Explain the Randomized Block Design
-A farmer wishes to test the effects of a new fertilizer on her potato yield. She has four equal-sized plots of land-- one with sandy soil, one with rocky soil, one with clay-rich soil, and one with average soil. She divides each of the four plots into three equal-sized portions and randomly labels them A, B, and C. The four A portions of land are treated with her old fertilizer. The four B portions are treated with the new fertilizer, and the four C s are treated with no fertilizer. At harvest time, the potato yield is recorded for each section of land. What type of experimental design is this
A) randomized block design
B) completely randomized design
C) matched-pairs design
D) double-blind design

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The farmer's experiment is a randomized block design because the blocks (the different soil types) are used to control for variability among the plots, and the treatments (types of fertilizer) are randomly assigned within each block.