Design of experiments
The first statistician to considera methodology for the design of experiments was Sir Ronald A. Fisher. He described how to test the hypothesis that a certain lady could distinguish by flavor alone whether the milk or the tea was first placed in the cup. This sounds like a frivolous application, but in fact, it allowed him to illustrate the most important ideas of experimental design.
Design of experiments was built on the foundation of the analysis of variance, a collection of models in which the observed variance is partitioned into components due to different factors which are estimated and/or tested.
Developments of the theory of linear models have encompassed and surpassed the cases that concerned early writers. Today, the theory rests on advanced topics in abstract algebra and combinatorics.
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