Hey there PaleoPals.  Today’s article is a bit unorthodox, as it’s actually a quick summary of an experiment that I did with a friend for one of my graduate classes recently.  If you’re interested in engineering, statistics, testing, and scientific journals, you should enjoy it.  If none of those things interest you, I promise there will be a prize at the end if you read all the way through.

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In engineering, there exists a field of study known as Systems Engineering, which deals with managing extremely complicated systems (like a rocket or jet fighter) which comprise many different disciplines, and producing a product with the ease and efficiency of building a Lego set.

Inside of Systems Engineering, there is a study known as Design of Experiments (DoE), which deals with how to effectively “design an experiment” (engineers aren’t very creative, lexicologically.  Yes that’s a word.  I just made it up.)   DoE is an extremely important tool for complex projects where many thousands of things may need to be tested at once. You want to design the test such that the important results are readily apparent, so that we don’t have to dig too far through the data to give us the answer we need, and DoE allows us to do that.

So, in my DoE course for my Systems Engineering Master’s degree, I decided to design an experiment to test the 3G networks of AT&T and Verizon.  The results may surprise you…

Continue reading Design of Experiment: AT&T vs. Verizon 3G Networks →