Question

1. What is Response Surface Methodology (RSM)?

2. What type of model can we fit using RSM?

3. Hill and Hunter (1996) outlined four steps in analysis of RSM as: 1) perform a statistically designed experiment 2) estimate the coefficients in the response surface equation 3) check on the adequacy of the equation and 4) study the response surface in the region of interest. Those look similar to the procedure in DOE, but RSM enables us to look at something different in terms of response. What is it?

Answer 1

Response surface methodology (RSM) is a statistical technique to study the relationship between several explanatory variables and one or more response variables. It uses a sequence of design experiments to get an optimal response.

RSM can be used to model systems where there can be multiple different explanatory variables affecting different response variables. Such a situation isn't easily modeled by conventional models, as we need to understand the specific explanatory variables affecting a particular response variable.

RSM helps us look at the response by setting factors which are completely different from each other, with no interaction among them. This is not in the case in DOE, where the factors might be affected by changes in each other, hence making it difficult to segregate the impact of each factor on the response variable.