Learning through planning experiments : A case study in thermal comfort in hospitals

Learning engineering involves observing and understanding how systems or processes work, but also knowing the cause and effect relationships present. During the course, students learn that the process of engineering investigation requires conducting experiments to validate theories or hypotheses about what makes the system work. Each experimental run is a test. It is through active experimentation, the controlled intervention of a process that modifies the inputs and characteristics of the process, that it is possible to learn the effect of a set of different factors on a response variable. Based on experimental data collected to model thermal comfort in hospital waiting rooms, this paper aims to contribute to the knowledge of this phenomenon through the selection of the most appropriate statistical techniques to analyze the data. For engineering students this is an opportunity to bring theory to practice.