A] THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

• Scientific Method - a systematic way of studying a problem used by scientists
• Anecdotal Evidence - a cause and effect association based on one person's experience
• Control group - an untreated group of subjects used to compare with the treated group to allow the establishment of a cause and effect relationship with a given treatment and noted result
• Treatment group - a group of subjects that has something done to it in order to see what the results of that treatment is
• Replication - the assignment of more than one experimental subject to the same treatment or repetition of a basic experiment
• Sample - some fraction of a population [used because it is impossible to test every subject]
• Controlled variable - the one variable or aspect of an experiment that is controlled by the researcher
• Mean - the average of a group of data (gives an idea of the ordinary value)
• Standard error (of a mean) - a measure of the variation within a group of data (the higher the standard error, the more variation is present within the data)
• The process of science - investigative process that scientists use in studying the natural world
• identify a problem (through observations)
• form a hypothesis
• experimentation
• analyze data
• conclusions
• Be able to work out scientific method problems (similar to the ones in your exercises) if you are given the means and standard errors (s.e.) for two groups of data
• be able to make up a number-line graph of the means +/- s.e.
• be able to interpret the graph (if overlap even the smallest bit, the two groups are considered to be statistically the same, no difference)
• use that information to decide whether to accept or reject the given hypothesis