Hi-
I got the following question from a customer:
"My question we more focused on better confirming the difference between quadratic and linear. I don’t expect it to be cubic or higher. This mainly comes from a concern about error in my experiments, where I don’t want to erroneously conclude that a correlation is quadratic because a few of the sample points are outlying enough to fit a quadratic better than a linear fit. Let me know if this makes sense or I am misunderstanding. To me, having 4 or more levels would provide stronger evidence of curvature. This would make me feel more comfortable concluding that curvature is not associated with the randomness of my test."
Essentially, he wants to know if he should add more levels (more than 3) to have more confidence in whether he has a linear or quadractic model.
My answer to him, although I told him I would check with other colleagues, he should:
1) Look a the graphical relationship in the Prediction Profiler to see if there was curvature
2) Finally, to be sure if there is a statistical relationship, to look at the Effects Table, and if the quadratic is statistically significant, then keep it in.
3) If you have the resources to run additional runs, then give it a go!
Does anyone else have any different thoughts?