Control group and experimetal group

[jlcannataro]

I recently posted a topic on the procedure plan but i cant figure out what a contol group is or what an experimental group is. I tried to find it on the website but couldnt find it.
The project topic is...Does gaming help you score better in school?
one more question. when they say the approximate cost for the materials do they mean the cost of electricity or the real cost of the materials?
Thank you!

[rgoelmsft]

Hi there,

You can read this article about the difference between a control group and an experimental group:

http://sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_experimental_procedure.shtml

For your project topic ("Does gaming help you score better in school?"), your control group would be a set of people who DID NOT play any computer games. Then you would measure how well they did on a certain test that you designed. Your experimental group would be a set of people who DID play computer games. Then you would measure how well they did on the same test. Now that you have the results from the two groups, you can see if there's a difference in the test results between the control group and the experimental group. Does that make sense?

Generally, you would not include the cost of electricity in your "cost of materials". Just include the cost of the physical materials that you used in putting together the experiment. In your case, it may just be the cost of the paper and pencil that you use to test the participants.

Let me know if you have further questions.

--Rajeev

[jlcannataro]

thank you so much this helped alot thank you!