Field

A probe chosen rather than picked

A diagnostic that reports on what a balancing rule was not handed is run through a column that is 92% inside the span the rule balanced — because orthogonality in the population is not orthogonality on fourteen units. Projecting the probe off that span costs one least-squares fit and triples the separation it carries; choosing the direction from the design's own leverage is worth another factor of four over a random one; and the projection-pursuit direction the argument invites is worse than random. On a short chain the raw probe misses 44% of the sets that are split and the projected one misses 12%.

All essays