Experimental Design B/C

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Re: Experimental Design B/C

Post by XJcwolfyX »

It's really not as bad as you think. It teaches students how to efficiently test and analyze data.
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Re: Experimental Design B/C

Post by The Eviscerator »

Wow that was a long rant.

Anyway, sorry, my bad. I've only done this event once in Division C 2 years ago at nationals. Furthermore, I recalled last year that the team at our school did a categorical experiment at nationals and got 20th, so I thought it was a valid thing to say.

I've also never heard of those problems with Experimental... But that's beside the point. I'd like to point out that the problems you have with Experimental are greatly due to poor event supervisors, and I feel that's not a valid reason to entirely call it out as being a terrible event. Plus, depending on the experiment, it's not asking too much to expect the students to be able to generate and collect data; with some time management, good teamwork, and dividing up of tasks, it's not impossible to finish. And you also scrap the "pencil-pushing (replace the detailed step-by-step procedure with a summary, or something like that)" but that's entirely against the spirit of scientific experiments. It's all about being precise in order for peers to be able to follow your work and be able to replicate it and affirm the conclusions; a summary doesn't allow for this. I'm sorry but this event definitely doesn't give students that sloppy experimental procedure is okay; sloppy experimental procedure doesn't place well. It promotes being concise and precise in writing and conducting experiments.

I'd also like to point out the fact that many people thoroughly enjoy this event, practice it a lot and there's no need to belittle their accomplishments. By the way, congrats Jcwolfy. I wish I could've been at nationals myself this year.
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Re: Experimental Design B/C

Post by Phenylethylamine »

The Eviscerator wrote:Wow that was a long rant.

Anyway, sorry, my bad. I've only done this event once in Division C 2 years ago at nationals. Furthermore, I recalled last year that the team at our school did a categorical experiment at nationals and got 20th, so I thought it was a valid thing to say.

I've also never heard of those problems with Experimental... But that's beside the point. I'd like to point out that the problems you have with Experimental are greatly due to poor event supervisors, and I feel that's not a valid reason to entirely call it out as being a terrible event. Plus, depending on the experiment, it's not asking too much to expect the students to be able to generate and collect data; with some time management, good teamwork, and dividing up of tasks, it's not impossible to finish. And you also scrap the "pencil-pushing (replace the detailed step-by-step procedure with a summary, or something like that)" but that's entirely against the spirit of scientific experiments. It's all about being precise in order for peers to be able to follow your work and be able to replicate it and affirm the conclusions; a summary doesn't allow for this. I'm sorry but this event definitely doesn't give students that sloppy experimental procedure is okay; sloppy experimental procedure doesn't place well. It promotes being concise and precise in writing and conducting experiments.

I'd also like to point out the fact that many people thoroughly enjoy this event, practice it a lot and there's no need to belittle their accomplishments. By the way, congrats Jcwolf. I wish I could've been at nationals myself this year.
No, the poor event supervisors are just icing on the cake. I suppose I'm confusing the issue by discussing both things at the same time, but the problem with this event is essentially unrelated to the poor event supervisors.

Oh, trust me – I've done this event in both B and C Division, and let me tell you, even with "time management, good teamwork, and dividing up of tasks", the best write-ups from the perspective of the rubric are still going to be the ones where the students knew what to expect at the beginning of the experiment, made up most or all of their data points, and had some prepared formula to follow. Yes, it rewards being concise and precise (and you're right, my suggestion of a potential way to make the event shorter was a bad idea) but it also rewards scientific dishonesty, and preferring experiments with known outcomes to experiments in which the outcome is not known. Sure, there may be teams that don't make up their data, and that's admirable – but they will not, on the whole, do as well as teams that do make up their data, because those teams have a time advantage.

I certainly respect the achievements of those who do well in this event; it's a difficult event, and I'm sure you've worked hard to get the results you did. Just because I object to the nature of the event does not mean I don't recognize the efforts of its medalists.
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Re: Experimental Design B/C

Post by The Eviscerator »

Phenylethylamine wrote:
The Eviscerator wrote:Wow that was a long rant.

Anyway, sorry, my bad. I've only done this event once in Division C 2 years ago at nationals. Furthermore, I recalled last year that the team at our school did a categorical experiment at nationals and got 20th, so I thought it was a valid thing to say.

