owea — Optimal Experimental Designs

Build an optimal design step by step: describe your model (or models), set the assumed parameter values and the criterion, then compute. No R code required.


Step: what kind of design problem is this?

Which one do I want?
  • Classical — "I know the model, and I want the most precise estimates of its parameters."
  • Compound — "I am not sure whether the interaction is real, and I want a design that is good either way"; or "I care about the slopes of one model and the overall fit of another"; or "my collaborators disagree about the model."
The compound branch reports how efficient the design is for each objective, and what a design optimised for any one objective alone would have cost under the others.
Note. The compound branch builds approximate (continuous-weight) and exact (integer-run) designs, and runs the same simulation study. Fitting the parameters from a data set is available in the classical branch only — fit them there, or elsewhere, and type the estimates in as each objective's assumed values.

Step: the model

This will be a locally optimal design. For a non-linear model the information matrix depends on the parameters themselves, so the design is optimal only at an assumed parameter value. You will be asked for those values (or you can draw them at random) in a later step.

Step: what do you already have?

With an existing design or data set the new design is chosen to complement what you already have (a second-stage design).

Step: your existing design

Covariate columns plus a 'count' column (integer runs) or a 'weight' column (proportions) — the format the app downloads. Factor covariates use integer levels 1..L.
With a 'count' column, n0 is filled in from the counts. With weights you must supply it: proportions carry no sample size.

Step: your existing data set

Covariate columns plus a response column, one row per run. Factor covariates use integer levels 1..L.

Estimating the parameters fits the model you described in step 1 to these data (maximum likelihood) and uses the estimates as the assumed values — you can still edit them afterwards. The data set is read as soon as you upload or paste it; the button below just reads it again.

Step: assumed parameter values (theta)

A locally optimal design depends on these values. Type them in, or draw them at random and edit.

Step: the criterion

Step: the design

Step: review and compute


Step: the covariates

One experiment, so one set of covariates and one design region — shared by every objective. The models come next.

Step: the objectives

Each objective is a model plus a criterion. They may be entirely different models — different families, different terms, different numbers of parameters.

Step: weighting and any existing design


The approximate optimum is computed first, rounded to whole runs, then improved by random exchanges.

Same format as the download: one column per covariate plus a 'count' or 'weight' column.

Step: review and compute