Global Resource Management of Response Surface Methodology

Statistical research can be more difficult to plan than other kinds of projects, since the research must adapt as knowledge is gained. This dissertation establishes a formal language and methodology for designing experimental research strategies with limited resources. It is a mathematically rigorous extension of a sequential and adaptive form of statistical research called response surface methodology. It uses sponsor-given information, conditions, and resource constraints to decompose an overall project into individual stages. At each stage, a "parent" decision-maker determines what design of experimentation to do for its stage of research, and adapts to the feedback from that research's potential "children", each of whom deal with a different possible state of knowledge resulting from the experimentation of the "parent". The research of this dissertation extends the real-world rigor of the statistical field of design of experiments to develop an deterministic, adaptive algorithm that produces deterministically generated, reproducible, testable, defendable, adaptive, resource-constrained multi-stage experimental schedules without having to spend physical resource.