Optimizing data-acquisition schedules in physicochemical experiments : Part 1. Principle of the Method and Application to the Firt-Order Decay of an Absorbing Species

In designing an experiment aimed at the evaluation of one or more of the physicochemical parameters that characterize the behaviour of the system being studied, it is advantageous to choose the data-acquisition schedule that will maximize the precision of the desired result. Practical definitions of a precision index (for a single parameter) and an overall precision index (for the simultaneous estimation of two or more parameters) are offered, and a method is described for optimizing either. When the method is applied to synthetic data the represent the first-order decay of an absorbing species, it yields results considerably superior to those obtained from other data-acquisition schedules.