GEOL 115 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Caffeine, Ignaz Semmelweis, Insomnia
Document Summary
Occam"s razor: all things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one. This is not like many detective stories. There is no truth in science: a hypothesis or theory can always be modified based upon new data. Semmelweis was beaten and died of blood poisoning in an insane asylum. The debate on climate change should not be whether or not it exists, its what we should do about it. To create a hypothesis, often need to explain how two observations are related to each other. Cause: the producer of a result or consequence. Could be all, none, or some of these potential causes. Correlation -> two things may be related to each other directly, indirectly or not at all. This doesn"t necessarily mean that one thing causes the other. Positive correlation: both variables increase or decrease together. Negative correlation: one variable gets larger as the other one gets smaller.
