Design of Experiments

  • A short song describing the benefits of blocking in experimental design by Heather Nichols, a teacher at Oak Creek High School in Wisconsin.  It may be sung to the tune of the traditional Scottish Gaelic tune, "Bunessan." The Randomization Song teaches the benefits of random assignment in an experiment. Randomization is relied upon to reduce bias or control effects of confounding variables and create comparable treatment groups. It also alludes to the use of random sampling and the generalization that allows so an instructor can make a comparison between random assignment and random sampling. The song was part of a pair of songs (along with the Blocking Song) that took the grand prize for the 2025 A-mu-sing Contest.

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  • A short song describing the benefits of blocking in experimental design by Heather Nichols, a teacher at Oak Creek High School in Wisconsin. It teaches students that blocking reduces variability in the response variable by creating groups of similar experimental units to see how they respond differently to the treatments in the experiment.  The song was part of a pair of songs (along with the Randomization Song) that took the grand prize for the 2025 A-mu-sing Contest.

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  • A cartoon that highlights the importance of details in designing an experiment that have important repercussions for one’s ability to interpret the results. The cartoon was used in the May 2022 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Jim Alloway from the EMSQ Associates.  The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.

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  • A cartoon that can be used to introduce the value of cross-over designs for reducing variability. The cartoon was used in the March 2021 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Kelly Spoon from San Diego Mesa College. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.

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  • A cartoon that can be used to discuss designs when one factor is harder to vary than others (and the root of the term "split-plot design" in agriculture). The cartoon was used in the December 2020 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Larry Lesser from the The University of Texas at El Paso. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.

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  • A joke to help in a discussion of how a well designed experiment helps to reduce the variance of the response variable.  The Joke was written by Larry Lesser (The University of Texas at El Paso) and Dennis Pearl (Penn State University) in Februrary 2021.

    Note - when the joke is spoken there is no need to say the parenthetical part - simply pronounce the word "variants" to sound like "variance".

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  • A poem to help in discussing matched-pair designs. UTEP Professor Larry Lesser wrote this poem on February 1, 2021, using end-rhyme couplets to convey (literally and figuratively) tradeoffs of a design with matched pairs.  Note that the rhymes are not always perfect, a reflection of how it can be impossible to match subjects perfectly. Also note how the would-be final couplet is ruined by losing its second line, just as you effectively lose two subjects when one subject in a pair chooses to drop out of your study. 

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  • A cartoon that can be used to motivate the importance of statistics in making decisions. The cartoon was used in the January 2020 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by  Douglas VanDerwerken, an instructor at the United States Naval Academy. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.

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  • A joke to facilitate discussion of random assignment in an experiment.  The joke was written by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso in May, 2020.

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  • A joke to use in presentations about the importance of control and replication in experimentation.  The joke was written by Larry Lesser (The University of Texas at El Paso) and Dennis Pearl (Penn State University) in March 2020.

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