Flashcards: Experimental Skills Terminology
About these flashcards
Created by:
Cyberspaced 
on March 17, 2010
Subjects:
Description:
Learn all those pesky wors like reliability, validity, resolution, precision and accuracy!
Groups:
Ms Collins, Annesley College BIOLOGY
Log in to favorite or report as inappropriate.All 10 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Hypothesis | a testable prediction. Usually an If...then... statement linking indepedent and dependent variable |
| Sample Size | the total number of pieces of data in an experiment |
| Random Error | measurement error that arises from random changes that have a different effect each time the measurement is made |
| Systematic Error | a repeated error which affects every measurement to the same degrees - caused by a technique problem or instruments. |
| Accuracy | a measure of how close a measurement comes to the "true" (established) value. |
| Precision | the degree of scatter in the data indicated by the difference between the highest and lowest value in a data set |
| Resolution | the smallest increment that the instrument displays |
| Reliability | the degree to which an experiment may give the same results if repeated |
| Validity | the extent to which an experiment measures what it is supposed to measure |
| Conclusion | a summary of the results of the experiment and a statement of how the results relate to the hypothesis |