ON TWO METHODS OF ANALYSING BALANCED INCOMPLETE BLOCK DESIGNS

Abstract

The paper briefly discusses the balanced incomplete–block design (BIBD’s) and further compares two methods of analyzing them-the classical and vector space analysis of variance (ANOVA) methods. These methods are applied differently to the data arising from the balanced incomplete block designs (BIBD’s). The basic interest is to compare the performance of the two methods of analysis on the available data from National Root Crop Research Institute (N.R.C.R.I) Umudike, Abia State. To achieve this, we shall consider treatment (adjusted), block (adjusted) treatment (not adjusted) in the classical ANOVA method and the vector space ANOVA method.  Block is adjusted to know if the experiment is symmetric balanced incomplete block design (SBIBD). The classical ANOVA method was easier to compute and more convenient to handle than the vector ANOVA method. The classical ANOVA method is found to be preferable to the vector space ANOVA method.