"If you are still unconvinced, how else would one explain a 25-year old with a 150 IQ, but also with Asperger's Syndrome/autism spectrum disorder, living on the streets while a 90-IQ illegal immigrant is living reasonably comfortably, and an intellectually uncurious and largely vacuous (outside of the classroom/lab/workplace) individual with only a 115 IQ is living large?("

Aren't you assuming that intelligence should be socially adaptive in the first place?

The ADOS test is used to assess communication disorders (pervasive development disorders, autism, Aspergers Nonverbal learning disabilities and the like.) I do not think that the underlying neurological basis of these problems are well understood at this time, but most people that are identified as impaired on the ADOS have poorer performance in the real world than their IQ would predict.

I don't know that what the ADOS measures could be considered one of the multiple intelligences or a faulty interface between the person's brain and the world. The ADOS may also measure the product of many complex neurological processes or modules in the brain.

Information on the ADOS test
http://www.agre.org/program/abou.../ aboutadosg.cfm

You seem to be confusing personality and intelligence.

There are many factors beyond intelligence that contribute to success.

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/200...vs- ability.html

It seems to me that the ability to navigate the social world (sorely lacking in individuals with autism spectrum but even the highest IQs), and even the ability to bear down in the face of boredom and stress is a form of intelligence. In any case, these are psychometric traits (in theory if not yet in practice), other than g that are important to success in life.

Moreover, at least to me, g seems much more based on left-brained (mathematical, lexical) than right-brained (creative, open-ended, street smart, social) skills, which I believe are harder to measure.

Incidentally, one reason I believe that g does not tend to increase in adulthood, while some of the "right-brain" type abilities do tend to increase in adulthood, is because K-12 and undergraduate (particularly lower division) education tends to be heavily concentrated on left-brain skills/abilities, while the working world tends to rely heavily on right-brained skills and abilities, with left-brain type abilities often being secondary to more right-brained abilities like being able to deal with ambiguity, and largely paleomammalian-reptilian abilities like enduring high stress, heavy workloads, and psychophysiological unpleasantness in general.

"Being intelligent but uncurious seems to be substantially more common amongst Asians (and perhaps amongst high-IQ blacks and Hispanics/Amerinds as well) than whites, and more common amongst females than males."

To add to this, I've noticed (annecdotally), going by how my high school colleagues did on their SATs (pre-1995 recentering), that people with high verbal ability seem to be more intellectually curious. For instance, I was always amazed at how the most gifted math student in my high school (he was white, of German descent) displayed virtually no intellectual curiousity or interests and had appallingly poor general knowledge (his interests seemed to be confined solely to death metal and carpentry). This fellow would place among the top in our state every year in state math competitions (he might have even won it once or twice) and, of course, had a perfect 800 on his Math SAT, but his Verbal was quite weak (low 600s). I've noticed this association of high math and low verbal with a lack of curiosity in other people too. I've noticed that people with high verbal scores seem to be curious whether they have a high math score or not.

It is a myth that intelligence is a left hemisphere issue - in the paper I reference below, they notice, on a sample of right-handed males, two things:

1. performance on timing task correlates with performance on intelligence test(Raven) and the two share a common substrate especially on right prefrontal matter

2. but the really interesting thing is not in the abstract: performance of Raven independent of performance on timing was correlated massively with volume of grey matter in the right hemisphere, much more so than in the left.

For those of you who have read Elkohon Goldberg's two books, this should come as no surprise.

There are also other papers I could attach, for example one that shows that actual differences in performance on an analogy test depend on degree of activation of the right dorsolateral PFC.

If you follow research in neuroeconomics, you will also notice the key role of the RDLPFC in impulse control.

See also the work of Vinod Goel, at York, Canada

So let's stop talking of intelligence being a left hem affair; i am not saying it's a right hem affair (because I am a conservative Bayesian in my updating), but I am saying that g is a matter of RH at least as much as of LH.


Intelligence and Variability in a Simple Timing Task ShareNeural Substrates in the Prefrontal White Matter
Fredrik Ulle´n et al, Journal of Neuroscience

General intelligence is correlated with the mean and variability of reaction time in elementary cognitive tasks, as well as with performance
on temporal judgment and discrimination tasks. This suggests a link between the temporal accuracy of neural activity and intelligence.
However, it has remained unclear whether this link reflects top-down mechanisms such as attentional control and cognitive strategies or
basic neural properties that influence both abilities. Here, we investigated whether millisecond variability in a simple, automatic timing
task, isochronous tapping, correlates with intellectual performance and, using voxel-based morphometry, whether these two tasks share
neuroanatomical substrates. Stability of tapping and intelligence were correlated and related to regional volume in overlapping right
prefrontal white matter regions. These results suggest a bottom-up explanation of the link between temporal stability and intellectual
performance, in which more extensive prefrontal connectivity underlies individual differences in both variables.

It seems to me that the ability to navigate the social world (sorely lacking in individuals with autism spectrum but even the highest IQs), and even the ability to bear down in the face of boredom and stress is a form of intelligence.

Many of the abilities that help us navigate social life, such as face recognition, are performed unconsciously. Saying that this is a form of intelligence is a bit like suggesting that insomniacs are less intelligent because their social life is affected by their ciraidian rhythm being out of whack. Furthermore sucess in navigating many aspects of social life depends on personality traits like agreeableness and extrovertedness.

