[marco_salvatori]

Though this work may seem exciting, there is an existing, respected body of work available on how to mathematically structure a search over a large parameter space and how to mathematically interpret experimental responses. That body of work is a subset of applied statistics called design of experiments. It helps scientists avoid the common failures that result from doing exactly what was done here, random space exploration and non rigourous evaluation of results.

For this to be exciting I would expect some indication as to how this method extends and enhances the existing science of experimental methods and the trade offs involved with using their method. I dont see that.

[adrianratnapala]

It would not surprise me if high-tech companies are inventing new, useful things in this field.

In my career as first a scientist and then an engineer, I've found very few practical users of highly technical experimental design theory, and all of them were in industry. These algorithms move about intelligently along all dimensions of some search space, whereas in the lab we prefered to turn just one knob at a time.

One reason is that the algorithms are optimally seraching for "known unknowns" -- that is they assume they roughly understand the problem. The lab is a world of unkown unknowns where the more plodding, understandable protocols tend to be safer.

But in industry, some problems are of the known-unknowns type. And experiment runs can burn up seriously expensive hardware time. So it makes sense for fusion researchers and cloud-computing giants a like to invent new practical ways to optimise searches.

Besides, optimising searches is what Googlers are for.

[abefetterman]

Reading their actual paper further, it seems I read a bit too much into the original article. However, as their paper mentions:

> The parameter space of C-2U has over one thousand dimensions. Quantities of interest are almost certainly not convex functions of this space. Furthermore, machine performance is strongly affected by uncontrolled time-dependent factors such as vacuum impurities and electrode wear.

I'm not aware of DOE procedures that are robust to these types of issues, and would certainly appreciate any literature you have on the subject.

Regardless of theoretical literature, this procedure has enabled a dramatic shift in how these scientists think about their experiment. Furthermore it has enabled them to achieve results much faster than before (if you have been following Tri Alpha, it has been a real slog). Both of these are exciting to me even if they don't break new ground in the design of experiments.

[Libbum]

Interesting. Are you able to provide some links to decent resources on this topic?

[ohitsdom]

Links on DOE? https://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/design-of-experime...

[Libbum]

Perfect! Thanks.