Lanterna Rally

Author: Sydney Kwasi Akapame

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13:

Experimental design pervades all areas of scientific inquiry. The central idea behind many designed experiments is to improve or optimize inference about the quantities of interest in a statistical model. Thus, the strengths of any inferences made will be dependent on the choice of the experimental design and the statistical model. Any design that optimizes some statistical property will be referred to as an optimal design. In the main, most of the literature has focused on optimal designs for linear models such as low-order polynomials. While such models are widely applicable in some areas, they are unsuitable as approximations for data generated by systems or mechanisms that are nonlinear. Unlike linear models, nonlinear models have the unique property that the optimal designs for estimating their model parameters depend on the unknown model parameters. This dissertation addresses several strategies to choose experimental designs in nonlinear model situations. Attempts at solving the nonlinear design problem have included locally optimal designs, sequential designs and Bayesian optimal designs. Locally optimal designs are optimal designs conditional on a particular guess of the parameter vector. Although these designs are useful in certain situations, they tend to be sub-optimal if the guess is far from the truth. Sequential designs are based on repeated experimentation and tend to be expensive. Bayesian optimal designs generalize locally optimal designs by averaging a design optimality criterion over a prior distribution, but tend to be sensitive to the choice of prior distribution. More importantly, in cases where multiple priors are elicited from a group of experts, designs are required that are robust to the class (or range) of prior distributions. New robust design criteria to address the issue of robustness are proposed in this dissertation. In addition, designs based on axiomatic methods for pooling prior distributions are obtained. Efficient algorithms for generating designs are also required. In this research, genetic algorithms (GAs) are used for design generation in the MATLAB® computing environment. A new genetic operator suited to the design problem is developed and used. Existing designs in the published literature are improved using GAs.