PNNL

Abstract

A mixture experiment involves mixing two or more components in various proportions and measuring one or more response variables on each mixture. This article presents mixture-experiment approaches for designing experiments and/or modeling the resulting data in situations where the slack-variable (SV) approach has been used. With the SV approach, one mixture component is designated the SV and the experiment is designed and/or the data are analyzed in terms of the remaining components. In a SV design, the proportion of the SV is obtained by subtracting from one the sum of the proportions of the remaining components, thus "taking up the slack". With the mixture-experiment approach, the experiment is designed and the data are analyzed using all of the mixture components. The article considers four situations in which the SV approach has been used, and explains for each situation that it is generally preferable to use an appropriate mixture-experiment approach. For each situation, the recommended mixture-experiment approach is discussed and compared to the SV approach using an example.