Towards a unified language in experimental designs propagated by a software framework

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel computational framework called 'the grammar of experimental designs' that standardizes and simplifies the creation of experimental designs using an object-oriented, modular approach within an R package.

Contribution

It proposes a language for experimental designs based on object-oriented programming, facilitating human cognition and modular modifications, implemented in the 'edibble' R-package.

Findings

Framework effectively standardizes experimental design specifications.

Demonstrated utility through multiple practical examples.

Enhances human understanding and flexibility in experimental design creation.

Abstract

Experiments require human decisions in the design process, which in turn are reformulated and summarized as inputs into a system (computational or otherwise) to generate the experimental design. I leverage this system to promote a language of experimental designs by proposing a novel computational framework, called "the grammar of experimental designs", to specify experimental designs based on an object-oriented programming system that declaratively encapsulates the experimental structure. The framework aims to engage human cognition by building experimental designs with modular functions that modify a targeted singular element of the experimental design object. The syntax and semantics of the framework are built upon consideration from multiple perspectives. While the core framework is language-agnostic, the framework is implemented in the `edibble` R-package. A range of examples is shown to demonstrate the utility of the framework.