Designs for half-diallel experiments with commutative orthogonal block structure

Abstract

In some experiments, the experimental units are all pairs of individuals who have to undertake a given task together. The set of such pairs forms a triangular association scheme. Appropriate randomization then gives two non-trivial strata. The design is said to have commutative orthogonal block structure (COBS) if the best linear unbiased estimators of treatment contrasts do not depend on the stratum variances. There are precisely three ways in which such a design can have COBS. We give a complete description of designs for which all treatment contrasts are in the same stratum. Then we give a very general construction for designs with COBS which have some treatment contrasts in each stratum.