Hypothesis

Many textbooks define a hypothesis as an "educated" guess. Most times the word "educated" loosely means take any guess you want based on your gut feelings. However, if you want to think like a real scientist, then you must first truly "educate" yourself by making initial observations, doing background research about classic & current experiments in the literature, reflect on your past experiences with the phenomenon, and rely on good logic. After you have recorded all of the background information in your journal or blog, now take that information and write down your best "educated" guess of what you think will happen to the dependent variable as you change the independent variable.

There is no established way to write your educated guess, but one format includes: //I////f// the independent variable is changed like this//, then// the dependent variable will do this. Also include some type of an explanation of a possible underlying factor of why this relationship might exist. You don't really have to follow the //If..., then...// format, but it's a way to have some structure if you need it. A really good hypothesis will give a proposed relationship between the variables in light of a logical explanation. [|Hypothesis Examples]