Philosophy of Science
Fall
2004
Extra-credit
assignment: Scientific Reasoning
Due: Monday, November 15, 2004
Points possible: 20*
Advice
for both of these items:
Keep your experiment or test procedure as simple as possible!
1. You have been hired by the Research & Development department of Wallet World, a company that manufactures wallets. The company has been receiving complaints that its very popular eel skin wallets demagnetize credit cards. You are asked to investigate.
Preliminary studies by your department show that, in fact, 8 out of 10 of the tested eel skin wallets do demagnetize the test credit cards put in them. You are pretty sure, however, that the eel skin is not the problem. Describe the procedure you will use to try to rule out the eel skin as the cause of the demagnetization.
[To aid you in designing this procedure, here are the "variables" the wallet makers can vary: MATERIAL (eel skin, calf skin, or canvas), COLOR (black, navy, burgundy), NUMBER OF CREDIT CARD SLOTS (2, 5, or 8), CLASP MATERIAL (Velcro, brass snap, magnetic clasp, no clasp).]
2. On Election Day, you volunteer to call prospective voters for the "Get To The Polls" political action committee. The organization hopes that calls to these prospective voters (who have been identified as somewhat likely to vote for your candidate, Votey McElectoral) will get these people to vote. Indeed, they say, "The more calls we give these people, the more likely they will actually vote for our guy."
As you make your calls, however, you begin to worry that the prospective voters will actually have a negative response to all these phone calls, either sitting out the election or voting for the other candidate, Otherguy Runningham. With help from 4 other phone volunteers and your cyber-spy friend in the Ohio Election Board, you decide to try to determine the real effects of your calls. You decide that Spytown, OH, will be your test sample (your call list identifies 100 prospective McElectoral voters). Your cyber-spy friend will be able to tell you how each of these people votes when they cast their ballot (although, of course, she won't be able to change their votes!). Describe the procedure you and your fellow volunteers will use to determine the effect of pro-McElectoral get out the vote calls on voters in Spytown, OH.
*If you scored 80 or below on the midterm, the extra points you earn will be added to your midterm grade. Otherwise, the extra points will be added to your reading response essay point-pool.
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