I am slogging away at grad school and I have a nagging feeling I can be more efficient. I feel like a person who cannot see more than a foot in front of them so I hit a lot of walls. My planning and experiment design could use a lot of work but interacting with my PI only gets me but so far. I am in a new lab so I do not have senior students to consult with either. Are there any good written resources about how to design experiments in a general sense?
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE
I am in biological sciences, but if the comments/answers could be broadened to include all STEM it would be much appreciated.
2nd Update
When I refer to experimental design I am referring to something broader than setting up controls or statistical power. I am doing a poor job of alluding to something broader and more general. What is a good research question and the transition from a neat idea to a framework of experiment that addresses such a question.
To use a chess analogy, I am learning tactical play, forks, skewers, pins etc.... I am getting better at moving pieces, but what is preventing me from taking the next step is the absence of a strategy How do I string these tactics together to win? I come up with cool ideas but I cannot grasp molding and shaping that idea into a series of experiments that tell a short narrative.
I would like to know different styles of this process and strengths and weaknesses of both. I am not getting very far with my local dialogue options so I was hoping people may write about this subject. Hopefully that clarifies my question.
