1. (I'm assuming the class is a morning class since the prompt did not specify.) The student is not getting enough sleep every night and that is why he is falling asleep in class.
2 Test:
- A. I would test this hypothesis by first learning how much sleep the student gets on average per night. Once you know the average, I would as them to just add an hour or two for a few nights and see if their sleeping in class trend continues.
- B. If the student is able to stay awake through the whole class after adding an hour or two of sleep per night, then it is safe to say that my hypothesis is true and all he needed was a little bit more sleep.
- C. If the student is still falling asleep in class, I would consider my hypothesis falsified. He is falling asleep for another reason besides lack of sleep.
3. An untestable hypothesis to this scenario would be that the student is falling asleep on purpose because he is from the future and is on a mission to go back in time and disrupt the class to prevent a specific student from passing.
Testable Hypothesis (5/5)
ReplyDeleteTest (5/5) - Okay, though it may take more than an hour or two to make a difference. How about making sure the student gets at least 8 hours of sleep?
Support (5/5)
Falsify (5/5) - Good.
Untestable Hypothesis (5/10) - You go on to explain your scenario, but the only part of that answer that is pertinent here is this:
"...the student is falling asleep on purpose ..."
Regardless of why he is choosing this action, if he is consciously choosing to fall asleep, then this is a real person making a real choice about a real action, which means it is testable. I agree that this might be difficult to test, but that isn't the same as "untestable". Whether an hypothesis is testable or not is not limited by our ability to figure out a test. In order to be untestable, it needs to be completely undetectable, unobservable or unmeasurable by any means. Can't we just ask him why he is falling asleep?
Check the guidelines to better understand this concept of "untestable" or "unfalsifiable". There is also a page in the assignment module that discusses this.