I've also never heard of those problems with Experimental... But that's beside the point. I'd like to point out that the problems you have with Experimental are greatly due to poor event supervisors, and I feel that's not a valid reason to entirely call it out as being a terrible event. Plus, depending on the experiment, it's not asking too much to expect the students to be able to generate and collect data; with some time management, good teamwork, and dividing up of tasks, it's not impossible to finish. And you also scrap the "pencil-pushing (replace the detailed step-by-step procedure with a summary, or something like that)" but that's entirely against the spirit of scientific experiments. It's all about being precise in order for peers to be able to follow your work and be able to replicate it and affirm the conclusions; a summary doesn't allow for this. I'm sorry but this event definitely doesn't give students that sloppy experimental procedure is okay; sloppy experimental procedure doesn't place well. It promotes being concise and precise in writing and conducting experiments.

I'd also like to point out the fact that many people thoroughly enjoy this event, practice it a lot and there's no need to belittle their accomplishments. By the way, congrats Jcwolf. I wish I could've been at nationals myself this year.
No, the poor event supervisors are just icing on the cake. I suppose I'm confusing the issue by discussing both things at the same time, but the problem with this event is essentially unrelated to the poor event supervisors.

Oh, trust me – I've done this event in both B and C Division, and let me tell you, even with "time management, good teamwork, and dividing up of tasks", the best write-ups from the perspective of the rubric are still going to be the ones where the students knew what to expect at the beginning of the experiment, made up most or all of their data points, and had some prepared formula to follow. Yes, it rewards being concise and precise (and you're right, my suggestion of a potential way to make the event shorter was a bad idea) but it also rewards scientific dishonesty, and preferring experiments with known outcomes to experiments in which the outcome is not known. Sure, there may be teams that don't make up their data, and that's admirable – but they will not, on the whole, do as well as teams that do make up their data, because those teams have a time advantage.

I certainly respect the achievements of those who do well in this event; it's a difficult event, and I'm sure you've worked hard to get the results you did. Just because I object to the nature of the event does not mean I don't recognize the efforts of its medalists.
I can better see where you're coming from. I wouldn't agree that the best teams have students that made up most of their data, but you may know better than me. I cannot argue with the fact that it does somewhat reward scientific dishonesty, albeit unintentionally. Unfortunately, it is also true that scientific dishonesty is quite widespread in the scientific community. The fact that some teams that do exceedingly well do so in a rather less than admirable way can't really be helped, but I stand by my opinion that Experimental Design is still a good event. Experiments are still a vital part of science and should be included in Science Olympiad; after all, the main goal of Science Olympiad is to encourage science education, and those that don't make up data are learning some good stuff for their futures if they so choose to become a scientist.
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Re: Experimental Design B/C

Post by mnstrviola »

IMO, Experimental to me is all about memorizing the rubric and making the least difficult experiment possible, so that writing the writeup is easy. Not really that great.

Any ideas on how this event could improve?
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Re: Experimental Design B/C

Post by Slarik »

Phenylethylamine wrote:
XJcwolfyX wrote:We wrote that lemonade was the mos acidic, sprite an apple juice were equally as acidic as each other but not as acidic as lemonade, and water was the least acidic.
And how did you graph that? That's the problem: "lemonade - sprite - apple juice - water" is not a quantitative axis.

Argh, this makes me angry. I think out of all my posts on this site, the ones in this thread (and previous years' Experimental threads) are the angriest, because... gah, this event is so often poorly designed and/or poorly run (not to mention the inherent problems with the whole "design, execute and write up an experiment in under an hour" paradigm).
I disagree about the time. We had no trouble doing the experiment and write-up it one hour. In fact, we finished with almost 20 minutes left, AND we had only two of us actually doing 95% of the writing (the other person carried out the experiment and wrote our names on the papers). I'm guessing the reason we got 11th was because of only a so-so graph?? (and with 20 minutes, I should have checked over all my partner's work and we could have fixed it. *sigh*. Instead, I checked with the rubric that I had gotten all the points, and then I checked some of my partner's work. RRR!)

However, it does seem like we rarely have to do the "design" part, bc the supervisors usually give you materials and a topic that pretty much tell you what they want you to do.
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Re: Experimental Design B/C

Post by Slarik »

Phenylethylamine wrote: I know Gelinas was second-tiered for doing concentration of one liquid (rather than using multiple liquids) vs. pH, because "Sprite vs. lemonade" is qualitative rather than quantitative (which is just bad experimental form). I don't blame them, and I think it's pretty ridiculous that the experiment apparently required them to have a qualitative IV.
Still, the topic did say it wanted you to test the acidity of drink*s* if I remember correctly. I don't know. I see where you are coming from in your anti ED sediments, and they definitely have their merits.
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Re: Experimental Design B/C

Post by Phenylethylamine »

Slarik wrote:I disagree about the time. We had no trouble doing the experiment and write-up it one hour. In fact, we finished with almost 20 minutes left, AND we had only two of us actually doing 95% of the writing (the other person carried out the experiment and wrote our names on the papers).
Is this what you generally observe (i.e., that you finish with twenty minutes left), or was it just this particular event?

