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My current understanding of a hypothesis is just that it is 'an educated guess to explain a phenomenon'. Which follows that in an experiment, any guessing statement can be correct as long as it can be proved by said experiment one way or another.

However, I came across this site http://web.csulb.edu/~msaintg/ppa696/696vars.htm which states that

A hypothesis states a presumed relationship between two variables in a way that can be tested with empirical data. It may take the form of a cause-effect statement, or an "if x,...then y" statement.

The cause is called the independent variable; and the effect is called the dependent variable.

This drives me to think that the hypothesis must explicitly state the relationship between the measured variables in the experiment. Is this true?

Qmechanic
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Rickson
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    In an educational context your instructors may make it a standard to be extremely explicit about these kinds of things in order to test how well you understand the underlying concepts, while a professional might take a more relaxed attitude because they will be paying attention to the question of what is communicated to their colleagues. This is similar to it being OK for Hemingway to write non-sentences in his novels while you would get marked down for them on writing assignments. – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten May 07 '19 at 00:34
  • Hypothesis testing is a rather well formalized statistical procedure, see, e.g., the accepted answer in this thread. Also this answer about model comparison – Roger V. Jul 28 '22 at 10:10

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Yes, relationships between measured quantities should be made explicit in any physics model. I think most physicists would think of independent vs. dependent in terms of controlled (varied) vs. response, at least for simple experiments. For example, a common physics experiment in an introductory course will measure the period of a simple pendulum as a function of its length, holding the mass constant. The length is the independent variable, the period is the dependent variable, and the mass is the control variable (not varied).

Rodney Dunning
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