Design of experiments

Lecture 3: Introduction (OFAT – 4-FAT, Ch 1

DAE)
Nitin Padhiyar
IIT - Gandhinagar
MOST INFLUENCING FACTORS
using BEST GUESS APPROACH
⚫ suppose the oversized driver, balata ball, golf cart, and
water combination is selected, and the resulting score
is 87
⚫ Later I realize the driver was too large and couldn't
control the shot. So next, I use regular sized driver
holding other constant
⚫ This approach could continue endlessly!
⚫ Generally we follow this approach
⚫ Works reasonably well
⚫ Tedious
⚫ May converge to a sub optimal solution
MOST INFLUENCING FACTORS using
ONE FACTOR AT A TIME (OFAT)
⚫ More systematic (compared to the best guess
approach)
⚫ One factor, 2-levels
⚫ Seems more scientific
⚫ Fails when there is interaction among factors (why?)

C W
 WHY OFAT IS NOT GOOD?
⚫ It does not take into account the interactions!
⚫ Now, Which combination of ball driver and beverage
looks good?
⚫ How does it compare with the OFAT?

OFAT 2-FAT
 Factorial Approach
⚫ What is a better approach?
⚫ Factorial experiment approach-simultaneous multiple
factors are varied together
⚫ For example 2 factors (with 2 levels), how many
different combinations exist?
⚫ 22 factorial design
22 FACTORIAL DESIGN
 2
2 FACTORIAL DESIGN - Driver
Effect

⚫ What does it mean?

⚫ With this result, should we use regular (R) or oversized
(O) driver?
 22 FACTORIAL DESIGN - Ball
Effect

⚫ What does it mean?

⚫ With this result, should we use Balata (B) or
three-piece (T) ball?
 22 FACTORIAL DESIGN –
Interaction

⚫ What does it mean?

⚫ With this result: is there any interaction among Ball
and Driver?
22 FACTORIAL DESIGN
⚫ factorials make the most efficient use of the
experimental data
⚫ Notice that this experiment included eight
observations, and all eight observations are used to
calculate the driver, ball, and interaction effects.
⚫ No other strategy of experimentation makes such an
efficient use of the data. This is an important and
useful feature of factorials.
⚫ What if we have 3 factors to study? E.g. (1) type of
driver, (2) type of ball, and (3) type of beverage
⚫ How many possibilities exist with 2 levels for each
factor?
 23 FACTOR FACTORIAL DESIGN

⚫ Only one round to be played for each combination.

Why?
⚫ If we want to study only two factors (ball and driver),
can we use these results?
 24 FACTOR FACTORIAL DESIGN

How many experiments do we need?

But, we have a luxury of performing only 8!
So, what should we do?
FRACTIONAL FACTOR FACTORIAL
DESIGN

⚫ Variation of the basic factorial design

⚫ Subset of the runs is used
⚫ 8 runs instead of the original 16
⚫ This is an excellent design to study all four factors with 8
rounds
⚫ Provides the information about main effects and their