By: Laura Krajewski
May sing to the tune of "I Love You Will Still Sound the Same" by Oh Honey
Verse 1
Here's a question for you which you must
test: Which leads to greater success?
A student who eats well every day,
Or one whose diet's gone astray?
Chorus
When we plan out our experiment,
We must be sure to add
A control, replication, randomization,
And maybe even blocking ain't bad.
Verse 2
Ok let's see...who shall we test?
University students are best.
Both boys and girls from every year,
To make sure randomness is clear.
But boys and girls may react differently,
Maybe we should group them separately.
This will let us further randomize the test,
Thus by blocking we aim for the best.
Chorus
Verse 3
So we've got a random group of them,
Our roots are set now what's our first stem?
We must ruin the diets of a few,
Perhaps just feed them Mountain Dew.
Now some we'll feed well every day,
Their diets cannot go astray!
And for our control some folks stay untouched,
To see if they have any luck.
Chorus
Verse 4
What about blinding? Can we use it now?
Can we keep our treatments hidden somehow?
In this case no, I think they'd know,
But thanks for the suggestion though!
So we've got three groups, what do we think we'll see?
Who will win academically?
Let's hypothesize it's those who are fed well,
All the others will not excel.
Chorus
Verse 5
If we run this once will that be good?
Can our results then be fully understood?
Not so fast! We must once again replicate,
Perhaps try again in another state.
Now let's run the test, that's all there's left to do.
But even then our results aren't always true.
Maybe diet isn't the cause of what we find,
We must keep both types of error in mind.
So remember:
A control, replication, randomization,
And maybe even blocking ain't bad.