What is the relationship between an hypothesis and a predict

What is the relationship between an hypothesis and a prediction? What is the difference between a theory and a hunch? Why do scientists do an experiment when they know what the results will be? In a research scientific paper, what are the relative roles of the following parts of a paper: Introduction, methods, results, discussion and abstract.

Solution

Answer:

1. Relationship between a hypothesis and a prediction:

A prediction is a guess about future observations based on the existing patterns and observation. A hypothesis is a possible explanation about an observation, phenomenon or event and can be tested by conducting experiments.

A hypothesis may include a prediction that is it can be used to make a prediction about the relationship between the variables.

Difference between a theory and hunch:

A hunch is a feeling or idea that is intuition driven rather than fact based. A theory on the other hand is a fact based approach that attempts to provide an explanation about a phenomenon and can be repeatedly tested by experiments.

2. Why do scientists do experiments when they know what the results will be?

Answer: An experiment is a usually conducted to refute a hypothesis. its important to perform experiments to ensure repeatability of the experimental outcome. For a scientific study its very important that the experiments are reproducible, repeatable so that the hypothesis can be accepted by a wider scientific community.

3. In a research scientific paper what are the relative roles of the following parts of a paper:

Introduction: Introduction outlines the scientific purpose of the research and provides brief information about the background, objective, problem statement of the research work.

Methods: This section covers details of the methods and materials that were used in the research work. A detailed description of the methods makes it possible for another person to repeat the experiment using identical methods, controls and experimental settings and determine the repeatability of the research work.

Results: This section summarizes the data generated from the experiment in the form of graphs, tables, figures etc and provides the reader an overview about the study outcome.

Discussion: This section includes interpretation of data, study findings and relating it to existing knowledge. This section also includes information regarding rejection or acceptance of the original hypothesis based on the study outcome.

Abstracts: In a research scientific paper, abstract provides a brief summary about the complete research work, provides information about the scope of the work and enable the readers to quickly find out if the research work is relevant to their requirements or is of interest to them and whether they should read the entire report or not.