Organizing and Conducting a Science Fair Project (page 2)  — The
Ohio State University Extension Breads of the Harvest Updated on
Sep 28, 2011  Results -- What Happened?    Drawing Conclusions
Once you have completed your experimentation and have collected
data, what have you proved? Before you answer that question,
consider that data is not always reliable. If you worked with
bean plants, for instance, how do you know that all bean plants
are exactly like your sample? The answer is, "You don't know."
You can only predict or infer that the rest are like your
sample. The probability of your sample resembling the total
population is not very high if you used five bean plants in each
group.  One way to increase the probability, then, is to test a
large sample. Fifty, one hundred, or even one thousand bean
plants would increase your ability to predict. As a further
step, you could have more than one experimental group with each
group receiving a different amount of fertilizer. This method
would give you even mor