Worked examples
Two examples
Example 1
Across many neighborhoods, the more air conditioners are running on a day, the more people go to emergency rooms with heat sickness.
- The finding is that two things rise together. That is a correlation. It does not, by itself, say which causes which.
- When two things rise together, there are four possibilities: the first causes the second, the second causes the first, something else causes both, or it is a coincidence.
- Look for a hidden third thing. Here it is hot weather. Heat makes people turn on air conditioners, and heat makes people sick.
- Neither air conditioners nor heat sickness needs to cause the other. The heat drives both.
Answer: Hot weather causes both.
Example 2
Students who go to tutoring have lower grades, on average, than students who do not.
- Again, the finding is a correlation: tutoring and lower grades go together.
- This time, check whether the arrow could run the other way. Who is sent to tutoring? Students who are already struggling.
- So the lower grades lead to the tutoring, not the other way round.
- To find out what tutoring does, a school would need an experiment: choose by chance which struggling students get tutoring, and compare them with similar students who do not.
Answer: No. Struggling students are the ones sent to tutoring.
Where this is taught: Science Practices, part 5: Reasoning from data · Look Again Quiz 5: Reasoning from Data
In your Kaplan book: Unit 4, Chapter 1, Lesson 3: Reason with Scientific Information · Map of the Terrain, topic 5: Reasoning from data
The drill
Ten questions
Read what is in the box first, if there is one. Then tap your answer; a few questions ask you to choose words from a drop-down instead, the way the GED test does. Press Check my answers at the bottom.Read what is in the box first, if there is one. Circle your answer; where there are brackets, circle the choice that fits. The answer key, with the reasoning, is on the last page.