The main CAST e-books cover topics that are usually taught in introductory statistical methods courses. The material in this CAST e-book is more advanced and is usually left until a second statistics course or later.

This e-book describes some principles of experimental design with emphasis on industrial experiments.

Experiments in agriculture and biology

Experiments in agriculture and biology are often conducted with highly variable animals, plants and plots of land. These 'experimental units' often have some structure that is known before the experiment is started. For example animals may have known weights and be managed in herds; plants may be grown in different greenhouse shelves; adjacent plots of land may have similar fertility. Many experimental design methods have been designed to cope with the variability and structure of experimental units.

Industrial experiments

In contrast, industrial experiments are usually conduced in well controlled environments with fairly homogeneous raw materials. Lower variability in the experiment makes it possible to vary and assess the effects of more input variables in the same experiment. The emphasis is therefore on efficiently designing experiments with many input variables and thorough investigation of their effects.

This e-book concentrates on the experimental designs that are most commonly used in industrial experiments.

The e-book does not give a complete coverage of Design and Analysis of Experiments. For a broader understanding of experimental design, we refer readers to the companion CAST e-book about Experimental Design for Agriculture and Biology.

The material assumes a good understanding of basic statistical concepts and methods. You are therefore strongly advised to revise the basics from one of the introductory CAST e-books before studying the material here.