Design of Experiments for Screening

The aim of this paper is to review methods of designing screening experiments, ranging from designs originally developed for physical experiments to those especially tailored to experiments on numerical models. The strengths and weaknesses of the various designs for screening variables in numerical models are discussed. First, classes of factorial designs for experiments to estimate main effects and interactions through a linear statistical model are described, specifically regular and nonregular fractional factorial designs, supersaturated designs and systematic fractional replicate designs. Generic issues of aliasing, bias and cancellation of factorial effects are discussed. Second, group screening experiments are considered including factorial group screening and sequential bifurcation. Third, random sampling plans are discussed including Latin hypercube sampling and sampling plans to estimate elementary effects. Fourth, a variety of modelling methods commonly employed with screening designs are briefly described. Finally, a novel study demonstrates six screening methods on two frequently-used exemplars, and their performances are compared

Exploratory ensemble designs for environmental models using k-extended Latin Hypercubes

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.publication-status: AcceptedOpen Access articleIn this paper we present a novel, flexible, and multi-purpose class of designs for initial exploration of the parameter spaces of computer models, such as those used to study many features of the environment. The idea applies existing technology aimed at expanding a Latin Hypercube (LHC) in order to generate initial LHC designs that are composed of many smaller LHCs. The resulting design and its component parts are designed so that each is approximately orthogonal and maximises a measure of coverage of the parameter space. Designs of the type advocated for in this paper are particularly useful when we want to simultaneously quantify parametric uncertainty and any uncertainty due to the initial conditions, boundary conditions, or forcing functions required to run the model. This makes the class of designs particularly suited to environmental models, such as climate models that contain all of these features. The proposed designs are particularly suited to initial exploratory ensembles whose goal is to guide the design of further ensembles aimed at, for example, calibrating the model. We introduce a new emulator diagnostic that exploits the structure of the advocated ensemble designs and allows for the assessment of structural weaknesses in the statistical modelling. We provide illustrations of the method through a simple example and describe a 400 member ensemble of the Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO) ocean model designed using the method. We build an emulator for NEMO using the created design to illustrate the use of our emulator diagnostic test.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

A comparison of general-purpose optimization algorithms forfinding optimal approximate experimental designs

Several common general purpose optimization algorithms are compared for findingA- and D-optimal designs for different types of statistical models of varying complexity,including high dimensional models with five and more factors. The algorithms of interestinclude exact methods, such as the interior point method, the Nelder–Mead method, theactive set method, the sequential quadratic programming, and metaheuristic algorithms,such as particle swarm optimization, simulated annealing and genetic algorithms.Several simulations are performed, which provide general recommendations on theutility and performance of each method, including hybridized versions of metaheuristicalgorithms for finding optimal experimental designs. A key result is that general-purposeoptimization algorithms, both exact methods and metaheuristic algorithms, perform wellfor finding optimal approximate experimental designs