SLE251 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Null Hypothesis, Systematic Sampling, Falsifiability

• School: Deakin University
• Department: Science, Engineering and Built Environment
• Course: SLE251
• Professor: Matthew Symonds

Document Summary

Observing similar situations over time and seeing a common property. Problems with induction include that it is not logical to prove anything by repeated observation and it is unclear how many observations are necessary. Hypthetico-deductive approach: theories (hypotheses) are disproved because proof is logically impossible. Based on falsifcationism: hypothesis: the prediction that relates to the theory being tested. Needs to be specific: falsificationism: we attempt to falsity a null hypothesis (hypothesis we seek to falsify). If we reject the null we can accept the alternate hypothesis. H1: females > males: null hypothesis: h0: females males, experiment: gather data on as many spider species as possible, results: you find 50 species for which the prediction is true. One for which it is not (european water spider). Interpretation: we reject (falsify) our null hypothesis because we have shown that on average females are bigger than males. Uncertainty (variability): measurements from the natural word are variable.