Summary

26 Planning, analysis and evaluation

1 See also the summary for Chapter 15.
2 A hypothesis about the relationship between two
variables predicts how one variable affects the other.
It should be testable and falsifiable by experiment.
3 To make up a 1% (mass/volume) solution, dissolve
1 g of the solute in 100 cm3 of water.
4 To make up a 1 mol dm3 solution, dissolve 1 mole of
the solute in a small amount of water, then make up
to a total volume of 1 dm3.
5 The mean of a set of data is calculated by adding up
all the individual values and dividing by the total
number of readings.
6 The median is the middle value in the set of results.
7 The mode is the most common value in the set of
results.
8 The interquartile range is the range into which the
middle 50% of the data fall.
9 Standard deviation is a measure of how much the
data are spread on either side of the mean.

Cambridge University Press 2013

10 Standard error is a measure of the likelihood of the

mean of your sample being the true mean of the
whole population. There is a 95% probability that
the true mean lies within 2 standard errors of the
mean you have calculated. This can be shown by
drawing error bars on a bar chart, where the error
bar extends 2 standard errors above and below the
plotted value.
11 If the error bars for two sets of data overlap, then
there is no significant difference between the two sets
of data. If the error bars do not overlap, it is possible
that there is a significant difference between them,
but this is not necessarily so.
12 The t-test is used to determine whether two sets
of data, each with an approximately normal
distribution, are significantly different from one
another. You look up the calculated value of t in a
probability table, which tells you the probability of
there being no significant difference between the two
data sets. If this value is less than 0.05, then you can
say that there is a significant difference.

Summary: Chapter 26

11