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The hypothesis of Andreas Cellarius, showing the planetary motions in eccentric and epicyclical orbits. A hypothesis (pl.: hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. A scientific hypothesis must be based on observations and make a testable and reproducible prediction about reality, in a process beginning with an educated guess or ...
Failure of a hypothesis to produce interesting and testable predictions may lead to reconsideration of the hypothesis or of the definition of the subject. Failure of an experiment to produce interesting results may lead a scientist to reconsider the experimental method, the hypothesis, or the definition of the subject.
In short, a hypothesis is testable if there is a possibility of deciding whether it is true or false based on experimentation by anyone. This allows anyone to decide whether a theory can be supported or refuted by data. However, the interpretation of experimental data may be also inconclusive or uncertain.
In some cases, a proposed theory can account for existing anomalous experimental results for which no other existing theory can furnish an explanation. An example would be the ability of the quantum hypothesis , proposed by Max Planck in 1900, to account for the observed black-body spectrum , an experimental result that the existing classical ...
The independent variable of a study often has many levels or different groups. In a true experiment, researchers can have an experimental group, which is where their intervention testing the hypothesis is implemented, and a control group, which has all the same element as the experimental group, without the interventional element.
An example might be the hypothesis that "if I release this ball, it will fall to the floor": this suggestion can then be tested by carrying out the experiment of letting go of the ball, and observing the results. Formally, a hypothesis is compared against its opposite or null hypothesis ("if I release this ball, it will not fall to the floor ...
Simple diagram of the steps in the natural science method. The hypothetico-deductive model or method is a proposed description of the scientific method.According to it, scientific inquiry proceeds by formulating a hypothesis in a form that can be falsifiable, using a test on observable data where the outcome is not yet known.
An experimental result was said to be statistically significant if a sample was sufficiently inconsistent with the (null) hypothesis. This was variously considered common sense, a pragmatic heuristic for identifying meaningful experimental results, a convention establishing a threshold of statistical evidence or a method for drawing conclusions ...