Theory & Methods: Cutting Experimental Designs into Blocks

Summary Most experimental material in agriculture and industry is heterogeneous in nature and therefore its statistical analysis benefits from blocking. Many experiments are restricted in time or space, and again blocking is useful. This paper adopts the idea of orthogonal blocking of Box & Hunter (1957) and applies it to optimal blocking designs. This approach is then compared with the determinant-based approach described in the literature for constructing block designs.