Undead Astronauts

a chinese company is looking to hire US comp sci grads to work in shanghai, but the grads must first take an IQ test and show they’re IQ is 125+. US companies aren’t allowed to require applicants to take a written IQ test, even though some companies make applicants take a test that is very similar to an IQ test. the funny/practical/non-pc part of this is that the company only hires chinese applicants that demonstrate an IQ of 140 or above.

The lower IQ threshold for new U.S. graduates reflects the fact that the pool of U.S. talent available to the company is smaller than the pool of Chinese talent, Bleum said.

ouch. who would have imagined that the chinese would be giving americans the benefits of affirmative action?

so. “are you dumb?”

another nytimes mental test. supposedly gadgets make us stoopid. we’re supposed to lose focus and screw up the focus test. i frankly don’t understand how anyone could not ace it.

anyways, see how u do.

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).

(more…)

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.

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)

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…)

from a cnn story AL47 sent me, it says china is testing kids at a summer camp and telling their parents what they would be good at:

Scientists claim a simple saliva swab collects as many as 10,000 cells that enable them to isolate eleven different genes. By taking a closer look at the genetic codes, they say they can extract information about a child’s IQ, emotional control, focus, memory, athletic ability and more.

i’m not sure if it’s a reporter error or not, but from the little about genetic research that i’ve read, that isn’t even close to the ballpark range of how many genes they’d need to test to extract the kind of information they’re talking about. scientists have been looking for just such characteristics and haven’t found any gene or SNP that account for more than 1 – 2% max of a person’s IQ. most other genes that have any effect at all are almost indistinguishable from noise. same w/ height. it’s likely that those 2 traits are the result of highly complex interactions between many many genes/environment and will defy any attempt at a simple test. my guess is that this is a modern day snake oil salesman who is peddling stuff that sounds great, but is actually meaningless. by the time these kids grow up, the salesman will have long disappeared.

still, i think the general direction is correct and more research in this area is needed. the sooner we figure out which genes/SNPs do what, the sooner we create a race of hyori/megan looking girls. ah, i hope i live long enough to see that day.