Category:Definitions/Experimental Designs

This category contains definitions related to Experimental Designs.
Related results can be found in Category:Experimental Designs.

Let us want to set up a series of comparative experiments to compare the effects of administering $2$ or more treatments of some kind, for example:

different medicines for patients

different fertilizers for plots of land

different lubricants for machines

to a number of experimental units.

An experimental design is a crafted system of experiments defined by a set of rules which defines how experimental units are grouped, in order to maximise the efficiency and precision of the experiments.

Such a group should contain units which are as alike as possible in those characteristics that may affect responses other than the applied treatments.

Treatments are them compared within each group, and the results analysed, often by using ANOVA techniques.

This analysis is then expected to remove the effect of differences, other than those caused by the applied treatment, between units in different groups.