Gene is testing the idea that plants grow faster when they are spoken to. He plants five flowers in a pot (pot A) and five identical flowers in an identical pot (pot B). Gene speaks to the flowers in pot A for one hour every day, but not to the flowers in pot B. At the end of his experiment, Gene finds that the flowers in pot A grew faster than those in pot B. This leads him to the conclusion that plants grow faster when they are spoken to. Which of these is an alternative explanation for Gene's results?

1. the question asks the most appropriate, which seems to rule out "all of the above." your choice appears to be the correct one.

2. the protocol described is good for identifying correlation, but not cause and effect. for cause/effect, you need to devise a protocol that will assign the treatment (or not) to groups that have essentially the same "demographics" with respect to all the other variables. your choice regarding control group seems appropriate. random assignment of treatment (choice d) may be appropriate also. (i think you can argue that b and d are just different descriptions of the same method.)

3. d will randomize the birds, but may not guarantee there are 10 in each group. e will do both, so seems the better choice.

comment on question 2

based on the problem statement, it seems clear that confident, attentive drivers are more likely to use daytime running lights. so, the protocol might need to be devised in such a way that the lights would be turned on or off without the driver's knowledge. (an attentive driver will figure it out.) assigning a confident, attentive driver to a group required to drive without running lights might mess with his/her confidence and attentiveness. you don't want your experiment to do that. (nor do you want the experiment to subject a driver to greater risk of accident as a consequence of driving without running lights.) experiments involving human safety are always problematic.

a pan containing water is placed in a positio n where it is exposed to a 10 mile per hour wind. the pan contains a uniform depth of 1.27 cm of water, is quite wide, and has a length of 2.44 m in the wind direction. the water in the pan is at a constant temperature of 15.5 °c.