21st century screening experiments: What, why, and how

The primary aim of screening experiments is to identify the active factors; that is, those having the largest effects on the response of interest. Large factor effects can be either main effects, two-factor interactions (2FIs), or even strong curvature effects. Because the number of runs in a screening experiment is generally on the order of the number of factors, the designs rely heavily on the factor or effect sparsity assumption. That is, practitioners performing such experiments must be willing to assume that only a small fraction of the factors or effects are active.