Question

A medical researcher suspects that giving post-surgical patients large doses of Vitamin E will speed their recovery times by helping their incisions heal more quickly.

Design an experiment to test this conjecture. It must be randomized, comparative, double blind and placebo controlled.

Be sure to identify the factors, levels, treatments, response variable and role of randomization.

Thank you.

Answer 1

The whole experiment can be designed and captured as below

	Post Surgical
	Grp1	Grp 2
	Placebo Pill	Vit E pill
Time

where the empty cells would capture the recovery times for different subjects

Factors would be 2 groups

treatment is placebo pills and vitamin E pill

response variable is recovery times

randomization can be described as below

In order to perform the randomize experiment , we can have equal number of pieces of coins in a box that are labeles as A and B
Then we shall let the subjects draw from the group
all As shall be placed in 1 group
all Bs shall be placed in another group

The experiment can then be controlled by having a baseline subject treatment. We give a placebo pill to group 2 and then compare the results with that of group 1 to see if there is any significant difference or improvement

Hope this helps
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