GSOE9011

Topic 6

Activity 1: Some experiments to think about and discuss

Q1. Suppose you want to determine how leaves from a certain type of tree decompose on a
lake bottom at a depth of 1 metre. You fill 8 small net bags with leaves and place them at
the same location. After one month you retrieve the bags and measure the decomposition.
Do you have 8 replicates?
Can you generalise from the results?
How could the study be improved?

Q2. A study of seven different treatments for child ear infections collected data from all 400+
children who attended a local hospital over a six-month period. Large differences were
observed between reinfection rates for the different treatments.
This was an observational study in which doctors allocated the treatment they thought was
best for the patient.
If treatment A had the best results, does this mean that treatment A is the best
treatment?
What is the problem here?
How could the study be improved?

Q3. When Puerto Rico was hit by a serious hurricane, there were 10,000 claims by residents
for hurricane damage. The US government decided to base its total grant aid on finding the
total of the claims in the first 100 applications and multiplying by 100.
Is this a smart approach? Are the first 100 claims representative?

Q4. A study was conducted to compare planks treated with a fungicide with untreated planks.
The factors of interest were
Treated or untreated
Ends or side of plank
Location: NSW or Queensland
June or December
There was a large difference between treated and untreated planks in NSW but not Queensland.
Why?

Clue: In Queensland the planks were stacked as shown, with the treated planks above the
untreated planks.
Q5. An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of
stirrer speed on measured membrane diffusive permeability. It
suspected that increased stirring will reduce the resistance to
diffusion and therefore increase the permeability
.
Measurements were made at a series of stirrer speeds in order of
decreasing speed as indicated in the table. The measured
resistance (R) is plotted against 1000/RPM.

2.90
2.80
run 1000/rpm R(sec/cm) 2.70
1 0.82 2.47 2.60

R
2 1.16 2.51 2.50
3 1.54 2.54 2.40
4 1.83 2.69 2.30
5 2.30 2.78 2.20
0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00
1000/rpm

The results seem to indicate that higher stirring rate leads to smaller resistance, as
hypothesised.

Can you see a reason why we might be cautious about drawing such a conclusion?
How should we have conducted the experiment?

Activity 2: Design a factorial experiment to investigate the performance of a bicycle

Design an experiment to determine the effect of 3 factors on performance:

Seat height
Tyre pressure
Generator on/off

There are many choices that you must make. Each requires thought and can lead to discussion.
How will you conduct the test? What will you measure?
Where will conduct the test?
How far will you ride?
How many tests will you do in one day?
How many settings for seat height and tyre pressure?
Activity 3: Construct a fishbone diagram for the bicycle experiment
A fishbone diagram is a compact way to categorise and display the many factors that must be
considered in the design of an experiment. This was discussed in the video in regard to the speed of
light measurements. We will use the same categories.

Material Measurement

Machine Environment
Seat height
Tyre pressure
Generator on/off

Person Method
Activity 4: Construct a data sheet for the bicycle experiment
There are 2 parts to the data sheet.

One part comprises fields in which you will record pertinent information such as weather conditions,
time of day, etc. Your choice, based on your decisions in activities 2 and 3 above. Whatever you think
you should record. Be inclusive.

The other part is a table which contains the 23 factorial design with columns indicating the run
number, the settings for seat height, tyre pressure and generator on/off, and one or more columns in
which to record the measurements. The data table is first prepared in standard order (to make sure
you get it right) and the rows are randomly permuted. An alternative is to have 2 columns, one for
standard order and a second for run order.

Date
Time
Var 1
Var 2
Etc.

Standard Run Seat Tyre

order order height pressure Generator y1 y2
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8