Minimum aberration criterion for screening experiments at two levels from an entropy-based perspective

This paper presents a new criterion for selecting a two-level fractional factorial design. The theoretical underpinning for the criterion is the Shannon entropy. The criterion, which is referred to as the entropy-based minimum aberration criterion, has several advantages. The advantage of the entropy-based criterion over the classical minimum aberration criterion is that it utilizes a measure of uncertainty on the skewness of the distribution of word length patterns in the selection of the “best” design in a family of two-level fractional factorial plans. The criterion evades the trauma associated with the lack of prior knowledge on the important effects.