cannot adjust. Examples of some state parameters are: pH, influent conductivity, temperature. After selecting state parameters that are important to your study, assign a weighting to the parameters. Weights are relative to one another, providing a high degree of flexibility. For example, if you had 3 parameters, you could weight them 0.2, 0.3 and 0.5, indicating that the third parameter should have 50% of the overall weighting. This would be an example of absolute weighting.  Weighting  can also be used to indicate relative importance, so temperature can be rated as the same importance as conductivity.