Objectives

This class is designed to arm you with a scientist’s skepticism, and a scientist’s tools to conduct research and evaluate others’ research. The student who successfully completes this course will understand:  

1. descriptive statistics, and how to represent a collection of numbers
2. how to design a good experiment (and evaluate how well someone else has)
3. inferential statistics and hypothesis testing other techniques human beings use to gain new information, such as qualitative methods.

"Methods Section" project:

Come up with a research question that intrigues you both. Assume you have one semester and
$25,000 to answer the question, empirically.

Write the "Methods" section of the research report. Specify what your research question is.
Demonstrate that you know what independent and dependent variables are. Demonstrate that
you know how to affect controls and counterbalancing, and to avoid confounds. Specify what
statistics you'll perform on your data. Design an experiment that, if you really did have
that time and that money, and did carry it out, you would likely have gotten an answer,
from "Nature."

Anticipating some questions:

1- Length? I don't know. Maybe three to six pages. The example on pages 474 of S, Z, & Z is about four pages long, double-spaced.

2- Question? Pick something that interests you. No, it doesn't have to be one that we've talked about in class. If you wish, you can send me your research question, and I'll tell you if I think it sounds like a good one.

3- Objective? Think of this as your first (?) experimental write-up. You get to have fun imagining the research, without actually carrying out the work. Design an EXPERIMENT. Show me that you know what independent variables and dependent variables are. Show me that you know how to sample and assign test participants, to avoid confounds. Show me you know how to control extraneous variables. Go for it. Design a study of which you'd like to see the results.