[Informatics] Reasonable hypothesis checklist

[Mark]

Hi, hypothesisers

Students have started writing to me asking whether their hypotheses would
be suitable for the SAT, so I started working on a simple checklist that
they could use to verify whether their hypothesis is reasonable and
feasible.

So far, my list looks like this:


   1. Does it provide a tentative explanation about how a change in one or
   more variables causes an effect in one or more different variables?
   2. Can you identify the dependent and independent variables?
   3. Is the hypothesis neither trivially-specific or impossibly-general?
   4. Is there at least some evidence that the explanation could be true?
   5. Can the explanation be tested?
   6. Can you use the hypothesis to make at least 1 prediction that can't
   be explained otherwise?
   7. Does the hypothesis have some value even if it's refuted?

Feel free to add / delete / edit ideas.

Cheers
Mark

-- 

Mark Kelly

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