A farmer wishes to determine the optimal level of a new fertilizer on his soybea

Question

A farmer wishes to determine the optimal level of a new fertilizer on his soybean crop. Some factors that affect crop yield are fertilizer, precipitation, sunlight, method of tilling the soil, type of soil, plant and temperature. Many of these factors cannot be controlled or manipulated to increase crop yield, but the amount of fertilizer can be. An experiment is designed to study the effect of various amounts of fertilizer on crop yield. The soybean plants are randomly assigned to the different treatments. Treatment A: 20 soybean plants receive no fertilizer Treatment B: 20 soybean plants receive 2 teaspoons of fertilizer per gallon of water every 2 weeks Treatment C: 20 soybean plants receive 4 teaspoons of fertilizer per gallon of water every 2 weeks Diagram the experiment. Indicate the subjects of the experiment, the explanatory variable, and the response variable.

Explanation / Answer

a. Is this an observational study or an experiment? Explain briefly.
It is an experiment where a low-carb diet is introduced into the sample population. The placebo effect is accounted for by the conventional diet. Providers of the food likely don't know which diet is which, so as not to influence the subjects (hence the term double-blind).

b. Identify the explanatory variable and the response variable.
explanatory (independent) variable is low-carb diet
response (dependent) variable is weight loss

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