SAT Math: Experimental Design: Control vs Treatment
26+ practice questions in Praczo
The concept, explained
- 1
To prove a cause-and-effect relationship, you need a randomized controlled experiment.
- 2
Participants must be randomly assigned to either a treatment group (gets the intervention) or a control group (gets a placebo or nothing).
- 3
If people self-select into groups, or if it is just an observational study (watching what people naturally do), you CANNOT claim cause and effect, only correlation.
- 4
Furthermore, you can only generalize results to the specific population that was randomly sampled.
- ✗ Concluding "X causes Y" from an observational study just because the correlation is very strong.
- ✗ Generalizing the results of a drug trial solely on seniors to the entire global population.
SAT-style practice
A researcher asks 100 people who voluntarily eat a vegan diet and 100 people who eat a standard diet about their energy levels. The vegans report higher energy. Can the researcher conclude the vegan diet causes higher energy?
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