22 - Experimental Design
Is it ever possible to get convincing evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship?
Practice
Chapter 13 # 7, 21, 23, 32,33,43, Read pages 294-309
Vocabulary
subject, experimental unit, levels of a factor, treatment, control, control group, replicate, block, randomly assign, blinding, placebo, matching, two factor experiment, confounding
Study Questions
- What are the basic principles of experimental design?
- Is it important to select random individuals to be in our experiment? Explain where and why randomization is important.
- What is the point of replication in an experiment and replication of an experiment?
- What is the importance of a control group and the placebo?
- When and why should blinding / double-blinding be used in experiments?
- What is the purpose of blocking?
- What is a completely randomized experiment?
- When can we say that the results of our experiment are statistically significant?
Resources
- Link: Salk Polio Trials article link
- Slide Deck: 22-Experimental-Design.pdf