Undead Astronauts

so the PISA scores which compare 15 yr olds in 65 different countries came out today, and shanghai earned the top spot in all sections (including reading). it would be a no brainer to predict shanghai would be very high, but it’s a bit eyebrow raising that they’re #1. the first thing that i would have thought is sampling bias introduced by gov’t direction, but international experts oversaw the testing and made sure the sample reflected the general school population of shanghai. that’s pretty interesting b/c steve hsu says, “this means that the top 10 percent of Shanghai math students are all above the 99th percentile for the US.”

some commentators in the US had already positioned the PISA test avgs as irrelevant b/c even though the US avg is low, it has 25% of the highest scoring students in the world b/c of uneven score distribution and it’s large population. but this was before the actual scores came out showing shanghai’s placement. even though shanghai is not representative of china as a whole, i’m guessing ppl here in the US are going to be less sanguine about this result if only b/c china is at the top. considering china’s population and the scores of shanghai students, suddenly maybe the US’s percentage of the highest scoring students isn’t quite what they thought it was.

the article mentions that shanghai students typically spend less time on non-academic activities, which may explain the scores. i wonder if flare could provide some insight. if chinese students play fewer sports, could a large portion of that time simply be swapped for gaming?

the interactive database w/ scores and student variables is here.

asianweek looked at the 2009 NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress) results and they confirm a recent trend in academic testing. asian seniors again outscored all other groups in NAEP math as they have historically, but also for the first time in english. asians topping english scores in NAEP follows similar outcomes with the SAT and ACT.

all races made gains from the last assessment in 2005. whites, blacks and hispanics all did 4-5 pts better. asians blew them out doing 12 pts better than in 2005. whatever failings the american education system has, it’s still doing better than it has in the past. when compared to scores in the 80s and 90s, last year’s scores are much much better for all groups.

the asian penchant for academic success hasn’t gone unnoticed by the majority. recently there have been a number of articles describing the new white flight, and now the wall street journal has one too. it covers familiar ground where some white parents don’t feel comfortable leaving their kids to compete with asians. in fact, some asian parents feel the same way. their concern is that schools with asian majorities do not reflect the real world simply b/c asians only comprise a small percentage of the US population. personally, i think it would’ve been great to see more asians at my alma mater. still, i’m not sure i’d be thrilled at competing against them either. hah!

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).

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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)