Design of Experiments - US Army Conference on Applied Statistics

Module 4 – Summary
• Most design problems have factors that are ripe for use as
blocking variables.
• Ignoring these variables can make it hard to detect the real
effects <strong>of</strong> the control factors due to the inflation <strong>of</strong> the error
variance from the effect <strong>of</strong> the blocking factor.
• Traditional blocking structures are also optimal.
• These structures can be reproduced using optimal design
algorithms.
• However, these algorithms also work in situations where nonstandard
block and/or sample sizes are required.