Graphical Methods for the Design of Experiments [Paperback]

Most texts on the design of experiments focus on the analysis of experimental data, not on the creation of the design. Graphical Methods for Experimental Design presents a strategic view of the planning of experiments, and provides a number of graphical tools that are useful for justifying the effort required for experimentation, identifying variables and candidate statistical models, selecting the set of run conditions and for assessing the quality of the design. In addition, the graphical framework for creating fractional factorial designs is used to present experimental results in a way that is easier to understand than a set of model coefficients. The text merely assumes a basic knowledge of statistics and matrices, while many of the graphical techniques are accessible without any knowledge of statistical models, requiring only some familiarity with the plotting of functions and with the concept of projection from elementary mechanical drawing.Graphical methods have played an important role in the statistical analysis of experimental data, but have not been used as extensively for experiment design, at least as it is presented in most design of experiments texts. Yet graphical methods are particularly attractive for the design of experiments because they exploit our creative right-brain capabilities. Creative activity is clearly important in any kind of design, certainly for the design ofan experiment. The experimenter must somehow select a set of run conditions that will meet the goals for a particular experiment in a cost-efficient way. Graphical Methods for Experiment Design goes beyond graphical methods for choosing run conditions for an experiment. It looks at the entire pre-experiment planning process, and presents in one place a collection of graphical methods for defining experiment goals, identifying and classifying variables, for choosing a model, for developing a design, and for assessing the adequacy of a design for estimating the unknown coefficientlS