Details of PH4109 (Autumn 2020)
| Level: 4 | Type: Theory | Credits: 4.0 |
| Course Code | Course Name | Instructor(s) |
|---|---|---|
| PH4109 | Research Methodology | Bhavtosh Bansal |
| Preamble |
|---|
| This is a new course which encompasses the aspects of the erstwhile seminar course as well as addresses the need of the Research Methodology course for RS students as given in UGC guideline for PhD course work. |
| Syllabus |
|---|
| Basic Concepts in the Philosophy of Science: What is science? The nature of truth, Subjective thinking, Objective thinking, Materialism and idealism, Logical reasoning: Inductive logic, Deductive logic, Falsifiability, Reproducibility, Causality.
What Scientists Actually Do: Forming scientific questions, Proposing and testing hypotheses, Proposing postulates, Measuring the value of a parameter or a constant, Establishing a functional relationship, Developing a mathematical model, Seeking something new by observation or experiment, Putting it together, Forming a Hypothesis, the requirements for a hypothesis to be scientific, Null and alternative hypothesis, Testing of hypothesis. Statistical Data Analysis: Sampling, Analysis of the sampled data, Distribution of the data, Measurement and Confidence Intervals, Measurement of a value, Experimental error analysis, the Central Limit Theorem, Estimating with confidence, Measurement of a proportion, Propagation of errors. Hypothesis Testing: Planning experiments for hypothesis testing, Null and alternative hypothesis, Experimental group and control group, Eliminating experimenter bias, Eliminating experimental subject bias, the statistical test. Mathematical Modeling of Physical Systems: Models built from first principles, Dimensional consistency, Modeling using dimensional analysis, Phenomenological models, Examples. Ethical Conduct in Science: Elements of scientific ethics, Research misconduct, Maintenance of research data, Dissemination of research results, Ethical issues related to authorship, Openness in research, Copyright issues, Unethical publishing practices, Ethics in reviewing, Citation and impact of a paper, Environmental safety and experiments with living organisms, Cases of scientific misconduct. The Art of Scientific Communication: Before you start writing, Title, Abstract, The body of the paper, Figures, Citing references, Conclusion, Acknowledgement, References, Revising the manuscript, Writing a thesis, Text stylistics. Presentation in Seminars and Conferences: The art of preparing visual presentation material, The art of delivering a talk at a conference, Poster presentation, Preparing the poster, Presenting a poster. |
| References |
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Course Credit Options
| Sl. No. | Programme | Semester No | Course Choice |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | IP | 1 | Not Allowed |
| 2 | IP | 3 | Elective |
| 3 | IP | 5 | Not Allowed |
| 4 | MR | 1 | Not Allowed |
| 5 | MR | 3 | Not Allowed |
| 6 | MS | 5 | Not Allowed |
| 7 | MS | 7 | Elective |
| 8 | MS | 9 | Not Allowed |
| 9 | RS | 1 | Elective |
| 10 | RS | 2 | Elective |