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Experience with Experiments: Factorial Design

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    Let's say you're mixing the ultimate smoothie. You're putting in all your favourite fruits: mango, apple, banana, strawberry, blueberry, pineapple, just everything. But you're not just doing this once, no, you've got to make this smoothie perfect; so you try out different amounts of each fruit in different balances. You try out different amounts of milk, maybe you add crushed ice, any factor  you can think of that might affect the taste.      Finally, once you have your smorgasbord of smoothies, you give them out to friends to enjoy, and give them a rating (as you still need to decide which smoothie is truly the ultimate smoothie). Obviously you haven't made every smoothie possible from the ingredients you have, the number of combinations is endless...but how might you decide which combination is the best? Is there an easy way to find out if a combination you haven't tried is better than any of the ones you have made?      This is one way of designing an