SEMINAR: Groups and Combinatorics Seminar: Circular designs balanced for neighbours at distances one and two

Time and place: 16:00 Friday 16 September in Weatherburn LT

Speaker: Rosemary Bailey (St. Andrews)

Title: Circular designs balanced for neighbours at distances one and two

Abstract: We consider experiments where the experimental units are arranged in a circle or in a single line in space or time. If neighbouring treatments may affect the response on an experimental unit, then we need a model which includes the effects of direct treatments, left neighbours and right neighbours. It is desirable that each ordered pair of treatments occurs just once as neighbours and just once with a single unit in between. A circular design with this property is equivalent to a special type of quasigroup. In one variant of this, self-neighbours are forbidden. In a further variant, it is assumed that the left-neighbour effect is the same as the right-neighbour effect, so all that is needed is that each unordered pair of treatments occurs just once as neighbours and just once with a single unit in between. I shall report progress on finding methods of constructing the three types of design.