E L S E V I E R Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems 36 (1997) 249

Chemometrics and intelligent laboratory systems

Book Review

Ed Morgan, Chemometrics: Experimental Design, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 1995 (ISBN 0-471- 95832-8). xviiii + 275 pp. Price £ 19.50.

The author of this book gives an excellent intro- duction to some of the essential aspects of basic statistics for experimental design. In a clear and prac- tical way the reader is involved step by step in the analysis of experimental data through the application of statistical methods on well-selected examples.

The book starts by mentioning a list of well estab- lished commercial packages that deal with the basic statistics and the experimental designs described in the book, but more references to new and widely used statistical software would be advisable in this part.

The first section is an introduction with examples of basic statistical tests such as the t-test, F-test and ANOVA. A mistake in the printing of the equation for standard deviation has been made which could create confusion to the reader when solving the self assess- ment question. An Erratum would be convenient.

In the second section, the reader can learn with worked single-factor design examples, some of the principles of experimental design, such as replica- tion, randomised block designs and balanced incom- plete block designs.

Section 3 uses the same example to illustrate ad- vantages of factorial designs compared to single fac- tor designs. A lengthy and comprehensive descrip- tion of the factorial designs is presented together with well-documented numerical and graphical examples for the calculation and analysis of principal and in-

teraction effects. Some of the legends of the figures presented in this section do not correspond with the factorial design described in the text (Figs. 3.5c and 3.5e: the factorial design referred in the text is a 23 and not a 22 as the legend of the figures said). Fur- thermore, the concept of a "Design Matrix" is used improperly, the correct term in this part should be "Experimental Matrix".

Section 4 explains some relevant aspects of frac- tional factorial designs, such as their advantage com- pared to full factorial designs, generation of factorial designs, the concept of resolution and also the inter- pretation of these designs.

The last section of the book is concerned with re- sponse surface methodology. A good provision of matrix algebra is presented to calculate the least square estimates of multilinear regression, estimated response and residual errors. Some sequential and si- multaneous designs are illustrated in detail.

An important feature of this book is the large number of examples which at first glance might seem to be excessive, but represent a friendly and instruc- tive aid for students to study at home and for analyti- cal chemist non-chemometricians that want to learn or apply in a basic way the principles of experimental design. In summary, this is an important book offer- ing valuable educational information.

Pedro W. Araujo H. School of Chemistry University of Bristol

UK

0169-7439/97//$17.00 Copyright © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved PII S0169-7439(97)00020-8