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It is explanatory knowledge that provides scientific understanding of the world. (Salmon, 2006, pg. 3) [1] According to the National Research Council (United States): "Scientific inquiry refers to the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and propose explanations based on the evidence derived from their work." [2]
Use of the phrase "working hypothesis" goes back to at least the 1850s. [7]Charles Sanders Peirce came to hold that an explanatory hypothesis is not only justifiable as a tentative conclusion by its plausibility (by which he meant its naturalness and economy of explanation), [8] but also justifiable as a starting point by the broader promise that the hypothesis holds for research.
A model with exactly one explanatory variable is a simple linear regression; a model with two or more explanatory variables is a multiple linear regression. [1] This term is distinct from multivariate linear regression , which predicts multiple correlated dependent variables rather than a single dependent variable.
For example, if an outdoor experiment were to be conducted to compare how different wing designs of a paper airplane (the independent variable) affect how far it can fly (the dependent variable), one would want to ensure that the experiment is conducted at times when the weather is the same, because one would not want weather to affect the ...
A research design typically outlines the theories and models underlying a project; the research question(s) of a project; a strategy for gathering data and information; and a strategy for producing answers from the data. [1] A strong research design yields valid answers to research questions while weak designs yield unreliable, imprecise or ...
The theory of statistics provides a basis for the whole range of techniques, in both study design and data analysis, that are used within applications of statistics. [1] [2] The theory covers approaches to statistical-decision problems and to statistical inference, and the actions and deductions that satisfy the basic principles stated for these different approaches.
As another example, suppose that the data consists of points (x, y) that we assume are distributed according to a straight line with i.i.d. Gaussian residuals (with zero mean): this leads to the same statistical model as was used in the example with children's heights. The dimension of the statistical model is 3: the intercept of the line, the ...
In multivariate statistics, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is a statistical method used to uncover the underlying structure of a relatively large set of variables. EFA is a technique within factor analysis whose overarching goal is to identify the underlying relationships between measured variables. [ 1 ]