Using Ordinary Least Squares Software to Compute Combined Intra-Interblock Estimates of Treatment Contrasts

Consideration is given to the computational aspects of the analysis of data from a comparative study, involving two or more treatments, in which the experimental units are arranged in b blocks.It may seem desirable, in making inferences about treatment contrasts, to carry out a combined intra-interblock analysis.Practitioners are sometimes reluctant to employ this analysis because of the computational requirements, which they regard as severe, and because they may not have ready access to directly applicable computer software.It is shown that by augmenting the actual data with b pseudo-observations, all of the computations can be accomplished efficiently, using only ordinary least squares software.