An inner bound can then be found by using the bisection technique described above to find the largest value of for which maximizing the approximated objective yields a valid power allocation.
Slots' Allocation searches the frontier more thoroughly as it gives one slot at a time, so we expect it to take longer to detect all the valid allocations.
Starfish is able to quickly detect valid allocations; however, as you can observe in Fig. 14, the detected solutions deviate significantly from ours in both workloads, as the randomly chosen allocations can be sub-optimal.
In summary, DA should be considered a valid alternative to randomisation or allocation via the random permuted blocks method, particularly for small to moderate-sized clinical trials with multiple significant prognostic factors having modest to large treatment effects, as is common in oncology.
Although participant observations are shown to be a valid approach to assess physicians' time allocation [ 21] this approach stresses time, human, and attention resources.
Participant observations to record physicians' activities are shown to be a valid and reliable approach to assess clinicians' time allocation [ 20, 21].
21 While this was likely to be a valid assumption for this study, as participants and clinicians were blinded to allocation, this is less likely to be valid for non-blinded studies.
