BSC 116 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Institute For Operations Research And The Management Sciences
26 Sep 2017
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Process and methodology by which scientific investigate observations, gain new knowledge, and modify existing knowledge. Observe question predict test analyze (go back to prediction, and alter it) We want to know and explain the natural world. 2 phases of scientific research: 1) discovery, 2) explanation, both involve inquiry; asking questions, each phase informs the other. Pieces of information: data (plural), datum (singular: quantitative, qualitative. Scientific knowledge is conditional; the meaning of our data changes as we get more. Discover new info changes our understanding of what we observe propose new explanation gives us an idea where to look for new info again, discover new info. 2 different kinds of reasoning applied: inductive reasoning extrapolating from observations to a generalization, deductive reasoning use a generalization to explain particular cases. Controlled experiments have controls and experimental variables. Control groups cancel out other factors in the experiment so we test only the experimental variable.
