Excess of locally D-optimal designs and homothetic transformations

The paper is devoted to the study of homothety’s influence on the number of optimal design support points under fixed values of a regression model’s parameters. The Ayen–Peters two-dimensional nonlinear in parameters model used in analytical chemistry is considered. It is shown that the number of optimal design support points must be greater than or equal to the number of parameters depending on certain conditions. The optimal designs with the minimal number of support points are constructed explicitly. Some numerical methods for constructing designs with greater number of points (we suggest to call them excess designs) are used.