I would however agree that the subset of social activities that is dependent on counsious manipulation of different social situations is a form of intelligence. But it would be difficult test

Also the reason uncurious/hyperfocused often achieve great economic success because in a complex society is that most jobs are highly specialized. This speicalization is a natural byproduct of efficient markets, specialization in what you are good at is rewarded.

Being knowledgable in a variety of different feilds has terrible returns. Unless you have a very end exotic job such a Novelist or a CEO of a large diversified company.

** Confession: I am a business student. Many of my peers will achieve economic success, not because they are highly intelligent, but because of their proficiency in a profitable vocation.

Mastering the variables involved in the determination of the price of Potash or learning how to creatively exploit loopholes in Corporate tax legislation is much more valuable than mulling over more esoteric topics on gnxp (which for most of my friends, is just as exciting as Section 564.a of the Internal Revenue Code).

Seems to me you need to distinguish between at least two 'theories of multiple intelligence'. On the one hand you have a lot of useful work in trying to find factors beyond g that contribute to performance on various tasks. I don't think any serious student of human cognition would deny the existence of such attributes. On the other hand, you have proponents of stuff like Emotional Intelligence who more or less
- don't bother even trying to do broad studies to see what sort of predictive value their model or factor has (probably because they already suspect the answer)
- promote their work as a more palatable PC alternative to IQ-based theories
- are basically just trying to muddy the waters as a way of hiding the unpleasant truths that research into human intelligence has revealed

So I think you need to specify which target we're aiming at here.
As for the general point that things other than IQ are a factor in success, sure. But frankly IQ covers for a host of ills. The general topic of IQ and its correlation with time preference has always interested me because my own family is something of a counterexample to the idea that these things run together strongly. Me and my two siblings:
- average IQ 144
- all of us have been arrested
- only one of us graduated college (undergrad) and that barely
- one of us has been married three times
- one of us has been stoned 2000+ times

Generally speaking I would expect someone with average capabilities who lived with as little forethought as we did to do quite poorly, but being really smart pretty well allows you to reinvent yourself at a moment's notice and vault over obstacles that would stop an average person. It is no surprise to me that IQ is such a good predictor of success - it's not only indispensable for really good professional jobs (for people that have their shit together), but it also helps you on the other side of things and lets you escape from decisions that would leave other people kind of screwed.

I am quite willing to bet that you come from at least an upper middle class background.

I think it is this, not IQ, that has allowed you and your siblings to achieve "success" - however you define it....given your criminal records and lack of education....

Seems to me you need to distinguish between at least two 'theories of multiple intelligence'. On the one hand you have a lot of useful work in trying to find factors beyond g that contribute to performance on various tasks. I don't think any serious student of human cognition would deny the existence of such attributes. On the other hand, you have proponents of stuff like Emotional Intelligence who more or less
- don't bother even trying to do broad studies to see what sort of predictive value their model or factor has (probably because they already suspect the answer)
- promote their work as a more palatable PC alternative to IQ-based theories
- are basically just trying to muddy the waters as a way of hiding the unpleasant truths that research into human intelligence has revealed

Point well taken. But as I said above, testing attributes besides g, and even more so the correlation of such attributes to economic success, is a difficult excercise. The requirement of high ability, diverse knowledge, and a high investment of resources, not only PC ideology, I think is a large part of the reason for the lack of good research on important non-g attributes. For example, Goleman, in Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence seems to tacitly admit the validity of The Bell Curve and the concept of IQ.

I think it is this, not IQ

lol, guess I should have known better to bring my personal life into it. Yes, my brother succeeds as a professional poker player because people can't help but donate money to his upper-middle-classness. And goodness knows how he would have gotten started in that career without the entree his upper-middle-class connections provided. Likewise I don't know how I would have managed to work my way up from machinist->shop supervisor->mechanical designer and then again from research assistant->test monkey->software QA supervisor without all those family connections. Not. I will certainly admit that making a good impression counts for a lot in these cases and that prejudice would probably have prevented a similarly-talented guy who was black (or just sounded black) from making all these transitions, but absence of prejudice is not the same thing as upper-middle-class privilege.

bbartlog is right. Assuming that people who do well had help is so freakin' limited and arrogant.

I grew in a fairly low SES with many strikes against me including a depressed and non-functional mother. My siblings and I ranged in IQ from 125 to low 140s. And yes, we do pretty well. One of us dropped out of highschool--she now does at least 100,000k as a programmer and has raised two kids (husband died). My brothers are doing very well. I began university life in a community college but eventually got a master's degree.

I hear of poor-me stories from low-SES people who had far more going for them than did I. IQ is the backbone of a person's mind.

I've been discussing similar issues with Hopefully Anonymous.

