Devising methods for planning a multifactorial multilevel experiment with high dimensionality

Abstract

This paper considers the task of planning a multifactorial multilevel experiment for problems with high dimensionality. Planning an experiment is a combinatorial task. At the same time, the catastrophically rapid growth in the number of possible variants of experiment plans with an increase in the dimensionality of the problem excludes the possibility of solving it using accurate algorithms. On the other hand, approximate methods of finding the optimal plan have fundamental drawbacks. Of these, the main one is the lack of the capability to assess the proximity of the resulting solution to the optimal one. In these circumstances, searching for methods to obtain an accurate solution to the problem remains a relevant task. Two different approaches to obtaining the optimal plan for a multifactorial multilevel experiment have been considered. The first of these is based on the idea of decomposition. In this case, the initial problem with high dimensionality is reduced to a sequence of problems of smaller dimensionality, solving each of which is possible by using precise algorithms. The decomposition procedure, which is usually implemented empirically, in the considered problem of planning the experiment is solved by employing a strictly formally justified technique. The exact solutions to the problems obtained during the decomposition are combined into the desired solution to the original problem. The second approach directly leads to an accurate solution to the task of planning a multifactorial multilevel experiment for an important special case where the costs of implementing the experiment plan are proportional to the total number of single-level transitions performed by all factors. At the same time, it has been proven that the proposed procedure for forming a route that implements the experiment plan minimizes the total number of one-level changes in the values of factors. Examples of problem solving are given.