Friday, January 22, 2010

Whats the control group , dependent variable ,independent variable and what should homers conclusion be !!!!!?

Homer notices that his shower is covered in a strange green slime. His friend Barney tells him that the coconut juice will get rid of the green slime.Homer decides to check this out by spraying half of the shower with coconut juice.He sprays the other half of the shower with water.After 3 days of ';treatment'; thereis no change in the appearance of the green slime on either side of the shower.Whats the control group , dependent variable ,independent variable and what should homers conclusion be !!!!!?
Treatment ';group';: coconut juice half of the shower


Control ';group';: half of shower sprayed with water


Independent variable: n/a


Dependent variable: amount of green slime


Conclusion: No effect of coconut juice on green slime.





I put ';group'; in quotations, because this experiment is lacking in replication and, hence, is a flawed design. Without replication, there is a 50% chance that the treatment half with have less green slime than the control half, simply by chance alone. This is unacceptably high such that, even if that half did have less green slime after a few days, one could never conclude with any confidence that it was the coconut juice that reduced the green slime.

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