I think executive function or prefrontal lobe functioning is as important as general intelligence. Suprisingly even with a lot of damage to the prefrontal cortex general intelligence is not necessarily affected, but many afflicted subjects become unable to take care of themselves. Motivation, drive, planning ahead and attention are all traits that are affected by prefrontal cortex dysfunction. Asperger's is very similar to certain types of frontal lobe trauma especially those with medial frontal damage.
http://www.ect.org/effects/lobe.html

I think proper function of the prefrontal cortex is critical to being able to use your intelligence. With damage to this area you would have poor socializing ability, poor attention, apathy, low motivation and an inability to think/plan ahead. Mesocortical dopamine in the prefrontal cortex is associated with improved attention/interest/motivation, so drugs that increase dopamine can help executive problems.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/139885

My own theory for creativity is that people who are creative are very tangential, meaning they make a lot of seemingly bizarre and irrelevant connections. See thought disorder.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Tho...hought_disorder

Tangentiality is common to schizophrenia/schizotypal, aspergers and psychopathy. Surprisingly all of these disorders have been associated with increased creativity. I thinks thats one thing that perhaps asians have a deficit. It's not that they aren't creative or imaginative, it just seems like they are less likely to make tangential, odd combinations of novel ideas. Combining tangentiality with a high general intelligence is like striking gold. You can make seemingly bizarre connections, but your intelligence allows you to sift out which connections are good and which are bad.

Tangentiality may actually be associated with impaired prefrontal lobe function (which is found in people with schizotypal, bipolar and asperger's). NorthEast Asians have a different level of COMT in their prefrontal cortex. COMT breaks down dopamine. I think this generally means that asians have more dopamine in their prefrontal lobe and thus have better concentration/attention/motivation than europeans on average. However this increased focus/concentration may come at a cost as they are less likely to make tangential connections. Also it could be partially societal too. Asian culture may prohibit asians from making the more bizzarre seemingly irrelevant connections. This probably interacts with the openness to experience personality trait as well. Europeans may be more open to new ideas on average than asians. The asians I know who are very creative also seem to be more more open to new and different ideas and are also able to make bizarre/weird connections. So it probably cuts across ethnic groups and is more a confluence of traits that one group may have more of on average.

devoted Asian [1] college student who seems to always be studying (high motivation/drive/tolerance for long, boring tasks) but has no intellectual interests and

Interesting observation. Many have noted that despite their utterly amazing academic stats (TIMSS scores, college graduation rates in the U.S., etc.), Asians and Asian-Americans have yet to overtake Westerners either technologically or economically. Perhaps a lack of creativity&curiosity act as a glass ceiling. Or perhaps their ability to handle an intense academic work load gives them a scholastic advantage over a similar IQ non-Asian, but doesn't translate into an advantage in other arenas. One could argue that "success" is a function of a lot different variables, academic success being one of the more quantifiable variables........ Jewish-Americans would probably score high on all the metrics mentioned (IQ, curiosity, creativity, academic achievement) and they do really well.

I would point out that despite only a slight lead in g-loaded tests like the ACT and SAT, Asian-Americans are way overrepresented at the prestigious Ivies and UCs. So there must be something other than IQ working for them......


spends most of her/his [2] free time with sleazy entertainment, sleeping around, smoking pot, drinking, and popping pills

From my experience, the typical dutiful Asian-American college student doesn't abuse drugs/alchol or solicit prostitutes. In Asia, things may be different though.....

I would point out that despite only a slight lead in g-loaded tests like the ACT and SAT, Asian-Americans are way overrepresented at the prestigious Ivies and UCs. So there must be something other than IQ working for them......


small differences in means result in huge differences at the tails. ivies & other elites (stanford, UCs, MIT, cal tech, etc.) are way selected from the tales.

"[1] and [2] Being intelligent but uncurious seems to be substantially more common amongst Asians (and perhaps amongst high-IQ blacks and Hispanics/Amerinds as well) than whites, and more common amongst females than males. This is only my personal observation, and it may be an entirely sociocultural phenomenon even if it is real."

I couldn't agree more with this observation, as sad as it is. I'm sure many other males out there can relate to the experience of dredging through hundreds of females for every one that shows even a spark of curiousity. I find that even in graduate school the girls' interests are incredibly narrow. What we really need is an explanation of this fact. You could add that Jews seem even more intellectually curious than generic whites.

i suppose i couldn't disagree more w/ that observation. i've met a few whites that were intellectually curious, but i've met far more asian americans that were. maybe it's a function of socializing w/ more asians than whites.

Even if you adjust for IQ, Asians are way overrepresented at regular state schools as well. I recall seeing a study on school children in SF that found that AA pupils study significantly more per night than those from other ethnicities. If you look at students in Asia, they also spend a good amount of time per day in intensive cram schools. More you study, the better you do.....

I think Arthur Hu once said that Asians attribute their academic success not to intelligence, but to hard work. So yeah IQ is a major predictor of outcome in general, but there are plenty of situations where other variables can have a much more forceful impact.

Even if you adjust for IQ, Asians are way overrepresented at regular state schools as well.

could you cite a study? or collect some data from the UC and cal state system and show how the trend line follows your argument? i've seen griffe get into arguments with third parties about this issue, and he admitted only a marginal effect.

