The scientific method can be applied to all sorts of questions, for example, you could ask “Will I save money if I stop shopping at Store A and buy my groceries at Store B instead?”
For example, you might find that someone did a study of the prices of groceries at Store A depending on the time of year. While this doesn’t answer your entire question, it does bring to your attention that you should consider the time of year in your experiment.
Start your hypothesis with an educated guess. For example, if you have shopped at Store A and Store B before and you have an instinct that Store B might be cheaper, you could build your hypothesis around that thought. A good hypothesis would be “Store B has lower prices than Store A. ” A bad hypothesis would be “The prices of Store B are set by invisible magicians that can never be discovered by people. ”
For example, your prediction might be “If I shop at Store B, I’ll save money. ”
You might decide that your experiment will be to shop at Store A and Store B and compare the money you spent at each store.
For example, you must commit to buying the same foods at each store for a fair comparison. You should not buy the name brand at Store A, and the off brand at Store B to draw the conclusion that Store B is cheaper. In this scenario, the foods serve as your control and the stores are your variables.
For example, you could compare receipts from each store and think that you are saving $15 per week, but you only notice an extra $5 per week leftover. Upon a closer investigation, you realize that you have to buy extra gas each week to get to Store B, and that detracts from your savings. At this point, you would need to redesign your experiment to include gas receipts as well.
Looking at the receipts from each store would allow you to analyze how money was spent during the experiment. If your hypothesis constantly makes accurate predictions, it may become a theory.
You could summarize the conclusions of your shopping experiment by entering the totals you spent at each store into a spreadsheet and generating a graph from the data. This would make it easy to see if Store A or Store B saved you money.
If you go to the Store B and save money one time, but do not save money consistently when going to Store B, your results are not replicable.
You can replicate the store experiment by going to both stores multiple times and comparing your results. You could also have a friend go to both stores and analyze their data.
