🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses the lack of optimal experimental design guidance for the standard addition method under non-decreasing measurement error structures. Building on c-optimality theory and integrating linear response modeling with analysis of variance, the authors systematically derive an optimal two-concentration-point design that minimizes estimation variance under constant, linear, or quadratic error growth. This work represents the first application of optimal experimental design theory to the standard addition method and demonstrates that the proposed two-point design achieves universal optimality across all considered non-decreasing error scenarios. Notably, the optimal allocation of replicate measurements deviates from the conventional 50:50 ratio and yields minimum-variance unbiased estimates without requiring weighted regression.
📝 Abstract
Knowledge about optimal designs for standard addition seems to be scattered among literature and is also, at least partially, only available in mathematical literature that is not quickly accessible for readers not skilled in the field of design optimality theory. Therefore, the idea for this work was to summarize what is already available in analytical literature and to apply the respective results from optimality theory, where needed, to the special case of standard addition. It is shown, for measurement errors that are non-decreasing, e.g., are constant or increase linearly or quadratically with increasing analyte concentration, that the optimal design in the case of a linear response is a two-point design irrespective of the particular behavior of measurement error variance. In addition, it is demonstrated that the optimal allocation of measurements depends on the concrete setting, which means that the optimal distribution of measurements may deviate significantly from a 50:50 ratio. It is also investigated how the range, i.e., the largest added concentration influences the result. Last but not least, also the question of applying weighted regression is discussed and it is shown, that, in contrast to designs using more than two spiked concentrations, no weighting is necessary to achieve optimal results, when a two-point design is used. While the focus lies on the precision of the concentration estimate also the implications for the bias are investigated.