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A student is timing how long it takes to get to school each day and wants to see if changing their breakfast food makes a difference. Each day they use a different form of transport. Just to be safe, they repeat the trial four times.Explain why four repeat trials won't make this investigation reliable.

Question

A student is timing how long it takes to get to school each day and wants to see if changing their breakfast food makes a difference. Each day they use a different form of transport. Just to be safe, they repeat the trial four times.Explain why four repeat trials won't make this investigation reliable.

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Solution

  1. Different Variables: The student is changing their mode of transport every day. This introduces a new variable into the investigation. Different modes of transport can have different speeds and may be affected by different factors such as traffic or weather. This makes it difficult to determine if the change in time taken to reach school is due to the breakfast food or the mode of transport.

  2. Small Sample Size: The student is only repeating the trial four times. This is a small sample size and may not provide a comprehensive view of the impact of breakfast food on the time taken to reach school. The results obtained from just four trials may be due to chance and may not accurately represent the true effect of changing breakfast food.

  3. Lack of Consistency: The student is not keeping the conditions of the investigation consistent. They are changing both their breakfast food and their mode of transport. For a reliable investigation, only one variable (in this case, the breakfast food) should be changed at a time while all other conditions are kept the same.

  4. Random Errors: With only four trials, the impact of random errors can be significant. Random errors can occur due to many factors such as inaccuracies in timing, variations in the student's speed of eating breakfast, or unexpected delays in transport. These errors can skew the results of the investigation.

  5. No Control Group: The student does not seem to have a control group in their investigation. A control group would be a set of days where the student does not change their breakfast food and uses the same mode of transport. This would provide a baseline to compare the results of the other trials to.

In conclusion, while repeating trials can improve the reliability of an investigation, in this case, the student's method has several flaws. They need to control their variables better, increase their sample size, and consider the impact of random errors to make their investigation more reliable.

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