PLANNING

AND
CONDUCTING
EXPERIMENTS
OBTAINING DATA
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS

● The goal of an experiment is to measure the effect of one or more

treatments on experimental units appropriate to the study to see
whether some treatments are better than others.
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS

QUESTION: Does listening to music on the assembly line help or hinder

the assembly process?
- The floor supervisor could let a few workers have their music on
during assembly process and let a few workers work without any
music.
Note:
- However, the time of the day when the assembly takes place could
affect the outcomes as well.
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS

SOLUTION:

- The supervisor could assign a few workers to work in the morning with
music on and a few workers to work in the morming without music.
- Similarly, he could assign a few workers in the afternoon tovwork with
music on and a few workers in the afternoon without music.
- This process will result in four treatments , namely, (1) morning with
music, (2) morning without music, (3) afternoon with music, (4) afternoon
without music
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS
NOTE:

- The issue will be decided based on measurements taken, such as the

number of assemblies completed per hour.
- Males might produce different result from females, so perhaps we could
control for gender by making sure both males and females are selected for
each of the four treatment groups.
- Randomly assign workers to the four treatment groups in the hope that
any undetected differences in ability will be balanced out by the
randomization process.
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS
KEY ELEMENTS OF AN EXPERIMENT:

a. Clearly define the question to be investigated.

b. Define the treatments to be used.
c. Identify other important variables that can be controlled, and
possibly block experimental units by those variables.
d. Identify important background (lurking) variables that cannot be
controlled but should be balanced by randomization.
e. Randomly assign treatments to the experimental units.
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS
KEY ELEMENTS OF AN EXPERIMENT:
f. Decide on a method of measurement that will minimize
measurement bias .
g. Organize the data collection and data management.
h. Plan for careful and thorough data analysis.
i. Write conclusions in light of the original question.
j. Plan a follow-up study to answer the question more completely or to
answer the next logical question related to the issue on hand.
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS
EXAMPLE:
- An engineer is interested in studying the effect of pipe size and
type of heat transfer. The engineer decides what types of pipes and
what sizes of pipes ( as measured by the diameter ) to use in the
experiment and then sets up an experiment to measure, as the
response of interest, the amount of heat that is transferred
through pipes of a specified length .
Note : In this experiment, diameter of the pipe is one explanatory
variable and type of pipe is another, while the amount of heat
transferred is the response variable.
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS

● In the music experiment, each worker in the study is an

experimental unit.
● In the pipe experiment, a time slot on the apparatus producing the
heat is an experimental unit.
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS

● When studying the effect of diameter of the pipe and type of pipe
on heat transfer, the variable “ diameter “ is a quantitative factor,
whereas “ type of pipe “ is a qualitative factor.
● An experiment can have one or more factors.
● The number of levels used in the experiment may differ from factor
to factor.
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS
Response variable - is the outcome of interest to be measured in an
experiment. ( This is sometimes called as independent variable )
Experimental unit - is the smallest unit (person, animal, building, item,
etc. ) to which a treatment is applied.
Factor - is a variable whose effect on the response is of interest in the
experiment.
Levels - are the values of a factor used in the experiment.
Treatments - are the actual factor - level combinations used in the
experiment.
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS

● In the example of music in the factory floor, two factors at each

two levels are considered: music ( with or without ) and time of the
day ( morning or afternoon ). Therefore, all four combinations (
morning with music , morning without music, afternoon with music
and afternoon without music ) considered in the experiment are
referred to as treatments.
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS

● In the experiment of heat transfer, suppose two types of pipes (

copper and aluminum ) in three different sizes ( small, medium,
and large ) are used. Then there are 3 x 2 = 6 treatments of interest
to the engineer; small copper pipe, medium copper pipe, large
copper pipe, small aluminum pipe, medium aluminum pipe, and
large aluminum pipe.
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS

Then, questions arises:

● How do we decide which worker will be assigned to which

treatment?
● Can we assign or let which worker will join either of the group ?
● Can we let the supervisor decide which worker will be assigned to
which treatment?
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS
Note:

● This process might produce bias and designation of workers with

different skills to the four treatments are not spread fairly evenly.

● The best way to accomplish the neccessary balance among

treatments and uncontrolled variables is to assign treatments to

experimental units at random ( Random assignment ).

PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS

Confounding Variable - is a variable whose effect on the response

cannot be separated from the effect of the treatments.

Block - is a group of homogeneous ( similar in characteristics )

experimental units.

