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Randomized Block Design

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The Concise Encyclopedia of Statistics

A randomized block design is an experimental design where the experimental units are in groups called blocks. The treatments are randomly allocated to the experimental units inside each block. When all treatments appear at least once in each block, we have a completely randomized block design. Otherwise, we have an incomplete randomized block design.

This kind of design is used to minimize the effects of systematic error. If the experimenter focuses exclusively on the differences between treatments, the effects due to variations between the different blocks should be eliminated.

HISTORY

See experimental design.

EXAMPLES

A farmer possesses five plots of land where he wishes to cultivate corn. He wants to run an experiment since he has two kinds of corn and two types of fertilizer. Moreover, he knows that his plots are quite heterogeneous regarding sunshine, and therefore a systematic error could arise if sunshine does indeed facilitate corn cultivation.

The farmer divides the land into...

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag

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(2008). Randomized Block Design. In: The Concise Encyclopedia of Statistics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-32833-1_344

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