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.

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.

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 ricci vs destefano ruling came out today 5-4 in favor of ricci. for those that haven’t heard, this case was about a firefighter promotion test. this test had been used in past years to promote the city’s firefighters, and there had been no problem b/c at least 1 of the members who passed the test has been black. as long as they had at least 1 black person pass, they could say the test didn’t have disparate impact, which is difficult to prove in court. but in 2003, only 2 minorities (hispanics) passed, even tho the racial averages were about the same as previous years. (more…)

leave it to steve sailer to find and post this data. he takes the white scores as the baseline and finds where on that bell curve distribution other groups’ test avgs fall. it’s not pretty.

Mean Score as Percentile of White Distribution
Test 	 	Degree 	 	White 	Black 	Asian 	Tot Hisp Mex-Am
GMAT 	 	M.B.A. 	 	50% 	13% 	55% 	27% 	 24%
GRE-Verbal 	Ph.D./M.A. 	50% 	18% 	47% 	29% 	 28%
GRE-Quant 	 	 	50% 	14% 	66% 	29%  	 28%
LSAT 	 	J.D. 	 	50% 	12% 	47% 	19%  	 29%
MCAT-Verbal 	M.D. 	 	50% 	10% 	36% 	19% 	 21%
MCAT-Phys Sci 	 	 	50% 	14% 	61% 	24% 	 25%
MCAT-Biol Sci 	 	 	50% 	10% 	54% 	24% 	 25%
DAT 		D.D.S. 	 	50% 	16% 	60% 	27% 	 NA

what’s interesting to me is that the test takers are more self-selected than takers of the SAT or ACT. 60% of the US has at least completed some college, but only about 1/3 of the nation has actually completed an associate or bachelor’s degree to even be qualified to apply to grad school. i would have thought differences in group test scores would be lower just for having passed that initial hurdle.

that appears not to be the case for NAMs unfortunately, while the stereotype that asians do better in math and slightly worse in verbal is upheld. before investigating this stuff i would have assumed that lower verbal was due solely to being immigrants, but east asian nations have slightly lower verbal iq’s than european nations in general.

as anecdotal evidence (i.e. this is prolly meaningless), my SAT verbal was higher than my math, but that changed on my GRE. in high school, my parents had me memorizing SAT words for years b/c they knew the PSAT verbal scores were doubled and that those scores mattered for national mertit awards. but for my GRE, i took practice tests a week or two in advance and that was it.

my experience may attest to the difficulty in raising scores and keeping them at a higher level than they would normally be… or who knows, maybe my GRE score was just a fluke.