undead astronauts

AoR writes about the commonly perceived advantage east asians have in visio-spatial (math) iq. i’m not going to spend much time on that b/c i haven’t seen much evidence to the contrary, and at least they do alright in competition. but something that isn’t especially clear to me is the evidence on a lag on verbal scores.

as AoR cited, 97 asian-american verbal iq is a number i’ve seen bandied about in the bell curve, and richard lynn’s comparisons of different national verbal scores show asians with a lower verbal. exactly how the tests were done however is something i still don’t know. the lower verbal score for asian-americans might, in part, be due to a slower start in english b/c their parents spoke an asian language at home. a friend of mine took an iq test at his school’s urging after arriving in the states from taiwan as a young teenager. he did well on the visio-spatial part of the test, but horrible on the verbal. he said that he barely understood half the english questions at the time b/c he had only recently arrived.  by the end of high school, he was in AP english and graduated salutatorian in his class (an ABC grabbed 1st).

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a study has come out that asked college freshmen how many AP courses they took in high school. this is not a measure of iq. it is only a measure of how hard a student is willing to push himself in high school. obviously asians answered that they took more AP courses than other groups. this is in spite of the fact that more white and hispanic kids went to schools that offered AP courses. from previous studies u might then expect the following group order: asians, whites, hispanics, blacks. but in fact it doesn’t go that way.

hispanics actually take more AP courses than whites. looking further into the numbers, u see that a higher percentage of hispanics go to schools where AP classes are offered. but even so, the numbers show that hispanic kids are willing to work harder in the classroom.

unfortunately even though they take the class at higher rates, their rate of scoring 3’s or above is lower than whites. so while it may be that they work harder than whites, hispanics aren’t seeing all the fruits that might be expected from that hard work.

hat tip to 8asians for the story link.

http://www.hanzismatter.com/

The site is pretty old, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it. As the site title says, “dedicated to the misuse of chinese characters in western culture.”

check to see if your old high school is on the list of best high schools in the US.

a funny thing tho. 8asians mentioned that the #1 high school thomas jefferson sci/tech has only 4.9% minority enrollment in their detailed stats. orly!? is that why below that stat, where it shows racial breakdown, u see asians comprise 40.2%? whitney, the #3 ranking school shows 11.5% minorities but has 84.9% asian population. they should really rename that stat to non-asian minority (nam) to clear the confusion no? wiki shows the asian pop to be 4.4% of the US total, so some ppl might be confused about just when exactly to use the word “minority.” do we only apply the minority label to traditionally low academic achieving minorities? really?

the most recent LSAT test (sept/oct ‘09) had a record number of takers. out-of-work young ppl are looking to law as a fallback option, but the problem is that a lot of other out-of-work young ppl have the same idea. that’s great if firms are hiring, but law firms have been laying ppl off or freezing hiring as the economy has stalled out. this can and will change in 4 years of course, but increased competition in any field means those in the field must work harder to either get in the school of their choice, or settle for a less desirable school. if law schools decide to admit more students due to increased interest, it will affect this cohort for a good portion of their career as the increased competition will follow them into the job market. (hat tip to hs)

inflammatory title no? it’s not like i’m against desegregation in theory. like some magical panacea, if u desegregate, everyone will suddenly go colorblind and not see race but rather individuals. but when u read some of the current news, it doesn’t suggest that, by itself, desegregation leads to improved racial relations.

from newsweek:

Moody found that the more diverse the school, the more the kids self-segregate by race and ethnicity within the school, and thus the likelihood that any two kids of different races have a friendship goes down. (more…)

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=353

2009 SAT scores have been tabulated and the wsj summarized the results (hat tip to halfsigma).

Average scores for the class of 2009 in critical reading dropped to 501 from 502, in writing to 493 from 494 and held steady in math, at 515. The combined scores are the lowest this decade and reflect stalled performance over the past three years. The reading scores are the worst since 1994.

