In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (dennis roberts)
wrote:
>happy new year to everyone ... hope your y2k +1 year is great! ....
>
>now, the y2k scare provides us with an excellent example of confounds (more
>or less) .. consider the following:
>
>Time One: lots of hype about "potential" disasters related to y2k ... (PRETEST)
>
>Time Two: billions of $$$ spent on "fixing" y2k "problems" (TREATMENT)
>
>Time Three: world notes relatively few y2k problems ... (POSTTEST)
>
>so ... did the "treatment" lead to the observation of "few problems"?
The only thing you're missing is a control group (one with a "treatment" that
didn't spend billions on a fix) and you'd really have something here. :-))
I'm wondering if those spending/earning the billions are congratulating
themselves on so "few problems" (We fixed that just right!!!) or if the
problems existed in the first place. Now, if we'd only had a control
group.....
