Controlled experiments—studies in which treatments are assigned to observational units— are the gold standard of scientific investigation. The goal of the statistical design and analysis of experiments is to (1) identify the factors which most affect a given process or phenomenon; (2) identify the ways in which these factors affect the process or phenomenon, both individually and in combination; (3) accomplish goals 1 and 2 with minimum cost and maximum efficiency while maintaining the validity of the results.
Topics covered in this course include the design, implementation and analysis of completely randomized complete block, nested, split plot, Latin square and repeated measures designs. Emphasis will be on the application of the theory to real data using statistical computer packages.
Prerequisites
knowledge of basic probability and statistics at the level of MA 511 is assumed