Experimental study, correlational study, case study, longitudinal study

1.     Describe the issue/concept: 

Experimental study is a study in which the investigator takes risks in his/her experiment, but has a back-up plan if the risks aren’t successful. Correlational study is a scientific study in which an investigator studies the link between an organisation of people and variables. A case study is a “research method common in social science”. Longitudinal study is a study that involves repeating observations of variables over again – as long as many decades.

2.     

What implications does this have for knowledge gained in the human sciences (how does this issue/concept affect our ability to learn and know things via the human sciences)? 

Experimental study implicates our knowledge gained in the human sciences as the investigator who performs the experiment may or may not choose to take a risk and if he/she does choose to take a risk/risks, then he/she could choose to risk anything – whether it be one risk or more and he/she may risk some things, but not others. If the risks aren’t successful, then he/she will perform the back-up plan, this resulting in us not learning anything about what happens when risks are taken during experiments. 

Reflection on human science experience

On Monday in our double period of TOK, we were split into two groups. One group was to plan a presentation on the topic of challenges that scientists are facing today and the other group was to assess the human behavior that occurred during the planning stage. 


I was part of the group that assessed the planning and it was a very interesting experience! As I have only experienced being part of a group planning something and having not actually experienced watching a group plan something and assessing their behavior, I found it weird to dig deeper and to really study their behavior.


The feelings that were shown from each different person in the group would show many things to a human scientist also studying our in-class simulation. They would show that you can actually tell what kind of personality one has by the way that they contribute to the discussion, they would show you what kind of relationships exist between different people and they would show the level of confidence in a person. 

Things that I learnt from mathematics video

From making the mathematics video, I learnt that there is so much more to the topic of mathematics than the subject that we learn at school. I have learnt that true mathematicians go way deeper and find mathematics truly beautiful and I have learnt that everything to do with maths was invented by someone, eg. Pythagoras and Leonardo Fibonacci. I learnt that we use deductive proof in real life.

An example of inductive logic and an example of deductive logic

An example of inductive logic that I found is in the Quantum Physics For Dummies video and it is the example when the man shoots marbles through one slit onto a blackboard. When he shoots marbles through one rectangular-shaped slit onto the blackboard, he creates a pattern on the blackboard that is the same shape as the slit. An example of deductive logic is when he believes that when he shoots marbles through two slits onto the blackboard, it will create a pattern that is the same shape as the two slits, but it actually creates an interference pattern.

"What surprises me about the way science has progressed"

I would be very interested to find out where science came from and when it was created. Scientists say that the universe was created by the Big Bang theory and that the Earth has been spinning around the galaxy for 4.5 billion years, but how do they know this? Obviously no one would have been alive before the Earth had been created.

It is interesting as to how major scientific theories and ideas have evolved from the tiniest things. Take Dr Alexander Fleming for example - he created penicillin by accident from a contaminated bacterial culture in his laboratory.