Activity Overview
This lesson involves investigating the effectiveness of two mosquito sprays in a large tract of land by using three different experimental designs - one randomized design and two randomized block designs.
Objectives
- Students will be able to identify situations in which blocking will reduce variation.
- Students will recognize that some randomized block designs are useful in reducing variation while others are not.
- Students will recognize that random allocation of events occurs within each block.
- Students will recognize that the experimental units within each block are as similar as possible and different from the experimental units in the other blocks based on a variable that has the potential to affect the outcome of an experiment.
Vocabulary
- experiment
- experimental units
- random allocation
- randomized block design
- treatments
About the Lesson
This lesson involves investigating the effectiveness of two mosquito sprays in a large tract of land by using three different experimental designs - one randomized design and two randomized block designs.
As a result, students will:
- Randomly allocate treatments and observe the mean number of mosquitoes in the lots after the sprays have been applied.
- Compare mean differences and variability for the three experimental designs to determine the most effective design for this context.