I recall seeing a study on school children in SF that found that AA pupils study significantly more per night than those from other ethnicities. If you look at students in Asia, they also spend a good amount of time per day in intensive cram schools. More you study, the better you do.....

i don't deny this. nor do i think that the study focus has no affect on elite school admission. that being said, you need to decouple from the hours studied from the IQ, right? that is, controlling for IQ how much more do they study? stupid kids often don't study much cuz they aren't going to get the marginal returns anyhow.

anyway, you should just collect some or cite a study. your argument is intuitively persuasive, but i've seen many a time people show that "hard work" is actually likely a more marginal effect than you would assume when you correct for the other variables. i'd like to see if you can show that this debunking isn't all that it's made out to be (griffe initially asserted no effect form studying, but later followed up with a correct that there was a minor independent effect).

ok, assume that
white IQ = 102
asian IQ = 107

(assuming 1/3 standard deviation diff., which is what i usually see)

assuming normality, 3.1% of white are above 135 IQ, 6.2% of asians. about 5% of US pop is asian, 70% non-hispanic white. the younger age cohorts likely skew a bit toward asians, but let's ignore that. so in absolute terms the ratio of asians to whites where you'd have a sample where the minimum IQ is 135 (pretty reasonable for super-elite, right?) would be 1:7 or so. just a baseline. my impression is that the ratio at the ivies is a little more than 1:7 in favor of asians, but not that much more more. unfortunately there are the issues of unofficial quotas on asians there. UC berkeley is about 50% asian american in a state that's 10% asian american last i checked.

anyway, all sorts of issues like the diversity (multimodality?) of the asian american population, differential representation in fields (e.g., MIT is usually 2X as asian as harvard), etc. i'd just to see some quantitative presentation of data or citation of study instead of just repetition of conventional wisdom. i agree it's generally intuitively persuasive wisdom, but as i said i've seen it "debunked" a lot on e-lists so i'm not inclined to give it (hard work) more than a marginal weighting....

in any case,
The Opportunity Costs of Affirmative Action.

Aside from IQ and study habits there is also the social cachet of attending a top school. This is very high among Asians -- esp. Koreans, for example. There are many kids (in absolute numbers) who have sufficiently high IQs to attend, e.g., Stanford, but attend their local UC or state college instead. I suspect Asians are more likely to attend an elite school if they can get in.

Caltech has the highest Asian population among elite privates (33%, so a factor of 3 or more overrepresentation depending on whether you normalize to California or the US as a whole). The average IQ there is probably around 145. 3x overrepresentation is entirely consistent with relative population fractions at IQ=145 (see Razib's numbers above).

I find it amusing that some guys with no experience with elite engineers, scientists and technologists have strong opinions about what groups are curious or incurious. I think you should spend some time with the Asian kids at Caltech or engineers at Sony :-)

"Asians comprise 12% of California's population, but now make up almost 50% of the student body at Berkeley and several other UC campuses. Nationally, they are 5% of the population, but make up 10-30% of student bodies at elite private universities (Caltech has the highest percentage at 33%, whereas Princeton has one of the lowest at 13%)."

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/200...t- berkeley.html

Another factor to consider is well-documented discrimination against Asians at many private universities (Ivies, Stanford, etc.)

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/200...ugly- truth.html

http://www.google.com/search?num...ion& btnG=Search

that being said, you need to decouple from the hours studied from the IQ, right? that is, controlling for IQ how much more do they study? stupid kids often don't study much cuz they aren't going to get the marginal returns anyhow.

A lot of kids don't study because they were distracted by their Wii or cell phone. Children are hardly rational consumers..... If Johnny studies 2 hours per night and Jimmy crams the night before the test, who's going to test better (controlling for IQ)?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008...5/asia/ cram.php

Intense academic cramming is so much more common in Asia than the U.S. that I'd suspect the middle of the Bell Curve there spends a lot more time studying than here.


http://college.sparknotes.com/sc...pl? inun_id=6573

Harvard is 48% white and 18% Asian. So a ratio of 2.7:1.

http://college.sparknotes.com/sc...pl? inun_id=8805

Stanford is 24% Asian and 41% white. 1.5: 1 ratio.

Berkely is 29% white and 46% Asian. So 0.6:1.

http://www.asian-nation.org/head...-uc-admissions/

The UC system has slightly more Asians than whites.

I've read that AA representation at elite schools runs at least ~20% generally. If you factor out legacy admissions and other advantages (connections, upper class extracirriculars, etc.) that disproportionately favor upper class whites/Jewish, Asians would be even more overrepresented. If you factored out affirmative action, a study found 4/5ths of the open spots would go to Asian students. So really the numbers vastly understate how many Asians should be at our elite universities. There's every reason to agree that, in comparison to whites, Asians are discriminated against quite a bit in elite admissions. In a pure meritocracy, quite a few of our elite universities would likely be majority Asian.....

I can't find the link now, but I remember reading that about 2/3 of native born Chinese-Americans have finished college compared to about 1/3 of whites. So we're talking about a huge differential even at the middle of the bell curve.

The multimodality of the AA population shouldn't sway the numbers too much. The high performers (Indian, Pakistanis, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Filipinos) are the overwhelming bulk of the AA population. Even a lot of 2nd generation SE Asians (Vietnamese, Thai) aren't really performing any worse than the white mean and may be doing even better. Sure Hmong and Lao perform at no higher than the black mean, but they're ~5% of the AA population and almost negligible. So 105 might be a good enough estimate for Chinese or Koreans.



I find it amusing that some guys with no experience with elite engineers, scientists and technologists have strong opinions about what groups are curious or incurious. I think you should spend some time with the Asian kids at Caltech or engineers at Sony :-)

To make it into the elite engineer category, you've got to be curious. I think it'd be more useful to compare the typical Asian college student to the typical non-Asian and see if there are any major differences. I would add that Asians are quite a bit more introvered than than mean, so perhaps this creates an illusion of a lack of curiosity.

