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| Design of Experiments | Observational Studies | Hypothesis Testing |
The main goal of this lab is to teach the basic concepts in experimental
design. Each experiment has a design board that is like a puzzle. The student's goal is to
find the missing pieces and to fit them into the puzzle. A puzzle piece is a short phrase
located in the text of a news or journal article that describes the experiment. Students
find these phrases, determine what part of the experiment
they describe, and then place them in the relevant component of the design. Once the
experiment has been mapped out, a virtual version of it is run for them and they check
their results against the newspaper's. In more advanced stages, students design an
experiment from scratch. They can try out interesting designs from which strange and
unpredictable results may occur. After settling on a good design, a "newspaper"
publishes their results.
Observational Studies:
In this lab the student learns about observational studies through
exploring the data from a large study on child health and development. The student
investigates the relationship between birth weight and factors such as whether or not the
mother smoked during her pregnancy in order to explain the presence of low-birth weight.
This is accomplished through an adventure game scenario. The student plays the role of a
summer intern, with an assignment to produce a report on the health of the children born
in the hospital. To do this, the intern travels the hospital, talks to knowledgeable
people, and reads material and charts hidden throughout the hospital. The student arrives
at his or her own explanation of the problem which is conveyed through an online report.
Hypothesis Testing & Simple Probability Models:
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This page was last updated on 03/11/98. Questions, comments, suggestions.