Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi!

I'm doing an experiment on the effect of odors on plant growth, and how good smelling objects effect plant growth and how bad smelling objects effect them. I was having a hard time deciding what type of statistical test to use. I was thinking maybe a Chi Squared goodness of fit test?

If you can be of any assistance, that would be amazing. Thanks!

Emmy

Hi,

A Chi-square test would be a good way to analyze the data for this type of experiment if you are going to have more than one independent variable. For a science project, I usually recommend having just one independent variable and then you can use the student t-test to test the null hypothesis. However, what is your experiment and how many plants are you going to have in each group? It is important to have a large enough population so your results will be significant.

Here is some information from the Science Buddies website on measuring plant growth. Do you have a way to measure the amount of the volatile compounds you will expose the plants to?

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... owth.shtml

Please let us know if you need any additional information.

Donna Hardy