Blocking, efficiency and weighted optimality

Optimal blocking is explored for experiments, such as those incorporating one or more controls, where not all treatment comparisons are of equal interest. Weighted optimality functions are employed in gaining both analytic and enumerative results; a catalogue of smaller optimal designs is provided. It is shown how design selection based on functions of variances, and on functions of efficiency factors, are both subsumed by the weighted approach. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.