Term
| What does science answer? |
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Definition
| Why things in the natural world happen and how they work. Science is not used to settle legal and moral debates. |
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Term
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Definition
| It's the explanation for the observations in a given experiment. Conclusions can change as new evidence is found. |
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Term
| During what phase of sleep do most dreams occur? |
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Definition
| REM -- Rapid Eye Movement. |
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Term
| How do REM and slow-wave sleep compar? |
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Definition
| In terms of EEG readings, SWS has a low frequency, while REM has a high frequency. REM's EEG reading is more like an awake state than that of SWS. Also, in REM sleep, people have almost no muscle tone--with the exception of their eyes. In SWS, by contrast, people have ordinary muscle tone. |
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Term
| Speaking of which, what's EEG stand for and what does it do? |
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Definition
| EEG -- electroencephalography. It's like, these wires on your head, getting electric signals that are put through an amplifier and made to move a needle on a piece of paper. Pretty sweet, huh? |
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Term
| Now. Name some theories that are meant to explain REM sleep. |
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Definition
-It helps catalogue and process new information aquired during the wakign period. Supporting this is the fact that children get a lot more REM sleep than adults, and adults get more REM sleep when put in novel situations.
-Actually, that's all I got. Sorry bro. |
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Term
| Is science self-correcting? |
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Definition
Yes. Yes it is. Bad theories eventually got asploded, yes?
Yeah that's all I got. |
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Term
| What is the independent variable? |
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Definition
| It's the variable that gets changed by the people controlling the experiment. Alternatively, it's the variable that is tested or studied for its potential effect on the dependent variable. It goes on the x axis, btw. |
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Term
| What's the dependent variable? |
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Definition
| The y-axis variable, the variable that is potentially affected by the changes in the independent variable. Remember it this way: we wanna see if the dependent variable depends on the independent variable. |
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Term
| What is the difference between the experimental group and the control group in a given experiment? |
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Definition
| The control group is the group that is used--from our textbook--"as a basis for comparison". The experimental group is tested for the effect of something, and the control group doesn't get that something done to them. So if we're trying to find out if putting onion vapors in the ventilation system makes people cry, the experimental group sits in a room and gets the onion vapors, and the control group gets nothing--everything should be exactly the same except for the vapors, so this way the onion vapors are the only plausible explanation for that room to burst into tears. |
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Term
| Tell me about correlation and causation and the Pepsi Challenge. |
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Definition
| Whenever two things are correlated, there are at least three explanatios: A caused B, B caused A, or some C caused both A and B. So like, when the experimenters put Pepsi in Cup L and Coca-Cola in Cup S, people always picked Cup L. Scientists concluded that this was because Pepsi tastes better, but someone eventually proved through a different experiment that people just like the letter L better than the letter S. |
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Term
| Tell me about the median. |
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Definition
The median, a kind of measurement of central tendency, is the middle number in a given set of data; if there are two middle numbers, it is the average of those two numbers.
The median is useful for eliminating outliers--that is, numbers that are way weird compared to the rest of the data set--but otherwise it's kind of an "insensitive measure." Sometimes it's used to make the central tendency look bigger or smaller than it really is, like here:
1 4 5 367 1000 20000000
The median doens't really do justice to those gigantic freaking numbers at the end. |
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Term
| Tell me about the mean, you kind, wonderful person, you. |
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Definition
| The mean is basically the average. Add all the numbers together and divide them by the number of numbers, and you got it, baby. |
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Term
| Howzabout telling me about variance? |
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Definition
| What you're going to do is find the difference between each of a set's number and the set's mean ( x - mean), square each of those differences (x - mean)^2, and add all the freaking squares together (bluhdabluhdabluh). The resultant number might be kind of big, but don't be discouraged! You can do this, I promise! |
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Term
| Tell me about standard deviation. |
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Definition
| This is the square root of variance, and, according to our Lab Manual, "the summary of how far, on the average, scores are spread out from their average (mean)." There's more on that in your textbook. Go ahead and look it up. Yes, do it. Use the index, you crazy scholar, you. |
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Term
| What's the difference between positive and negative correlations? |
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Definition
| Positive slope and negative slope. I would suggest a Google image search for more. |
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Term
| What is the first basic idea behind Darwin's theory of evolution? |
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Definition
| Variation: there's no such thing as an error-proof copy system. |
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Term
| What's the second basic idea behind Darwin's theory of evolution? |
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Definition
| Selection. If there are lots of different things, some will work better than others. |
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Term
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Definition
| Stuff that organisms do. Did you know that how we shape our behavior affects how the world around us shapes our behavior and vice versa?! |
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Term
| Tell me about Rene' Descartes. |
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Definition
| French mathematician and philosopher who "proposed in essence that every action by an organism is a direct response to some event in the outside world. Something from the outside excites one of the sense; this, in turn, excites a nerve that transmits the excitation to the brain, which then diverts the excitation to a muscle and makes the muscle contract. In effect, the energy from the outside is 'reflected' back by the nervous system to the animal's muscles, a conception that gave rise to the term reflex." (From our textbook, Philosophy 7th edition) |
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