Steve says:

I find it amusing that some guys with no experience with elite engineers, scientists and technologists have strong opinions about what groups are curious or incurious. I think you should spend some time with the Asian kids at Caltech or engineers at Sony :-)

Heh, I'm with you. I have been associated with Chinese people pretty much all my life, starting in Darwin in Australia at age 6.

These days I work with them and play roller hockey with them, and I am mystified where these claims of incurious Asians, or at least Chinese, come from.

If you are still unconvinced, how else would one explain a 25-year old with a 150 IQ, but also with Asperger's Syndrome/autism spectrum disorder, living on the streets...

Yes, autism research shows that there is at least one class of cognitive tasks (roughly speaking, "theory of mind") where higher IQ doesn't translate into better perfomance at the task.

I find it pretty wierd that things like the ability to understand metaphors ("Thowing the baby out with the bathwater." etc) are associated with Theory of Mind. (Or rather: impairment of both is found together). You wouldn't intuitively expect language processing to be split across two mental modules, with the module responsible for "metaphors" also handling recogizing faces, recognizing facial expressions and reasoning about other peoples' intentions.

Here's what Flynn had to say:

"The Chinese Americans I studied were the generation born in 1945-1949. They were no higher than whites even for non-verbal IQ yet out-performed whites by a huge margin in terms of eventual occupational status. That meant that they could give their own children the kind of privileged environment they had never had. The result was a pattern of IQ that put the subsequent generation of Chinese Americans at an IQ of 109 at say age six gradually falling to 103 by the late teens, as parental influence faded away in favor of peers. The extra 3 points the present generation has as adults is due to the fact that they are in cognitively more demanding universities and professions and because they have internalized a positive attitude to cognitively challenging activities and companions."

Flynn noted that Chinese-Americans tested at an IQ of 98.5, but performed at ~120.

Richard Hsu wrote:

"Caltech has the highest Asian population among elite privates (33%, so a factor of 3 or more overrepresentation depending on whether you normalize to California or the US as a whole). The average IQ there is probably around 145. 3x overrepresentation is entirely consistent with relative population fractions at IQ=145 (see Razib's numbers above)."

Isn't an IQ of 145 somewhere around the 99.9th percentile, if I recall correctly. The average SAT score at Caltech is 2235, which is between the 99th and 99.5th%ile, and probably closer to 99th.

Given that essentially all students at Caltech must be intensely driven to begin with, plus the above average demands of asian parents in particular, it's more than likely that "true" IQs are below that level. I mean, I acknowledge that Caltech students are smart, but I think a lot of people here are both underestimating the insanity that passes for parenting among many asian parents, and the intelligence requirements for admissions to top schools.

Just an anecdote:

I taught at an SAT school in Korea. It was normal for student's scores to increase 200 or so points on a 2400 point scale in an 8 week program which ate up the entire summer vacation of these kids.

4 hours per day plus 4 hours of homework, 5 days per week, and many of the students were enrolled in another school at the same time, so they would do another 2 or 3 hours of math prep in the evenings. Many of the kids had been in the program every summer for two or more summers. One girl was 12 years old, in 8th grade, already prepping for the SAT. Granted this is the extreme, but almost all korean kids go through some version of this. Many of these kids were traumatized by the experience. Intellectual curiosity was non-existent, probably not because of a genetic trait, but mostly because learning became an unpleasant experience and was only to be done for specific tasks, and not for enjoyment. Kids didn't know how to learn on their own, didn't read, had absolutely no general knowledge, yet were scoring quite well on SATs.

I think most of these stereotypes have quite a bit of truth to them. I think much of it may be cultural, but it's there. Without research we can't really say much more.

"I find it amusing that some guys with no experience with elite engineers, scientists and technologists have strong opinions about what groups are curious or incurious. I think you should spend some time with the Asian kids at Caltech or engineers at Sony :-)"

Speaking as someone who has spent time with extremely intelligent math / science people of asian and non-asian ethnicities, and who is one himself, I've mostly agreed with the stereotypes. Asian students tend to emphasize memorization above understanding, tend to have less general knowledge about things that aren't explicitly in the curriculum for some class, and it's been very rare to have any type of philosophical, political, or literary conversation with asian students. Personally, I blame the parents.

Speaking as someone who has spent time with extremely intelligent math / science people of asian and non-asian ethnicities, and who is one himself, I've mostly agreed with the stereotypes. Asian students tend to emphasize memorization above understanding, tend to have less general knowledge about things that aren't explicitly in the curriculum for some class, and it's been very rare to have any type of philosophical, political, or literary conversation with asian students. Personally, I blame the parents.

This is arrant nonsense.

You cannot understand a body of knowledge until you have memorized a bunch of facts in that field and have organized them in your mind.

You cannot understand how to ride a bike until you have gotten on the bike and tried to ride and fallen off. No amount of thinking about or understanding of angular momentum is going to help you to ride a bike.

You cannot proceed in math until you have learned your multiplication tables, and then factorization will be simple for you because, for example, the factors of 56 will come, unbidden, to your mind. Learning those tables, however, is simple memorization.

A good memory, and the development of memory skills is the key to learning in any area.

The other thing I notice Asian students do is to practice and practice the material. They do math/physics/whatever problems over and over, like a young African American practicing his basketball moves, or a young Tiger Woods practicing his putting or golf swing.

