Planning and Managing Agricultural and Ecological Experiments

This text addresses the essential issues required to undertake satisfactory comparative experiments. The author has avoided presenting the mathematical and computational complexities of the traditional treatment of experimental design. Instead, an integrated presentation is given, with the focus strongly placed on the planning and execution of experiments, without tempting the reader to become lost in the numerous theoretical and algebraic procedures along the way. A brief and informal overview of the scope of analytical methods is given to provide a background for planning strategies. The power of computer simulation techniques, and use of residual maximum likelihood to increase the efficiency of experimental resources is discussed in detail, along with acounts of classical replication and blocking incorporate discussion of contemporary ideas of pseudoreplication and the use of blocks of natural size.