Blocking Used For Nuisance Factors That Can Be Controlled
When we can control nuisance factors, an important technique known as blocking can be used to reduce or eliminate the contribution to experimental error contributed by nuisance factors. The basic concept is to create homogeneous blocks in which the nuisance factors are held constant and the factor of interest is allowed to vary. Within blocks, it is possible to assess the effect of different levels of the factor of interest without having to worry about variations due to changes of the block factors, which are accounted for in the analysis.
Read more about this topic: Randomized Block Design
Famous quotes containing the words blocking, nuisance, factors and/or controlled:
“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)
“Without infringing on the liberty we so much boast, might we not ask our professional Mayor to call upon the smokers, have them register their names in each ward, and then appoint certain thoroughfares in the city for their use, that those who feel no need of this envelopment of curling vapor, to insure protection may be relieved from a nuisance as disgusting to the olfactories as it is prejudicial to the lungs.”
—Harriot K. Hunt (18051875)
“The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence,luxury, scepticism, weariness and superstition,are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.”
—Cyril Connolly (19031974)
“Babies control and bring up their families as much as they are controlled by them; in fact ... the family brings up baby by being brought up by him.”
—Erik H. Erikson (19041994)