I should really clarify what I mean with this time issue, because it seems like people are not taking it quite the way I meant. It's not that I think an hour is too short a time to complete the event; as a competitor in Experimental Design, I would essentially always finish writing before time was called. I'm well aware that all Science Olympiad events have to be designed to fit in one time slot, and I have no problem with that.

My point is that, in order to finish the event in an hour, my team devised a parallel-processing strategy: one person would write the problem statement/hypothesis/materials/procedure stuff, one person would "conduct the experiment" and make the graphs and so on, and one person – usually me – would write the analysis, conclusion, etc. We were doing all these things simultaneously. See anything wrong with that situation? When you have someone writing the conclusion of your experiment at the same time that it is being conducted, you are not doing good science. (And sure, there are plenty of teams that don't do this, but they are at a disadvantage to the teams that do, because they can't spend as much time on their responses.)

In addition, regardless of whether you are parallel-processing or all three working together or somewhere in between, you certainly don't have time to come up with an original or interesting experiment – which means that, at best, you're using some simplistic experiment that occurs to you on the spot. Even if you could think of something new and interesting, it would be much harder to write up, and there's no point in taking unnecessary risks in the event. But usually it doesn't even get to that point; as you said,
Slarik wrote:However, it does seem like we rarely have to do the "design" part, bc the supervisors usually give you materials and a topic that pretty much tell you what they want you to do.
Yeah. This is terrible. The event is called Experimental Design. You learn very little in executing and writing up an experiment that someone else has designed for you – particularly given that, more often than not, the "desired outcome" is obvious. Sure, you didn't necessarily know at the beginning which drink was most acidic, but it didn't matter: you could write your entire analysis/conclusion just leaving a blank for the name of the most and least acidic drinks, and fill them in at the end. In the case of most other (non-categorical) experiments, the trend you should come up with is clear: yes, the ball will take less time to roll down the ramp when you increase the incline. But yet they often feel they have to make the topic a leading question, because one, competitors don't really have the time to come up with better experiments of their own when given something totally open-ended, and two, it's easier for them to grade if everyone's doing the same experiment.

TL;DR: The reason I object to the time frame of Experimental Design is not that I think it's too hard to finish in an hour; it's that I don't think the whole process of actual experimental design can be meaningfully condensed into a one-hour event without sacrificing some of its most essential aspects (creativity, scientific integrity, not going in with presuppositions about your results) and thereby encouraging poor scientific methodology in young scientists.
Slarik wrote:
Phenylethylamine wrote: I know Gelinas was second-tiered for doing concentration of one liquid (rather than using multiple liquids) vs. pH, because "Sprite vs. lemonade" is qualitative rather than quantitative (which is just bad experimental form). I don't blame them, and I think it's pretty ridiculous that the experiment apparently required them to have a qualitative IV.
Still, the topic did say it wanted you to test the acidity of drink*s* if I remember correctly. I don't know. I see where you are coming from in your anti ED sediments, and they definitely have their merits.
Well, since pure water was their standard of comparison, one could argue that they tested two drinks: water and whatever they were diluting (I think it was actually apple juice that Gelinas used) ^.^
Yeah, I see your point as far as reading the requirements for the specific event carefully, but I think second-tiering students for doing a slightly less obvious experiment that's in a gray area created by the word "drinks" is nitpicky at best (and actually counter to good science at worst).
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Re: Experimental Design B/C

Post by Slarik »

Phenylethylamine wrote:
Slarik wrote:I disagree about the time. We had no trouble doing the experiment and write-up it one hour. In fact, we finished with almost 20 minutes left, AND we had only two of us actually doing 95% of the writing (the other person carried out the experiment and wrote our names on the papers).
Is this what you generally observe (i.e., that you finish with twenty minutes left), or was it just this particular event?
Usually we're more pressed for time (although there are usually a few minutes left), as you said earlier about coming up with a formula, yes, since my sister wasn't going to be with me on it, we wrote up a formula for the new people, and it ended up speeding me up a lot too to have a formula written out. And having the rubric helped, because sometimes it takes a little time to think about whether I got each point. Plus I'm getting faster at ED as I work on it more.
I should really clarify what I mean with this time issue, because it seems like people are not taking it quite the way I meant. It's not that I think an hour is too short a time to complete the event; as a competitor in Experimental Design, I would essentially always finish writing before time was called. I'm well aware that all Science Olympiad events have to be designed to fit in one time slot, and I have no problem with that.

