In: Statistics and Probability
An investigation is to be conducted to determine the source of reduction in yield of a certain chemical product. It is known that the loss in yield occurs in the mother liquor, that is, the material removed at the filtration stage. It is hypothesized that different blend methods of the original material might result in different yield reductions at the mother liquor stage. T1 is the current blending procedure in use, and the chemical engineers would like to compare this with 3 other methods, namely, T2, T3 and T4. Each of the 4 methods will be applied to 5 batches of mother liquor, and the losses in yield will be measured. Note that each batch is only used once, that is, it is blended by only one method.
Short answers:
a. What are the experimental units and how many are required?
b. What are the treatments and how many are there?
c. Identify the control group, if there is one.
d. What is the response variable?
e. Identify 2 stages in the experiment where the principle of randomization should be applied. Describe how it is implemented in these stages, respectively.