You can use the Sample Size Explorers to help determine the number of units to test in a study of a new material. Suppose you are interested in demonstrating that the flammability of a new fabric being developed by your company has improved performance over current materials. The previous testing indicates that the standard deviation for the time to burn of this fabric is 2 seconds. Use the Power Explorer for One Sample Mean to calculate the number of fabric samples you need to test. You would like to design an experiment that has 90% power to detect a difference of 1.5 seconds at a significance level of α = 0.05.
1. Select DOE > Sample Size Explorers > Power > Power for One Sample Mean.
2. Leave Alpha set to 0.05.
3. Enter 2 for Std Dev.
4. Enter 1.5 for Difference to detect.
5. Enter 0.9 for Power.
6. Click Save Settings to save these settings.
7. Use the sliders and or text boxes to explore other sample size and power possibilities for your study.
At a significance level of 0.05, 21 fabric samples are needed to have a 90.4% chance of detecting a significant difference of 1.5 seconds in the burn time.