That was EXACTLY the process AlephZero, so you can always find some hypothesis to fit the data. If it hadn't been hair colour it could have been eye colour or shoe size or who had toast for breakfast etc etc...
It's scary that this is being TAUGHT as GCSE Science!
I thought of a much better reason why there is no correlation.
By random chance you should score 50%
Those with dark hair scored 81%
The rest scored 37%
If you combine them all, it comes out at 59% which is within the margins of 50% given the small sample size.
If however you are...
Well the "right" answer is Yes, but I can't agree with it, and it isn't because I'm dismissing any paranormal event, It's because it's irresponsible to start drawing any conclusions from such limited data, and frankly it's stupid to have a yes/no answer.
I think this discussion shows that you...
Agreed, but remember who the question was aimed at - 15 year olds who don't have the knowledge or experience to be able to make very sophisticated judgements about the "reasonability" of the data.
You or I might play the lottery for fun, but with no real expectation of winning, but a scary...
I guess that's true in the real world, although I'd rather say that scientists make observations from empirical data after which they formulate a hypothesis which they go on to test.
This example looks to be a case of creating the hypothesis to fit the existing data and that never happens...
The trouble is you can't ignore the context, and particularly in an exam which is designed to educate kids about the potential and limitations of scientific discovery.
In my road all the houses with red doors have oil spots on the drive, so there's a clear correlation (as long as I ignore the...
Interesting - and right at the heart of what "correlation" means.
If 6 people toss a head and 2 people toss a tail, and you then notice that the 6 who tossed heads happen to be wearing shorts, does that mean you can claim a correlation between wearing shorts and tossing heads?:biggrin:
If...
I have no idea if this is the right forum for this, but I'd genuinely like to hear what real scientists think of this question which is taken from a GCSE Physics test paper.
Frances claims she can read people's minds. She asks them to think of a number.
She says she can tell whether they are...