Develop Generic Formulas for 2^K Design

To develop the generic formulas, let’s start the design with three variables can be found in Table 6. The use of the -1/+1 coding system in MS Excel provides an advantage to multiply columns easily to find the interaction effects. For an example, the AB interaction column is simply the multiplication of the main effect columns A and B.

Now, the total effect of A (known as the contrast of A) can be calculated from the Table 6 by simply multiply the column A and the treatment combination column, TRT. Another way of find the total effect of A is subtracting all treatment combinations without “a” from all the treatment combinations with “a” in them. Think about all the experimental units that received a fertilizer (e.g. factor A) and all the experimental units that did not receive the fertilizer. Therefore, the total effect of A (contrast of A) can be written as in Equation 14.

Table 6 also shows that there are four replications for each level of the factor A. Therefore, the average effect can be calculated as.

As the replication for the factor increases by the power of 2 for each additional factor in a 2^K design (Equation 1), to generalize for the higher number of factors, the Equation 15 can be modified as Equation 16.

Therefore, the main effect for A and the other effects can be generalized for k number of variables (factors) with n replications as in Equation 17.

Similarly, the Equation 18 represents the estimates (one-half of the effect) for the 2^K design, which can be developed following the basic 2² design in Equation 10.

Similarly, the Equation 19 represents the sum of square for the 2^K design, which can be developed following the basic 2² design described in Equation 11.