Which term is defined as an educated guess?

Which term is defined as an educated guess?

• A. Controlling Idea
• B. Hypothesis
• C. Thesis
• D. Explanation

Answer: (B)

An educated guess is a hypothesis: a tentative statement about a relationship that you can test through observation and experiments. It should be specific and testable, and it must be possible to disprove it with evidence (falsifiable). This lets you make predictions and then see whether data support or contradict the guess. The other terms describe different ideas: a thesis or controlling idea is a claim used to organize writing, not something you test experimentally, and an explanation is reasoning that clarifies why something happens, not a testable prediction. For example, a hypothesis might be, “If a plant receives more sunlight, it will grow taller,” which you can test by measuring growth under different sunlight conditions.

An educated guess is a hypothesis: a tentative statement about a relationship that you can test through observation and experiments. It should be specific and testable, and it must be possible to disprove it with evidence (falsifiable). This lets you make predictions and then see whether data support or contradict the guess. The other terms describe different ideas: a thesis or controlling idea is a claim used to organize writing, not something you test experimentally, and an explanation is reasoning that clarifies why something happens, not a testable prediction. For example, a hypothesis might be, “If a plant receives more sunlight, it will grow taller,” which you can test by measuring growth under different sunlight conditions.