Interaction effect- is said to be present when one factor produces a

different pattern of responses at one level of a second factor than it
does at another level.
PLANNING AND CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS

Replication - is the number of times a treatment appears in the

experiment, or the number of experimental units to which each
treatment is applied in an experiment.
CONFOUNDING VARIABLE

EXAMPLE OF CONFOUNDING VARIABLE:

- Suppose the experimenter did decide to play music only in the

morning and had no music in the afternoon.
- If the morning productivity turned out to exceed the afternoon
productivity, then it would be impossible to tell whether the
increased productivity were due to the music or the time of the
day.
CONFOUNDING VARIABLE

EXAMPLE OF CONFOUNDING VARIABLE:

- In this situation, music and time of day are said to be confounded

and in comparative studies, confounding may lead to many false
conclusions.
RANDOMIZATION

● The effect of randomization is used to balance the effect of factors

you cannot easily control.
● Randomization is used to average out the effects of extraneous
factors on responses.
● Which experimental unit recieves which treatment is determined
randomly.
RANDOMIZATION

EXAMPLE OF RANDOMIZATION:

- In the experiment of music effect on productivity of workers, the

floor supervisor will use a randomization mechanism to decide
which participating worker should be assigned which one of the
four treatments.
BLOCKING

● The technique of blocking is used to control the effects of factors

that you can control easily.
● Ideally, experimental units in a given block are similar in certain
characteristics, whereas those in different blocks differ in those
characteristics.
BLOCKING

EXAMPLE OF BLOCKING:

- In the experiment on the effect of music on productivity of

workers, the floor supervisor could separate workers gender and
conduct the experiment once for males and once for females.
- In this situation, the gender of a worker is used as a blocking factor
to control for the effect of gender on productivity.
INTERACTION EFFECT
EXAMPLE OF INTERACTION EFFECT:

- In the example of music in the factory floor, two factors are

considered.
- If production rate increases with music in the morning but
decreases with music in the afternoon, then we would say that
music and time of day interact to affect productivity.
INTERACTION EFFECT

EXAMPLE OF INTERACTION EFFECT:

- If the difference in the productivity between the music and no

music groups is similar in the morning and in the afternoon, no
interaction effect exists between factors music and time of day;
otherwise, there is an interaction effect.
REPLICATION EFFECT

● Replication is neccessary to measure variation in responses at each

treatment.
● This variation is also known as within - treatment variation
● Replication reduces chance variation among responses while also
allowing us to measure this chance variation.
REPLICATION EFFECT

● Treatments are usually compared by comparing their mean responses.

● The variation in these means decreases as the number of replication
increases.
● If all treatments replicated are exactly the same number of times im
the experiment, then it is known as a balanced design.
REPLICATION EFFECT

Question:

While prescribing certain medicines, your doctor advises you not to

take them with coffee. Why?
REPLICATION EFFECT

Answer:

● In general, when a chemical engineer runs experiments in a lab,

she repeats the experiment more than once under the same
conditions.
● Because even an experiment conducted under the same conditions
can give slightly different results.
REPLICATION EFFECT
REPLICATION EFFECT

EXAMPLE:

- Suppose five workers are assigned to each of four treatments,

resulting in the following data table ( Table 3.6 ); then we say that
each treatment was replicated five times.
REPLICATION EFFECT

EXAMPLE:

- This replication will allow the floor supervisor to treat the

within-treatment variation (i.e., the variation within the
productivities of workers working under the same conditions) from
the variation in productivity due to differences in working
conditions (i.e., variation between the treatment made up of the
factors “music” and “time of day”).
REPLICATION EFFECT
COMPLETELY RANDOMIZED DESIGN
Completely Randomized Design - Treatments are assigned randomly to the
experimental units, or experimental units are randomly assigned among
treatments.

Design of an Experiment - A protocol that describes exactly how the

experiment is to be done

Between - Treatment Variation - The differences within the average

(mean) productivity of workers assigned to the four treatments may be a
result of differences among these four treatments.
COMPLETELY RANDOMIZED DESIGN

- There are certain advantages in having an equal number of

experimental units for each treatments, but it is not neccessary.
- All the experimental units are expected to be as similar as possible
because nonhomogeneous experimental units can confound
effects due to experimental units and effdcts due to treatments.
COMPLETELY RANDOMIZED DESIGN
Question :

- A research and development department of a manufacturer of

industrial drills has designed two new types of drill bits (A and B).
The design engineers are interested in comparing the functioning
of these two new types of bits with that of a currently marketed
one ( C ) . Metal sheets of specific thickness are available for the
experiment.The drilling times to make holes of specific sizes will be
recorded.
COMPLETELY RANDOMIZED DESIGN

Solution:

- The factor of interest is the bit type, witg three levels ( A, B, and C),
which is an explanatory variable, because we are hoping that it
would explain differences (if any) in drilling times.
- Therefore, bit types A, B, and C are three treatments in this
experiment.
- The measured variable, drilling time, is the response variable.
COMPLETELY RANDOMIZED DESIGN

Using the available metal sheets, design the experiment as follows;

● Use some randomization scheme to divide the metal sheets into

three groups. For example, throw a six - sided die for each sheet. If
a number 1 or 2 shows, then assign that sheet to group 1; if a
number 3 or 4 shows, then assign that sheet to group 2; otherwise
assign tge sheet to group 3.
COMPLETELY RANDOMIZED DESIGN

● Drill a hole in each sheet in group 1, using a new bit A. Record the
drilling times. Drill a hole in each sheet in group 2, using a new bit
B. Record the drilling times. Drill a hole in each sheet in group 3,
using the currently marketed bit C. Record the drilling times.
Randomize the order in which the drilling occurs.
● Compare the results.
COMPLETELY RANDOMIZED DESIGN
COMPLETELY RANDOMIZED DESIGN

● In this experiment, we can identify two different sources of

variation in the drilling times, one due to the use different types of
drill bits and the other among bits of the same type.
● The variation in drilling times using different drill bits is the
between-treatment variation, whereas the variation in drilling
times when using the same type of drill bit is within-treatment
variation.
RANDOMIZED BLOCK DESIGN
Randomized Block Design - all experimental units are grouped by
certain characteristics to form homogeneous blocks, and a completely
randomized design is applied within each block.

- Groups of similar units, called blocks, are formed, and treatments

are compared within each block.
- Blocking of experimental units allows removal of systematic
differences in responses due to a known factor and leads to more
precise conclusions from the experiment.
RANDOMIZED BLOCK DESIGN

- In the music experiment, to control for the differential effect of

skill level on thebproductivity, the supervisor decided to separate
workers by skill level (low and high) and assign workers within
each skill-level group randomly to four treatment groups. So, the
randomization was carried out within each block. It is like
conducting a completely randomized design within each block.
The resulting data table will look like Table 3.7.
RANDOMIZED BLOCK DESIGN
RANDOMIZED BLOCK DESIGN

Now we can identify three different sources of variation.

1. Variation in productivity due to use of different treatments

2. Chance or within-treatment variation

3. Variation in productivity due to the skill level of workers

RANDOMIZED BLOCK DESIGN

- Make each block of two experimental units, matched by some

characteristic. Within each block, toss a coin to assign two
treatments to two experimental units randomly. So, both
treatments will be applied within each block, with each
experimental unit receiving only one treatment. Because both
experimental units are similar to each other except for the
treatment received, the differences in responses may be attributed
to the differences in treatments.
RANDOMIZED BLOCK DESIGN

- For example, in a medical experiment comparing two treatments,

subjects paired by matching background health conditions could
have the treatments assigned at random within each pair.
RANDOMIZED BLOCK DESIGN

- Alternatively, each experimental unit can be used as its own block.

Assign both treatments to each experimental unit, but in random
order. To control the effect of order of treatment, determine the
order randomly. With each experimental unit, toss a coin to decide
whether the order of treatments should be “treatment 1 treatment
2,” or “treatment 2 treatment 1.”
RANDOMIZED BLOCK DESIGN

- Because both treatments are assigned to the same experimental

unit, the individual effects of the experimental units are reduced so
that differences in responses can more easily be attributed to
differences in treatments. (A design of the type described here is
sometimes called a repeated measures design.)
RANDOMIZED BLOCK DESIGN

For example, in a medical experiment comparing two treatments, it is

sometimes possible to give each subject both treatments in random
order, with a time delay between the administrations.
RANDOMIZED BLOCK DESIGN

EXAMPLE:

- A manufacturer is interested in comparing the time required to

complete a task by two different sorters. Six different operators
will be used to operate sorters in this experiment. The engineer in
charge suspects that the experience level of each operator will
affect the sorting time. Design an experiment to compare sorting
times of the three sorters.
RANDOMIZED BLOCK DESIGN

SOLUTION:

- The response variable is sorting time to be measured. Two factors

in this experiment are sorter (2) and operator (6), of which sorter is
a treatment factor and operator is a blocking factor. To control for
the operator effect, the engineer decides to block by operator, in
other words, get each operator to operate both sorters.
RANDOMIZED BLOCK DESIGN

- However, she suspects that the second sorter operated by each

operator will get the advantage of a learning effect and will result
in lower sorting times.
RANDOMIZED BLOCK DESIGN

- Therefore, with each operator the engineer randomly decides the

order of sorters operated (sorter 1 sorter 2 or sorter 2 sorter 1). By
doing so, any advantage of a learning effect will be about the same
for both the sorters, and it will get averaged out in the comparison
of mean times.
THE END