 Steepest ascent in response surface methodology

For a fitted local first-order response $\hat{m}(x)={\hat{\beta }}_0+{\hat{b}}^{T}x$, the unit direction maximizing its directional derivative in coded Euclidean distance is $d=\hat{b}/\Vert \hat{b}\Vert$, by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Run sequential feasible settings $x_0+hd$, increase $h$ while measured response improves, and refit near promising settings. Physical increments are $h_{j}h{d}_j$, so coded and unscaled physical gradients need not give the same experimental path. A near-zero gradient calls for further modeling rather than division by zero.