Sunday 27 September 2015

Scientific Method: Useful or not?

Investigation Question: The natural sciences gain knowledge in specific ways. Using the vocabulary we used in class (listed below), and from your card game experience, talk about how your team worked to understand what cards I was looking for. How might the scientific method have helped your team? How could you have improved your performance?

Hypothesis, observation, experiment, evidence, proof, theory, falsify, proof, predict, test, induction.

The minute we got the cards, our team was quite confused as to how to proceed in order to find the sequence Ms Jones had in mind. After a lot of speculation, our team figured out that the best way to proceed was to predict a hypothesis that would help us formulate our experiments. Furthermore, we realized that there was a scientific theory behind every pattern which could be figured out through the various types of experimentation we could conduct. While experimenting, we observed Ms Jones choosing methods in order to predict our hypothesis, which helped us in revealing our predicted hypothesized theory of the sequence every round. Once using the dictated cards as evidence, we wrote down all the possible sequences that could take place while carefully examining the cards that were rejected. Moreover, the cards that were rejected were also piled upon another side of the table so we did not have to worry about it a lot. The use of proof and evidence from the other groups was an added benefit to our prediction as well. While our prediction failed multiple times in one such round, we portrayed the qualities of a risk-taker to further experiment and disregard the falsified predictions of other teams. Subsequently, through the various mechanisms of Scientific method such as hypothesis, prediction, proof, tests, observations and experimentation. Additionally, as the rounds became harder, we had to start thinking from different perspectives because now the relationship was not between the cards, but was between my fellow peers, this allowed us to use observation of the clothing and the different stereotypes to further exemplify our prediction. In conclusion, the idea of scientific methods is very prevalent in predicting a sequence not just in a card game, but also in the real world.