Fundamentals of Statistical Experimental Design and Analysis

Preface

I have a dream: that professionals in all areas—business; government; the physical, life, and social sciences; engineering; medicine; and others—will increasingly use statistical experimental design to better understand their worlds and to use that understanding to improve the products, processes, and programs they are responsible for. To this end, these professionals need to be inspired and taught, early, to conduct well-conceived and well-executed experiments and then properly extract, communicate, and act on information generated by the experiment. This learning can and should happen at the undergraduate level—in a way that carries over into a student’s eventual career. This text is aimed at fulfilling that goal.

Many excellent statistical texts on experimental design and analysis have been written by statisticians, primarily for students in statistics. These texts are generally more technical and more comprehensive than is appropriate for a mixed-discipline undergraduate audience and a one-semester course, the audience and scope this text addresses. Such texts tend to focus heavily on statistical analysis, for a catalog of designs. In practice, however, finding and implementing an experimental design capable of answering questions of importance are often where the battle is won. The data from a well-designed experiment may almost analyze themselves—often graphically. Rising generations of statisticians and the professionals with whom they will collaborate need more ...