Comparison between Univariate and Multivariate Optimisations on Wet Digestion of Almond Nuts Prior To Determination of Magnesium

Abstract

Optimisation is the act of improving the efficiency of a certain product, process or system to obtain the best response for measurement. There are two types of optimisation method, which are univariate and multivariate optimisation, for the latter is more effective and efficiency as it considers interactions between parameters. However, univariate optimisation is still being use more frequently than multivariate in certain cases. The purpose of this study is to compare univariate optimisation and multivariate optimisation, hence, to determine the presence of significant difference between both methods. The comparison was done using the analysis of magnesium in almond nuts where the parameters of temperature, volume of nitric acid and time of digestion were optimised. A two-sample assuming unequal variances t-test was then used to determine the difference between both univariate and multivariate optimisation. It was found that there was a significance difference between both methods, whereby based only on the best responses, univariate optimisation method was superior. However, taking all the factors and interactions, multivariate optimisation was, overall, the more efficient and superior method.