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
Famous quotes containing the words blocking, effect, nuisance and/or factors:
“Cassoulet, that best of bean feasts, is everyday fare for a peasant but ambrosia for a gastronome, though its ideal consumer is a 300-pound blocking back who has been splitting firewood nonstop for the last twelve hours on a subzero day in Manitoba.”
—Julia Child (b. 1912)
“In effect it seemed to him that, though honor might possess certain advantages, yet shame had others, and not inferior: advantages, even, that were well-nigh boundless in their scope.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Nations like the Cuban and the Swiss
Can never hope to wage a Global Mission.
No Holy Wars for them. The most the small
Can ever give us is a nuisance brawl.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The economic dependence of woman and her apparently indestructible illusion that marriage will release her from loneliness and work and worry are potent factors in immunizing her from common sense in dealing with men at work.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)