How are scientific studies done?

You have two groups, 1 group testing something and a control group doing it, usually in free form or in another way they are suggested.

When they finish, you analyze data. And you can rate success based on many factors, some of which are:

• Number of people who tested it
• How big is the difference between these two groups?
• If you repeat the same experiment, how similar are the results of the previous experiment?

That is just part, but you probably have an idea.

How do you know that experiment is successful?

You must measure results. The end result of the study is almost always shown using numbers.

Let’s imagine something like this:

• We had 100 participants. 50 tried method A, and 50 tried method B
• After they finished, we gave them a test to see what they had learned
• From the test, they got a maximum score of 100,
  • Group A got an average of 20
  • Group B got an average of 68
• In group A we had 0 people scoring above 90
• In group B we had seven people scoring above 90

If we ignore what method A or method B was, we understand that B had much better success in this experiment. If it was related to language learning, this sounds considerable difference. We invented numbers here. We just wanted to show why we are doing this.

If we convinced you this was a study, what if we say that we had 50 preschool kids using method A, and persons using method B are high school students? So is that still make this study?

In conclusion, don’t trust anything until you have all data that you can have almost 100% confidence that there are no hidden data that would make the final result wrong.