Uniformity criterion for designs with both qualitative and quantitative factors

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new uniformity criterion called QQD for assessing the space-filling quality of experimental designs involving both qualitative and quantitative factors, addressing a gap in existing methods.

Contribution

The paper proposes the QQD criterion, providing closed-form expressions, lower bounds, and a connection to balance patterns to evaluate and distinguish such designs effectively.

Findings

QQD can accurately measure design uniformity.

The criterion distinguishes different designs effectively.

The connection to balance patterns offers statistical validation.

Abstract

Experiments with both qualitative and quantitative factors occur frequently in practical applications. Many construction methods for this kind of designs, such as marginally coupled designs, were proposed to pursue some good space-filling structures. However, few criteria can be adapted to quantify the space-filling property of designs involving both qualitative and quantitative factors. As the uniformity is an important space-filling property of a design, in this paper, a new uniformity criterion, qualitative-quantitative discrepancy (QQD), is proposed for assessing the uniformity of designs with both types of factors. The closed form and lower bounds of the QQD are presented to calculate the exact QQD values of designs and recognize the uniform designs directly. In addition, a connection between the QQD and the balance pattern is derived, which not only helps to obtain a new lower bound but also provides a statistical justification of the QQD. Several examples show that the proposed criterion is reasonable and useful since it can distinguish distinct designs very well.