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| to rely on reason to derive principles (and also to cause to happen |
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| to reason out, working from facts |
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| the study of, or branch of knowledge about |
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| the study of living organisms |
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| the process of 1) MAKING OBSERVATIONS of the world, 2) PROPOSING IDEAS about how something works, 3) TESTING THOSE IDEAS, and discarding (or 4) MODIFYING) our ideas in response to the results of those tests |
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| a proposed explanation for observations (in biology hypotheses are generated from knowledge about how the body and other biological systems work, experiences in similar situations, familiarity with other scientific research, and logical reasoning. Hypotheses are also shaped by the creative mind.) |
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| a testable hypothesis is one that it is possible to measure with real-world experiments. If a hypothesis is NOT testable, then it is not a scientific hypothesis. (In other words, there has to be a way to potentially prove the hypothesis wrong.) |
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| if something is "supernatural" it is "beyond nature" and therefore it cannot be tested by experiment. Science may not be able to prove supernatural hypothesis are *wrong*, but by nature they are also not scientific because they cannot be tested. |
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| a falsifiable hypopthesis is one that could be proved wrong. If a hypothesis is NOT falsifiable, it is not a scientific hypothesis because it cannot be tested. |
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| an explanation of a set of related observations based on well-supported hypotheses from several different, independent lines of research. i.e. the "germ theory" is one. |
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| combining a series fo specific observations to discern a general principle |
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| involves using a general principle to predict an expected observation |
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| sets of actions or observations designed to test specific hypotheses |
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| an important part of the scientific method, it concerns the expected outcome of an action, test, or systematic investigation |
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| the observations and information collected by scientists during any type of hypothesis testing |
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| any factor upon which data is collected. these things are those which can change in value under different conditions |
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| a factor which scientists can manipulate (freely change) in order to measure the effect on another factor |
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| scientists manipulate some factors (called independent variables) in order to measure the effect this has on these |
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| the most unambiguous support for a theory comes in the form of hypothesis tests called these. |
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| a subject similar to an experimental subject except that the control is not exposed to the experimental treatement |
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| a way to effectively minimize differences between groups (control and experimental). For example, the researcher might put all the volunteers' names in a hat, drraw out half, and then designate these people as the experimental group and the remainder as the control group. |
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| a way to minimize the differences between the control and experimental groups. giving the contol group these makes them more similar to the experimental group |
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| the unfair influence in the results of an experiment which may be caused by the strong opinions possibly held by the researchers and subjects about the truth of a particular hypothesis before ti is tested |
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| a test like this makes sure that the researchers and the subjects BOTH don't know which subjects are in the control and which are in the experimental group, this way bias may be minimized |
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| when a researcher tests the effects of a drug on a mammal other than a human, when they want to know how it will work on a human they are using one of these |
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| a relationship between two variables. this can be observed outside of controlled experiments on humans (which are sometimes difficult to enact) |
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| the horizontal axis of a graph |
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| the vertical axis of the graph |
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| a specialized branch of mathematics used in the evaluation of data |
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| a small subgroup of a population |
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| statistically significant |
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| a result that is very unlikely to be due to chance differences between the experimental and control groups |
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| the effect of chance on experimental results |
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| the amount of variability in a samble |
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| the range of values that has a high probability of containing the true population average |
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| the number of individuals in the experimental and control groups |
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| If the "sample size" isn't large enough than... |
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| one experiment may not show a correlation between two factors which actually does exist AND, it may also show a correlation between factors which does NOT actually exist. in other words, Sample size has to be large enough or the experiment doesn't mean anything. |
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| when a person gives advice based on their personal experience, not actually evidence from a scientific standpoint |
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