SEE-U 2000: Black Rock Forest - Lecture

## Lecture Archive

## Scientific Method and Theory

James Danoff-Burg
CERC
Columbia University

### Goals of science

- Describe the patterns that are found in the natural world
- Explain patterns
  - This is the major emphasis of your individual project
  - Ditto for most of the activities that we are doing in the class

### Methods of Explanation

- Include those of descriptive science
- Approximately 11 Steps
- Process is repeated many times
- Can NEVER prove a hypothesis
  - Can only reject many, leaving one as best supported by the data
  - “Proof” is a common fallacy

### Hypotheses

- Null hypothesis
  - The hypothesis of no change
  - Often abbreviated as Ho
- Alternative hypotheses
  - Often abbreviated as Ha, Hb, etc.
  - All must be mutually exclusive
  - We accept one if Ho is statistically rejected
    - Which Ha to accept is determined by trends in data

### Scientific Method — Steps 1-5

- Observe or suspect pattern
- Posit cause or significance of observed difference
- Create answerable question to explain pattern
- Create testable hypotheses
- Design experiment

### Scientific Method — Steps 6-11

- Collect data (Descriptive stage)
- Analyze data, primarily using statistics
- Evaluate hypotheses, reject Ho?
- Make conclusions based on data
- Note problems in current work
- Predict future directions for research

### Parts of a scientific report

- Title
- Abstract — an overall summary
- Introduction — background, question, Has
- Methods — what we did
- Results — what we found, analyses results
- Discussion — interpretations, predictions
- Acknowledgements — who helped us
- References — who we cited

### Transmission Methods in Science

- Written report
  - Traditional
- Oral presentation
  - Commonly used for preliminary presentation of work to get feedback before writing it up
- Poster
  - Visual summary of work — used at conferences
- Web page
  - Can use a written report & make it interactive