CLAIMS AND EVIDENCEArguing in Science and Engineering

Fair Coin Model Predictions

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Why argue?• Scientists argue in order to reach agreement about explanations for observations

• Engineers argue in order to reach agreement about the best solution to a design problem

What are going to argue about?• The explanation you construct to explain what you observe

• Your interpretation of the data you collected

•Why your design is “the best”

Where else do you have to argue based on evidence?

What is a claim?• A claim is a conclusion that you reached after analyzing and interpreting your data

What claims could you make from our experiment?

What counts as evidence?• Evidence is your interpretation of the data• It is not just the raw data itself

If the coin was “fair”, I would expect to see the average close to 50% and the distribution peaked there.

What I observe is…

which argues for/against…

Prediction from the model

Evidence from data

interpretationThe claim is

your conclusion