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DOE Simplified: Practical Tools for Effective Experimentation, Second Edition by Mark Anderson and Patrick Whitcomb. Productivity Press, New York, xiv + 242 pp, $45.00.
THIS BOOK is unique when compared to most books on DOE in that it is meant to be a self-guiding study of the basic concepts of DOE. The intended audience is one with little experience in statistics but one who needs some practical knowledge of how to implement some basic experimental designs. The first edition of this book was reviewed previously by Copeland (2001). A few changes appear in this updated edition, notably the inclusion of a new chapter on experimental planning and discussion of Pareto charts of effects, Minimum-run screening designs, and Desirability functions for multiple-response optimization.
There is not an overwhelming amount of material in this slim volume, which makes it relatively quick read. It is not meant to be read cover to cover without working through the problems provided by the authors at the end of many of the chapters. It is not meant to be comprehensive-the reader is often referred to other books such as Box, Hunter and Hunter (2005) or Montgomery (2004) for more details. The authors use a light-hearted, sometimes humorous writing style which improves the readability and reassures the reader who suffers from "stats anxiety".
After a brief introduction in Chapter 1 to some...