[Informatics] The SAT: Cat bites and depression

[Mark]

Oh, and here's a weird little study showing how to create an elegant
experiment that manipulates the independent variable to observe the effects
on the dependent variable.

Ants on stilts...

http://www.livescience.com/871-ants-marching-count-steps.html

(And I hypothesise that the taller boy ants were more attractive to the
girl ants at the post-experiment ant party.)


On 27 December 2015 at 13:33, Mark <mark at vceit.com> wrote:

> Hi, hypothesisors
>
> In an effort to find engaging hypotheses and statistics for introducing
> the SAT to kids, I have found this:
>
> Cat bites are linked to depression.
>
> A study of 1.3 million health records showed that 47% of women and 24% of
> men  who suffered cat bites severe enough to need medical treatment were
> diagnosed with depression - compared to 9% in the general population.
>
> But do cat bites cause depression, or does depression cause the owning of
> cats?
> Or is the relationship between the variables even more complex?
>
> - The original study
> <http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0070585>
>
> - A psych viewpoint
> <http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2014/02/24/does-cat-bite-mean-you-also-have-depression/>
>
> - A newspaper report
> <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2524993/Why-cat-bite-trigger-depression.html>
>
> ​Kids might find it interesting to investigate the possible causal
> relationships, the various hypotheses that can be formulated, and the ways
> in which statistics are used in the sources.​
>
> P.S. I also found this <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJlualhdUpc> but
> it's not quite as relevant.​​
>
> --
>
> Mark Kelly
>
> mark at vceit.com
> http://vceit.com
>



-- 

Mark Kelly

mark at vceit.com
http://vceit.com
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