方法对比

	试点 A/B 测试	多臂实验
领域	实验设计	实验设计
方法族	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
起源年份	2000s–2010s (formalized in digital experimentation literature)	1990s–2000s (clinical formalization); multi-arm concept implicit in ANOVA-era factorial designs
提出者	Derived from pilot study methodology (Kraemer et al., 2006) applied to A/B testing practice	Developed within clinical trials methodology; formalized by Parmar, Royston and colleagues (UK MRC CTU, early 2000s)
类型	Experimental design — feasibility study	Experimental design
开创性文献	Thabane, L., Ma, J., Chu, R., Cheng, J., Ismaila, A., Rios, L. P., Robson, R., Thabane, M., Giangregorio, L., & Goldsmith, C. H. (2010). A tutorial on pilot studies: The what, why and how. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 10(1), 1.	Royston, P., Parmar, M. K. B., & Qian, W. (2003). Novel designs for multi-arm clinical trials with survival outcomes with an application in ovarian cancer. Statistics in Medicine, 22(14), 2239–2256.
别名	pilot split test, feasibility A/B test, preliminary A/B experiment, pilot randomized comparison	multi-arm trial, multiple-arm experiment, multi-group experiment, many-arm design
相关	5	5
摘要	A Pilot A/B test is a small-scale, preliminary split-test experiment run before a full A/B test to assess feasibility, estimate effect sizes, detect operational problems, and validate measurement instruments. Participants are randomly assigned to a control condition (A) and a treatment condition (B), but the study is explicitly underpowered — its purpose is to inform the design of the definitive test, not to yield a conclusive comparison.	A multi-arm experiment simultaneously compares three or more treatment or intervention conditions — each called an arm — against a shared control or against one another. By testing multiple alternatives in a single study, it yields more information per participant than running separate two-group experiments sequentially, while controlling the overall Type I error rate through pre-specified comparison strategies.