Question

HW Question: When trying to reduce energy costs for a home, one strategy is to install high quality doors. A consumer service wants to test two brands (A and B) of doors to see which is more effective at preventing loss of heat. They have four doors of each brand they will install in a small cabin built for this purpose. The cabin has places for four doors on the north wall and four on the south wall. The inside of the cabin will be heated, and monitors will be placed outside each door to

measure the amount of heat loss.

a. How would you use random numbers to decide which doors to put in which position?

b. Briefly explain why your assignment strategy is important in helping the manager assess the effectiveness of the doors.

Answer 1

The first brand of doors, brand A, has 8 different places for the doors to be put in, 4 in the north, 4 in the south. So, when choosing places for brand A, we have multiple options.

To ensure that the doors aren't discriminated based on bias, the doors should be placed randomly and not in order. So for example, we shouldn't place all 4 doors from brand A in the north because then the manager may have a bias for or against brand A and will understand the pattern.

Instead, if we use random numbers to arrange the doors, the distribution will be completely random and hence bias-free.