Practical Experimental Designs and Optimization Methods for Chemists

This book introduces statistically designed experiments to chemists who conduct experiments for the purpose of making inferences from data. It emphasizes statistical considerations for preliminary planning of experiments, standard statistical designs that may be used for experiments, and the underlying logic for using these designs. The book assumes only an elementary background in probability and statistics. Among the topics discussed are the steepest ascent and simplex optimization methods to maximize or minimize chemical ... Read More

This book introduces statistically designed experiments to chemists who conduct experiments for the purpose of making inferences from data. It emphasizes statistical considerations for preliminary planning of experiments, standard statistical designs that may be used for experiments, and the underlying logic for using these designs. The book assumes only an elementary background in probability and statistics. Among the topics discussed are the steepest ascent and simplex optimization methods to maximize or minimize chemical measurements and response surface experiments to characterize the surface of chemical measurements for different levels of the experimental factors. The authors provide three computer programs written in BASIC for an IBM-PC for calculating half-normal plots. They also provide a bibliography of optimization and response surface methods actually used in 17 major fields of chemistry as a guide to current practice. Read Less