A response surface test bed

A method is presented for creating randomly generated polynomial functions to be used as a test bed of simulated response surfaces. The need for the t est bed to perform empirical comparisons of experimental design strategies is discussed and the methods used to create the surfaces are explained. An important feature of the test bed is that the user can control some of the characteristics of the surfaces without directly controlling the surface fu nctions. This allows the user to choose the types of surfaces on which a si mulation study is run while preserving the random nature of the surfaces ne eded for a valid simulation study. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Lt d.