Fractional Factorial Design

The fractional factorial design is an economical experimental strategy that investigates k factors by running only a carefully chosen 1/2^p fraction of the full 2^k factorial experiment. Formalized by George E. P. Box and J. Stuart Hunter in their landmark 1961 Technometrics paper, it exploits the sparsity-of-effects principle — that high-order interactions are typically negligible — to screen many factors with far fewer runs than a complete factorial would require.