Question

Kathryn wants to keep squirrels from eating the bird feed she puts out for the birds in her yard. She decides to conduct an experiment to see which types of bird feed the squirrels seem to prefer. Based on her observations, she hypothesizes that the squirrels prefer feed containing berries. Why was it important for Kathryn to generate a hypothesis prior to starting her experiment?

Answer 1

Generating a hypothesis after doing the experiment/ collecting the data defeats the whole purpose of a hypothesis. When forming a hypothesis we are supposed to take an educated guess on what we think will happen, not what we know happened. Furthermore, doing an experiment is to test whether our hypothesis was correct. So in this case, you could say Kathryn was cheating the system by forming a "guess" with the data she had already collected.

Step-by-step explanation: