Evaluating Popular Statistical Properties of Incomplete Block Designs: A MATLAB Program Approach

Abstract

Evaluating the statistical properties of a semi-Latin square, and in general, an incomplete block design, is vital in determining the usefulness of the design for experimentation. Improving the procedures for obtaining these statistical properties has been the subject of some research studies and software developments. Many available statistical software that evaluate incomplete block designs do so at the level of analysis of variance but not for the popular A-, D-, E-, and MV-efficiency properties of these designs to determine their adequacy for experimentation. This study presents a program written in the MATLAB environment using MATLAB codes and syntaxes which is capable of computing the A-, D-, E-, and MV-efficiency properties of any n×n/k semi-Latin square and any incomplete block design via their incidence matrices, where N is the number of rows and columns and k is the number of plots. The only input required for the program to compute the four efficiency criteria is the incidence matrix of the incomplete block design. The incidence matrix is the binary representation of an incomplete block design. The program automatically generates the efficiency values of the design once the incidence matrix has been provided, as shown in the examples.