Blocking To "remove" The Effect of Nuisance Factors
For randomized block designs, there is one factor or variable that is of primary interest. However, there are also several other nuisance factors.
Nuisance factors are those that may affect the measured result, but are not of primary interest. For example, in applying a treatment, nuisance factors might be the specific operator who prepared the treatment, the time of day the experiment was run, and the room temperature. All experiments have nuisance factors. The experimenter will typically need to spend some time deciding which nuisance factors are important enough to keep track of or control, if possible, during the experiment.
Read more about this topic: Randomized Block Design
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