Many observers Tuesday viewed the flat results of recent years as discouraging in light of a more than 25-year effort to improve U.S. education. “This is a nearly unrelenting tale of woe and disappointment,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “If there’s any good news here, I can’t find it.”

au contraire mr. finn, but there is good news…

Asian-American students showed the most dramatic gains. In math they scored an average of 587 — 72 points better than the general population. Since 2008, their average math score has climbed six points. (more…)

i’ve already said in this space that high IQ leads to less reproduction. but according to msnbc, the rates are different (worse) for black females when compared against white females.

Among black women with postgraduate educations born between 1956 and 1960, the median age at which they gave birth for the first time was 34 years old. This was about the same as it was for white women in the same demographic. But once white women reached their 30s, many more of them did give birth, often more than once. Many black women did not. The rate of childlessness among this group of black women rose from 30 percent for those born between 1950 and 1955, to 45 percent for those born between 1956 and 1960.

The rate of childlessness does moderate somewhat in highly educated black women born between 1961 and 1970. In this group, 38 percent have remained childless.

Beyond the personal interests of individual women, the trend is significant because “in terms of American society, this is one additional obstacle” to the broadening of the black middle class, Brueckner said. Fewer highly educated black people having children means that they cannot pass on those advantages and knowledge.”

so whether u’re on the side of environment or genes, highly educated black women aren’t passing things on to the next generation. (more…)

Well, I thought it was pretty awesome.  Skip to 1:50.

checkout where your college stands:

http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges

bill gates was nice enuf to make these physics lectures available online. unfortunately, u need IE to watch it. gates said that if he had seen these lectures earlier in his lifetime, that he would’ve become a physicist instead of a programmer.

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html

another steve sailor related post dealing w/ testing and ricci aftermath. he posts the percent of AP test takers who pass each test (earn 3, 4, or 5) by race in 2008. the reason he does this is b/c the equal employment opportunity commission (EEOC) that came up w/ the regulation that a test is racially “valid” only if the lowest scoring group passes at 80% of the rate of the highest scoring group. i considered posting the numbers, but u should just go to steve’s site for that.

the upshot is that none of the 38 AP tests conform to the 4/5 rule set by the EEOC. if attending college was considered a job, AP tests would be illegal. the tests where NAMs come closest to reaching 80% are french (74%), 3d studio art(73%), spanish lit (73%), and 2d studio art (72%).
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the nytimes has a story on how interracial roommates decrease prejudicial views except when one roommate is asian. it cites a UCLA study that attempted to verify or disprove contact theory. contact theory is the idea that social contact between different racial groups can, in itself, serve to lessen prejudicial views. the researchers studied the # of roommates from different groups, group affect (how positively/negatively a person viewed ppl from other groups), intergroup unease & competence (ease and competance person felt in dealing w/ ppl from other groups), the symbolic racism, social dominance orientation,  anti-misegenation attitudes, friendship homogeniety, and interracial dating present in 1st year students. it then kept track of those students’ roommates for 4-5 years in college and restested them at the end to see how their attitudes tracked. (more…)

chinese preference for sons may have led to the bubble in the US. the theory is that boys’ families have to compete for marriagiable girls w/ high savings b/c of the girl shortage, and the high savings rate led the chinese gov’t to buy US treasury bills and depress interest rates in the US. i speculated years ago that chinese girls would necessarily become a highly valuable commidity. u can’t have a huge artificial shortage of something in demand w/o consequences, but i didn’t think about it leading to a US bubble. i did figure that chinese men would outsource the problem to poorer nations by marrying women of southeast asian origin.

another bubble may be close to popping. the cost of higher ed. has been rising far faster than inflation, but w/ the recession, many potential college students may head to community colleges instead of big name ivy schools. what’s in a name?

so the proposed solution is again to outsource the problem. prestigious colleges are thinking of propping their prices up by opening more spots to rich overseas applicants who don’t mind so much about paying inflated prices. yet.