And we all typically practice those things we are good at ... of course, today's world has more slots for people who are good at math or engineering or other technical areas than slots for basketball players or golfers.

I seem to recll avg sat of 1400-1450 when I was there (sat I), which I guess is 140 or so. I think the sat underestimates math capability since 800 is a low ceiling.

Asians and Asian-Americans have yet to overtake Westerners either technologically or economically. Perhaps a lack of creativity&curiosity act as a glass ceiling

Have you looked at say, Red Dot award winners for product design? A good chunk of the names and faces are Asian.

Just an anecdote:

I taught at an SAT school in Korea. It was normal for student's scores to increase 200 or so points on a 2400 point scale in an 8 week program which ate up the entire summer vacation of these kids.


It seems that because the average person only increases their score 30 points, people think that it is impossible to raise their score 100 to 200 points. First, we have to consider the possibility that many of the retakers are slackers who's parents were disapointed with their first score. There is a possibility that the average doesn't increase much the 2nd time because the avg person didn't study very hard the 2nd time eithier. When I first took the SAT test w/o studying I scored an 1170. (and I didn't study very long)When I took it a 2nd time with prep I scored 1290. (which is closer to my psychologist-tested IQ of 133, barely MENSA, ha ha) (1600 point scale) I actually knew a person personally that increased his score 250 points. I also heard many 2nd time success stories through SAT/GRE prep forums, I figure they can't all be lying.

Supposdely the SAT is a very g-loaded test, I tend to only partially agree. While there is a large problem-solving element to the test, you have to study for the test. Most of the vocab words don't appear in everyday conversation or entertainment( and if you think they do you are seriously kidding yourself), and even the math portion can be heavily knowledge based. It seems that the SAT is a measure of both conscientiousness and intelligence, if you are lacking in one you will not do well. (eithier by not studying or not having the intellect to solve the problems)

I think that there are two types of people with high IQs, the ones that do zero studying but are still exceptionally bright, or those to have gained high IQs through a lifetime of intellectual engagement. I would love to see if there is a correlation between conscientiousness and IQ, but studies have been mixed (with some showing positive and some showing negative and some showing none at all). However, many studies have shown a correlation between IQ and TIE (typical intellectual engagement), which is your general interest in intellectually stimulating activities. (the one study that shown a very weak, negligable correlation, looked mostly at women) Perhaps, some have inflated their IQs furthur through a lifetime of interest in knowledge and firm study habits. ( studies have shown that higher IQ people study more and higher IQ babies tend to be more explorative, no?) Perhaps, this is an explanation why extraverts, who tend to be more interested in people and conversations, tend to have lower IQs on average.

Flynn noted that Chinese-Americans tested at an IQ of 98.5, but performed at ~120.

It does seem that Asians seem to overrepresent in great universities far more then their measley 5-7 point higher IQ average shows. Perhaps the SD curve for Asians is wider? Or perhaps they are simply more conscientious?

Also, as for your comment Filipinos and Pakistanis, I have a feeling that the former performs worst then whites, and I don't think there is any data from the latter. I grew up in Chareston where there is a large Filipino population, and they don't tend to do very well in school.

The multimodality of the AA population shouldn't sway the numbers too much. The high performers (Indian, Pakistanis, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Filipinos) are the overwhelming bulk of the AA population. Even a lot of 2nd generation SE Asians (Vietnamese, Thai) aren't really performing any worse than the white mean and may be doing even better. Sure Hmong and Lao perform at no higher than the black mean, but they're ~5% of the AA population and almost negligible. So 105 might be a good enough estimate for Chinese or Koreans.

Is your name really McGraw?

Typically the IQs of Filipinos, Vietnamesse, and Thai, tend to be lower then the white average. If you want to find Asians with higher average IQs, look at the north-east Asian elite. (Japanesse, Chinesse, Koreans, etc) This was documented heavily in Richard Lynn's work. Jews tend to have the higher IQs then Asians, so it is no surprise that they overrepresent in Ivy League schools, and are pigeonholed as white. This could be the actual reason why whites are more overrepresented then IQ implies.

much better than whites: Block Design
better than whites: Arithmetic, Digit Span, Picture Completion, Picture Arrangement, Object Assembly
comparable to whites: Similarities, Digit Symbol
worse than whites: Information, Comprehension

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/07...ites- and_17.php

It is interesting that the less the test used spatial visualization, the more comparable Asians were to whites. It is also interesting that areas that are more verbal whites outperformed Asians. I am Jewish, so I find this information interesting (since it could apply to me). Before you say this is culural, keep in mind that a higher White verbal IQ also applies when Asians born in Western cultures were tested, or Asians using their own language. PISA international tests also conform this (Korea was the only exception). I also notice that not only whites tend to be more extraverted, they tend to be quicker at finding the right words in coversations. I would love to see an MRI scan comparing whites and asians. Perhaps whites have a larger hippocampus, the area responsible for memory.

Typically the IQs of Filipinos, Vietnamesse, and Thai, tend to be lower then the white average.

not necessarily for asian americans (note that mcgraw said AAs, not asians as such); some of these groups are strongly selection biased (see the educational profile of filipino americans and their average income). also, a disproportionate number of vietnamese americans by nationality are chinese by ethnicity (though not the majority). about 10% of thailand's population are ethnic chinese, and these form the business & professional elites, so i wouldn't be surprised if a disproportionate number of thai migrants are also ethnic chinese (thailand is one southeast asian nation where the chinese-nonchinese boundary is much more fluid, so take the terminology with appropriate caution). facts do matter, let's not forget them in specific cases and just go by the generalities for ease of conjecture.

