PONE-D-20-10931

On the Effects of Hard and Soft Equality Constraints in the Iterative Outlier Elimination Procedure

PLOS ONE

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

University of Bradford

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Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The study “On the Effects of Hard and Soft Equality Constraints in the Iterative Outlier Elimination Procedure” is interesting. The paper is well set. The data and methodology parts are well described. However, I would recommend the authors add some more explanations and also describe the innovation of this paper in the introduction section. Moreover, attention should be given to the following highlighted points before resubmitting.

1. Improve the quality of Figure 1. Flowchart of the algorithm because the text inside the boxes is hard to read.

2. Page 3 / 20, Line 85, the words “ the minimal biases, MDB (Minimal Detectable Bias) and MIB (Minimal Identifiable Bias) “, the same words defined again just with a different style as Page 4 / 20 line 108 “ the minimal biases - Minimal Detectable Bias (MDB) and Minimal Identifiable Bias (MIB) ”, Please use the same style throughout the paper and secondly once an abbreviation is defined just use the same if required. The same repeated on page 7 / 20 lines 227 MIB (Minimal Identifiable Bias).

3. Page 6 / 20 line 168. The expression 1/0=∞ is not true. 1/0 is said to be undefined because the division is defined in terms of multiplication. a/b = x is defined to mean that b*x = a. There is no x such that 0*x = 1, since 0*x = 0 for all x. Thus 1/0 does not exist, or is not defined, or is undefined.

4. In Table 1 with two hard constraints, why the local redundancy, the standard deviation least square estimated outlier, and the maximum absolute correlation all are equal for twelve measurements. While for 1 hard constraint and 3 hard constraints there is some variation present in twelve measurements.

5. Page 9 / 20. The abbreviations used are very much common please stop this work from line 254 to 259, probabilities of correct identification (PCI ) and correct detection (PCD) used and defined 3 and 4 times, respectively. The other abbreviations also repeated quite often i.e. over-identification cases (P over+ and P over-) and the statistical overlap (Pol).

6. Check the value of MIB in Table 4, column 3 is it the value equal to 25?

7. Check the value of MIB in Table 6, column 3 is it the value equal to 22?

8. Page 12 / 20 line 324, Cluster 4: MDB e MIB were equal for all cases. Here the lower case e stands for.

9. In last some special attention must be given to the language as well. There are some sentences which completely wrong.

Reviewer #2: The authors investigated the effect of soft and hard constraints in the iterative outlier elimination procedure.

The paper is well written and addressing an important issue in the field of Statistical Process Control. The paper can be acceptable for publication after careful handling of the following points.

i) Reduce the length of Conclusion section. Only include important findings.

ii) Include high quality figures.

iii) There are some missing lines or extra legend items in Figures 4(c) - 4(h).

iv) Figures should be of same size.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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On the Effects of Hard and Soft Equality Constraints in the Iterative Outlier Elimination Procedure

PONE-D-20-10931R1

Dear Dr. ROFATTO,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Qichun Kit Zhang, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

Both reviewers satisfied the current version with revisions. The concerns have been addressed well and the quality of the manuscript has been improved. The paper is acceptable and ready to publish.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: As my suggestions form the previous review round have been met, I suggest acceptance of the paper in the current form.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed in the revised submission.The manuscript is acceptable in the current format.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Saddam Akber Abbasi