Answer to Question #286759 in General Chemistry for Lia

Question

Please help me with the explanation of the Latin Square Method for interpreting the results in bioanalysis

Answer 1

This function calculates ANOVA for a special three factor design known as Latin squares.

The Latin square design applies when there are repeated exposures/treatments and two other factors. This design avoids the excessive numbers required for full three way ANOVA.

An example of a Latin square design is the response of 5 different rats (factor 1) to 5 different treatments (repeated blocks A to E) when housed in 5 different types of cage (factor 2):

This special sort of balancing means that the systematic variation between rows, or similarity between columns, does not affect the comparison of treatments.

The Latin square is probably under used in most fields of research because text book examples tend to be restricted to agriculture, the area which spawned most original work on ANOVA. Agricultural examples often reflect geographical designs where rows and columns are literally two dimensions of a grid in a field. Rows and columns can be any two sources of variation in an experiment. In this sense a Latin square is a generalisation of a randomized block design with two different blocking systems.