Perhaps the SD curve for Asians is wider?

NO!!!!! most likely no!!!!

I'll look up the data later, but Pakistani-Americans are doing fairly well. The stats from the Census indicate that Filipino-Americans as a group are comparable to the other high-performing AA ethnicities in income and college attainment. Selective migration definitely plays a role.

2nd generation Vietnamese-Americans have good stats as well and, as Razib pointed out, many Vietnamese-Americans are the descendants of ethnic Chinese. It's interesting to note that the Vietnamese community both in the U.S. and Australia seems to bi-modal in achievement and well represented at the extremes. I wonder if the ethnic Viets are more like the Lao/Hmong/Cambodians and the Chinese-Vietnamese are more like Chinese diaspora populations elsewhere.....

I do believe that Flynn also found that Japanese score similarly to whites when SES was controlled for, but that the verbal-visuospatial gap didn't go away. Higher visuospatial IQs for Japanese populations seem persuasive to me, especially given their strong performance in manufacturing.....

Possible explanation for more creativity in caucasians? Perhaps it is the possibility that the gene found for bipolar disorder is found in greater number in Caucasian populations, and almost non existent non-caucasian populations. So is schizophrenia. Both are correlated with higher scores on creativity tests, but lower IQ. (on average)
http://www.pendulum.org/bpnews/ a...er_biology.html

http://www.medscape.com/viewarti...le/ 430898_print

The higher susceptability to bipolar and schizo might be the reason why we see more creative breakthroughs in the West, despite lower global population and lower average IQ. (even when you factor out Jews).

Huh? Schizophrenia is extremely common among Afro-Caribeans in the UK. But that may be due to too much ganja.

Jtd, whats wrong, can't believe that island-filipinos can beat the chinese "elite" in the same environment? You have to stop reading books that does not match reality, you know.

Philippines has a bad economy because it is run by corrupt chinese nationals. Corruption is the basic recipe in all Chinese-run dealings.

Thank you Razib for pointing out that the low-iq vietnamese are chinese too.

Mcgraw, its not selective migration, remember that most Filipinos came here through legal processes, being relatives of military men from World War 2.

Selective migration - those corrupt Chinese businessmen who pays for "student visas" for their children to "study".

-So tired of the chinese shit.

the thing about asian & female superiority (and esp. asian female superiority) is that such a thing seems too good to be true to those who want to believe in it & too horrible to be true for those who are disgusted by it.

and no, this comment is not meant to be snarky or enigmatic (or is it?)

JTD,

If you look at PISA data NE Asians also outperform on the reading comprehension test (not just Koreans). The verbal score issue is discussed on the same thread that Razib points to above. I have never seen any good data that supports lower verbal scores -- only cases where immigrants or children of immigrants are tested in a language they don't speak at home. For example, Korean kids (many of whom suffered malnutrition in Korea during the war) adopted into Belgian families had higher verbal IQs that native Belgians. The study is cited on the thread.

A mean which is .5 SD higher accounts for a large overrepresentation at elite universities if the cutoff for admission is high enough. But, I do think there are other cultural/social/personality(?) factors at work as well.

^^

There does seem to be some contradictary data to say the least. The Weschler IQ tests seems to suggest that caucasians have the edge in certain areas of intelligence, comprehension included. I admit I was basing a lot of my memory on Finland's results (which is probably not accurate since they were much higher then the average European), but I could have sworn that in 2000 and 2003 European nations made the bulk of the Top 5 in reading comprehension. (again this is based off memory, but I would want to see the results) There were also a lot of European nations were in the 530 to 542 range with NE Asians in 2006. Six other high-scoring countries had mean scores of 530 to 542 points: Canada, Japan and New Zealand and the partner countries/economies Hong Kong-China, Chinese Taipei and Estonia. But I guess if you factor in NE Asia as a whole and Europe as a whole, Asia might have the edge on comprhension as well (based of PISA results. I would still like to see the data on every country individually)

I was intrigued by the PISA data in Finland. Perhaps we are seeing a sharp rise in IQ for the younger generation?


Huh? Schizophrenia is extremely common among Afro-Caribeans in the UK. But that may be due to too much ganja. I was just basing the facts on the sources above, mainly dealing with Bipolar. You right that Schizophrenia is also found high in Blacks (but Bipolar isn't), but we do see many musical breathroughs in this group, so the idea is not completely bunk (perhaps scientific breakthroughs require a higher IQ then artistic breakthroughs? both would require a degree of creativity) The mean IQ for Bipolar is higher then schizophrenia, so perhaps more of the creative innovations come from this group rather then schiz. Both have been tested for scoring higher in creativity tests (at least the schizotypes and bipolar people), but lower mean IQ (bipolar not drastically lower then the average)

http://www.pendulum.org/bpnews/a...ive/ 001632.html

The Weschler IQ tests seems to suggest that caucasians have the edge in certain areas of intelligence, comprehension included.

I wish people would use their brains ...

Have you not seen Chinese cooks and other workers sitting around in restaurants and hair-dressing salons (where you can get cheap hair cuts) reading newspapers in Chinese?

