The Theory and Practice of Up and Down Designs

Up-and-down designs (also known as staircase methods) are the dominant procedure for threshold-finding of fatigue for engineering materials, explosives tests, acute chemo-toxicity evaluations, hearing, vision and anesthesiology assessments. Many extensions to the procedure and advances in methods of subsequent data analysis have been made since the method was originally introduced. This text will be the first to present a compilation of theoretical results and practical considerations on up-and-down designs. The text will be self-contained, mathematically speaking, so theoretical results will be accessible to mathematically comfortable scientists.