My point is that, in order to finish the event in an hour, my team devised a parallel-processing strategy: one person would write the problem statement/hypothesis/materials/procedure stuff, one person would "conduct the experiment" and make the graphs and so on, and one person – usually me – would write the analysis, conclusion, etc. We were doing all these things simultaneously. See anything wrong with that situation? When you have someone writing the conclusion of your experiment at the same time that it is being conducted, you are not doing good science. (And sure, there are plenty of teams that don't do this, but they are at a disadvantage to the teams that do, because they can't spend as much time on their responses.)
We don't (typically) write the last four sections of the rubric up until everything else was done. One of us (me) does our statement/hypothesis while the others get started drawing lines for the graph/data table etc. Then I tell the others what we will be doing for an experiment and make sure they know what my statement of problem was, and then they get started on the experiment while I do the variables/procedure etc. Next I look at their data/they tell me the results of the experiment, and I do the analysis and practical stuff, while they do the conclusion and errors.

That's a little funny to think that a lot of people do their conclusion during the experiment -- perhaps I'll try that next year, I didn't think of it hahaha!
In addition, regardless of whether you are parallel-processing or all three working together or somewhere in between, you certainly don't have time to come up with an original or interesting experiment – which means that, at best, you're using some simplistic experiment that occurs to you on the spot. Even if you could think of something new and interesting, it would be much harder to write up, and there's no point in taking unnecessary risks in the event. But usually it doesn't even get to that point; as you said,
Slarik wrote:However, it does seem like we rarely have to do the "design" part, bc the supervisors usually give you materials and a topic that pretty much tell you what they want you to do.
Yeah. This is terrible. The event is called Experimental Design. You learn very little in executing and writing up an experiment that someone else has designed for you – particularly given that, more often than not, the "desired outcome" is obvious. Sure, you didn't necessarily know at the beginning which drink was most acidic, but it didn't matter: you could write your entire analysis/conclusion just leaving a blank for the name of the most and least acidic drinks, and fill them in at the end. In the case of most other (non-categorical) experiments, the trend you should come up with is clear: yes, the ball will take less time to roll down the ramp when you increase the incline. But yet they often feel they have to make the topic a leading question, because one, competitors don't really have the time to come up with better experiments of their own when given something totally open-ended, and two, it's easier for them to grade if everyone's doing the same experiment.

TL;DR: The reason I object to the time frame of Experimental Design is not that I think it's too hard to finish in an hour; it's that I don't think the whole process of actual experimental design can be meaningfully condensed into a one-hour event without sacrificing some of its most essential aspects (creativity, scientific integrity, not going in with presuppositions about your results) and thereby encouraging poor scientific methodology in young scientists.
I see, I think I agree.
Slarik wrote:
Phenylethylamine wrote: I know Gelinas was second-tiered for doing concentration of one liquid (rather than using multiple liquids) vs. pH, because "Sprite vs. lemonade" is qualitative rather than quantitative (which is just bad experimental form). I don't blame them, and I think it's pretty ridiculous that the experiment apparently required them to have a qualitative IV.
Still, the topic did say it wanted you to test the acidity of drink*s* if I remember correctly. I don't know. I see where you are coming from in your anti ED sediments, and they definitely have their merits.
Well, since pure water was their standard of comparison, one could argue that they tested two drinks: water and whatever they were diluting (I think it was actually apple juice that Gelinas used) ^.^
Yeah, I see your point as far as reading the requirements for the specific event carefully, but I think second-tiering students for doing a slightly less obvious experiment that's in a gray area created by the word "drinks" is nitpicky at best (and actually counter to good science at worst).
True. It was a very "do exactly this experiment" topic, which certainly isn't design. I may be remembering incorrectly, but I think someone said that in NC, they tell you the experiment instead of giving you a topic? Can anyone from NC clarify that?
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Re: Experimental Design B/C

Post by The Eviscerator »

Slarik wrote: I may be remembering incorrectly, but I think someone said that in NC, they tell you the experiment instead of giving you a topic? Can anyone from NC clarify that?
In NC they've tried this different setup (just this year for regionals) where teams are given stations and each one has scenarios and asks about parts of an experiment, from dependent/independent/control variables, to hypotheses, to data collection, to conclusions. It's really quite bizarre, like a mix between Technical Problem Solving (which NC doesn't run for some reason) and regular Experimental Design. I personally don't like it that much, but it's only been tried once and I didn't do it.
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