Too Good
The idea: a result with no mess in it needs checking before it is believed, or before anyone is blamed.
Read it
Who is in this book
- Ravi A result you can trust is one that still holds when you do it again from InquiryForge
- Sana Before you trust a result, check who was counted and who was left out from InquiryForge
- Danya a child of the Green Asks "how do we know?"
- Tomas Ask how surprising a result would be, including how surprisingly neat from InferForge
- Tara a child of the Green Listens longest, speaks last
Every recurring character has a short tune, so you can tell who is on stage before a word is said. The tunes play only when you tap, and the Reading Access sound switch turns them off.
The Honest Page
Which parts of this story are true, stretched or made up?
True
- Twenty-four seedlings minus sixteen on the sheet is eight dropped; if about 2 in 10 millimetre readings land on a whole or half centimetre, about 3.2 of 16 would; the gap fell from 18 − 12 = 6 cm to 20 − 18 = 2 cm.
- Measurements recorded by people tend to cluster on round numbers (digit preference), for example rounding to the nearest 5 or 0; checking the final digits is one way to spot it. Source
- Blinding, where the person measuring does not know which group a sample belongs to, is used to stop expectations from shaping measurements. Source
- Dropping data points after seeing them can create a result that is not really there; this is one form of what researchers call p-hacking or researcher degrees of freedom. Source
Stretched
- The case says about 2 in 10 millimetre readings would land on a whole or half centimetre. What we simplified: That is true only if every millimetre ending is equally likely. Real people favour round numbers, which is exactly the habit the case is about.
Made up
- The greenhouse, the fertiliser trial, Marisol, Professor Adeyinka, Nadia and every measurement are made up.
Tara’s sentence
The case stops where Tara speaks. Write the sentence you would have said. It stays on this device.
Kept.
Your sentence lives on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Ring the hammer for someone
Pick this book for someone younger. The link carries only the book, and it will wait for them on the Green.