Experimental Design Flashcards

Flashcards on Experimental Design

Experimental Unit

The smallest unit to which a treatment is applied.

Sampling Unit

The smallest unit from which data is collected; what you actually measure.

Replication

Sample sizes needed to estimate the variation in the system being studied.

Standard Error of the Mean

A measure of the statistical accuracy of an estimate, equal to the standard deviation of the theoretical distribution of a large population of such estimates.

Pseudo Replication

Artificially inflating the number of replicates, often due to misidentifying experimental units.

Confounding

A situation where the effect of a treatment cannot be distinguished from other factors.

Randomization

Randomly assigning treatments to experimental units to avoid bias.

Completely Randomized Design

Randomly allocating treatments amongst all experimental units.

Randomized Complete Block Design

An experiment where the field is broken up into blocks, and within each of those blocks, the treatments are randomly assigned.

Blocking

Breaking up an area or experiment into blocks to control for known or suspected sources of variation.

ANOVA

Capturing all the information and variation based on what treatments are set up.