1. CHAPTER 4 Designing Studies
4.2
Experiments

2. Experiments
DISTINGUISH between an observational study and an experiment.
EXPLAIN the concept of confounding.
IDENTIFY the experimental units, explanatory and response variables, and treatments in an experiment.
EXPLAIN the purpose of comparison, random assignment, control, and replication in an experiment.
DESCRIBE a completely randomized design for an experiment.
DESCRIBE the placebo effect and the purpose of blinding in an experiment.
INTERPRET the meaning of statistically significant in the context of an experiment.
EXPLAIN the purpose of blocking in an experiment. DESCRIBE a randomized block design or a matched pairs design for an experiment.

3. Observational Study vs. Experiment
An observational study observes individuals and measures variables of interest but does not attempt to influence the responses.
An experiment deliberately imposes some treatment on individuals to measure their responses.
When our goal is to understand cause and effect, experiments are the only source of fully convincing data.
The distinction between observational study and experiment is one of the most important in statistics.
In contrast to observational studies, experiments don’t just observe individuals or ask them questions. They actively impose some treatment in order to measure the response.

5. Observational Study vs. Experiment
Observational studies of the effect of an explanatory variable on a response variable often fail because of confounding between the explanatory variable and one or more other variables. Well-designed experiments take steps to prevent confounding.
Confounding occurs when two variables are associated in such a way that their effects on a response variable cannot be distinguished from each other.
To explain confounding you should explain how the variable you chose is
associated with the explanatory variable and also how it affects the response
variable.

6. Consider a study to determine if heavy drinkers die at a younger age.
Two variables are confounded if it is impossible to determine which of the two variables is causing a change in the response variable.
Consider a study to determine if heavy drinkers die at a younger age.
It is quite possible that the heaviest drinkers come from a different background or social group. Heavy drinkers may be more likely to smoke, or eat junk food, all of which could be factors in reducing longevity.
Ice cream sales and drowning
The confounding variable “summer” increases ice cream sales and also increases the number of drownings.
Smoking and lung cancer
While smoking may cause lung cancer, it is not the only cause. Asbestos, genetics, cigar smoking, and other thing cause lung cancer too. Each of those other variables that could cause lung cancer are confounding variables.

7. AP Exam Tip on p.236
If you are asked to identify a possible confounding variable in a given setting, you are expected to explain how the variable you choose is associated with the explanatory variable and how it affects the response variable.
Ex. – Taking hormones reduces the risk of heart-attacks
The following response would not earn full credit on the AP exam:
“Diet is a confounding variable because people with bad diets are more likely to have a heart attack”
The following response would earn full credit:
Diet is a confounding variable because women who pay attention to their diet are more inclined to be health conscious and also more inclined to take hormone replacement pills. You cannot be sure that the reduction in heat attacks came from the hormone replacement rather than the careful diet.

8. CYU on p.237

9. The Language of Experiments
An experiment is a statistical study in which we actually do something (a treatment) to people, animals, or objects (the experimental units) to observe the response. Here is the basic vocabulary of experiments.
A specific condition applied to the individuals in an experiment is called a treatment. If an experiment has several explanatory variables, a treatment is a combination of specific values of these variables.
The experimental units are the smallest collection of individuals to which treatments are applied. When the units are human beings, they often are called subjects.

11. Often times the explanatory variables in an experiment are called factors if there
is more than one explanatory variable.
If an experiment has several factors, the combinations of each level of each
factor form the treatments.

13.
Describes a multifactor experiment to determine if money can buy happiness.
There are 2 factors, amount of money & how it is spent.

14. How to Experiment Badly
Many laboratory experiments use a design like the one in the online SAT course example on p.240 (example on next slide):
Experimental Units
Treatment
Measure Response
In the lab environment, simple designs often work well.
Field experiments and experiments with animals or people deal with more variable conditions.
Outside the lab, badly designed experiments often yield worthless results because of confounding.

16. How to Experiment Well
The remedy for confounding is to perform a comparative experiment in which some units receive one treatment and similar units receive another. Most well designed experiments compare two or more treatments. Comparison alone isn’t enough, if the treatments are given to groups that differ greatly, bias will result. The solution to the problem of bias is random assignment.
In an experiment, random assignment means that experimental units are assigned to treatments using a chance process.

18. Principles of Experimental Design
The basic principles for designing experiments are as follows:
1. Comparison. Use a design that compares two or more treatments.
2. Random assignment. Use chance to assign experimental units to treatments. Doing so helps create roughly equivalent groups of experimental units by balancing the effects of other variables among the treatment groups.
3. Control. Keep other variables that might affect the response the same for all groups.
4. Replication. Use enough experimental units in each group so that any differences in the effects of the treatments can be distinguished from chance differences between the groups.
Randomized comparative experiments are designed to give good evidence that differences in the treatments actually cause the differences we see in the response.

21. Completely Randomized Design
In a completely randomized design, the treatments are assigned to all the experimental units completely by chance.
Some experiments may include a control group that receives an inactive treatment or an existing baseline treatment.
Group 1
Group 2
Treatment 1
Treatment 2
Compare Results
Random Assignment
Experimental Units

25. CYU on p.247

26. Experiments: What Can Go Wrong?
The logic of a randomized comparative experiment depends on our ability to treat all the subjects the same in every way except for the actual treatments being compared.
Good experiments, therefore, require careful attention to details to ensure that all subjects really are treated identically.
The response to a dummy treatment is called the placebo effect.
In a double-blind experiment, neither the subjects nor those who interact with them and measure the response variable know which treatment a subject received.

29. Inference for Experiments
In an experiment, researchers usually hope to see a difference in the responses so large that it is unlikely to happen just because of chance variation.
We can use the laws of probability, which describe chance behavior, to learn whether the treatment effects are larger than we would expect to see if only chance were operating.
If they are, we call them statistically significant.
An observed effect so large that it would rarely occur by chance is called statistically significant.
Remember, an association alone does not imply causation, but a statistically significant association in data from a well-designed experiment does imply causation.

30. Blocking
When a population consists of groups of individuals that are “similar within but different between,” a stratified random sample gives a better estimate than a simple random sample. This same logic applies in experiments.
A block is a group of experimental units that are known before the experiment to be similar in some way that is expected to affect the response to the treatments.
In a randomized block design, the random assignment of experimental units to treatments is carried out separately within each block.
Completely randomized designs are the simplest statistical designs for experiments. But just as with sampling, there are times when the simplest method doesn’t yield the most precise results.

31. Blocking

35. Matched Pairs Design
A common type of randomized block design for comparing two treatments is a matched pairs design. The idea is to create blocks by matching pairs of similar experimental units.
A matched pairs design is a randomized blocked experiment in which each block consists of a matching pair of similar experimental units.
Chance is used to determine which unit in each pair gets each treatment.
Sometimes, a “pair” in a matched-pairs design consists of a single unit that receives both treatments. Since the order of the treatments can influence the response, chance is used to determine with treatment is applied first for each unit.

36. Matched Pairs

37. Experiments
DISTINGUISH between an observational study and an experiment.
EXPLAIN the concept of confounding.
IDENTIFY the experimental units, explanatory and response variables, and treatments in an experiment.
EXPLAIN the purpose of comparison, random assignment, control, and replication in an experiment.
DESCRIBE a completely randomized design for an experiment.
DESCRIBE the placebo effect and the purpose of blinding in an experiment.
INTERPRET the meaning of statistically significant in the context of an experiment.
EXPLAIN the purpose of blocking in an experiment. DESCRIBE a randomized block design or a matched pairs design for an experiment.