Can you read those fucking things? I am only just beginning to, and if you think they are simply looking at the comics then you are mad. And remember, that form of writing has been around for some 4,000 years, and two thousand years ago, Chinese intellectuals were debating the role of government in the economy!

Have you ever played Mahjong in Chinese with Chinese people and listened to the conversation around the table and seen their ability to quickly count up the score in the game or see the possibilities in a hand? I have.

People who think that Chinese people score worse that Caucasians when it comes to intelligence have been visiting Mrs Palmer too much.

^^

I really wish people would read before they post.

I never said Chinese scored worse on intelligence, I said that the Weschler data I sourced above (not anecdotal as everyone seems to be suggesting) shows that Asians do worse on reading comprehension then Caucasians. (but it only looked at Japanese) I've already said Asians have the edge on Spatial ability. Don't put words in my mouth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Fil...lipino_American

Filipino immigration in recent decades has skewed towards the highly educated, but many of the earlier immigrants were commoners. Hawaii might be a good place to look since the Filipinos there mainly arrived as laborers.

"A mean which is .5 SD higher accounts for a large overrepresentation at elite universities if the cutoff for admission is high enough. But, I do think there are other cultural/social/personality(?) factors at work as well."

Flynn found that the minimum IQ threshold for Asians entering professional fields was ~1/2 a standard deviation below the white IQ threshold. Asians appear to have a very substanial academic advantage even when matched for IQ.

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.co...2s.com/ sft2.htm

"Take the bar exam for example. In 1989, the Law School Admission Council commissioned a study of bar passage rates. Its report, The LSAC National Longitudinal Bar Passage Study was published in 1998, with results disaggregated by race and ethnicity. Linda F. Wightman, the project head, collected data from more than 27,000 students who entered ABA approved law schools in fall 1991. The study found that only 80.75% of Asians passed the bar on the first try compared with 91.93% of non-Hispanic whites. This corresponds to a white-Asian mean-score difference of 0.53 standard deviation or in IQ terms a verbal gap of 8 points!"

Students need strong verbal skills and LSAT scores to even enter law school. So new immigrants with poor English skills probably aren't skewing the results down for Asians.

Students need strong verbal skills and LSAT scores to even enter law school. So new immigrants with poor English skills probably aren't skewing the results down for Asians.

I think your logic is flawed. The binary categorization: recent immigrant, or not, isn't very realistic.

Take a kid who immigrated to the US as a child, or even one who was born here to immigrant parents. His parents don't speak English well, but the kid does well in school, gets into law school, takes the bar. What would his "verbal IQ" as tested in English have been if he had been born in the US to parents who are native speakers (who perhaps even have superior vocabularies due to high IQ and SES)? You have to address that confound before using data from pools of Asians that have some immigrant heritage -- their scores will not necessarily be indicative of *true* verbal IQ.

The English vocabulary used in a high SES/IQ home where the parents mainly speak, e.g., Korean, is a far cry from that in a family of native speakers, and it would be surprising if this didn't affect the vocabulary of the kids in that household. (Of course the *total* vocabulary of those kids is high if you count all the Korean words they know :-)

This confounding effect is in SAT scores, LSATs, bar passage rates, you name it. It *is not* in the PISA data, where tests are laboriously translated into national languages and given to thousands of students *in their native language*. In those studies the reading comprehension scores of NE Asians are above the European average.

The best methodology is probably to look at Asians adopted in infancy by native speakers. I already referenced the Belgian study which showed the verbal IQ of Korean adoptees to be higher than native Belgians.

Parental influence is likely limited. Parents can impart more vocabulary onto their childen and establish a basic level of fluency, but their impact significantly diminishes afterward. Schooling and individual initiative/ability are the keys to move from standard user fluency to mastery. As I also stated above, you need strong LSATS to get into law school. So children inhibited by their home environment aren't even making it in.....

Also, look at pass rates for whites v.s. Mexican Americans. There's a ~0.75 standard deviation gap, which corresponds fairly well to the generally agreed upon Mexican IQ range. If the children of Spanish-speaking immigrants Mexicans ae performing at roughly their potential, my guess is that environment doesn't have more than a slight depressing effect on Asians from non-English speaking homes.

Comparing someone educated in South Korea to someone educated in Italy introduces more variables. Comparing students within a nation more effectively controls for environment. A lot of the apparent variance between comparable East Asian ethnicities (Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese) is likely related to what their school systems emphasize or academic rigor.

The Law School Admission Council:

"The language spoken in the home when these law school graduates were growing up was statistically independent of bar examination outcome for all groups except whites and, although the chi-square statistic was significant for whites, the effect size was not sufficient to be considered of any practical significance (w = .04)"

Asians and Mexicans raised in English-speaking homes fared similarly to those from homes where multiple languages were spoken. I would caution that 8 points is an upper bound value, as examination takers likely include a small number from the less competitive Asian ethncities.

McGraw:

It would be pretty hard to do. First off, the initial Filipino migrant labor of the early 1900s to the 1940s was gender skewed to the men, as such most of the Filipino plantation laborers who stayed in Hawaii either remained bachelors or out-married into other ethnic groups. The post 1940s immigration has been more like that of the rest of America, though even in the early period there was a strong Sangley (Chinese Mestizo) component to the immigration pattern. I can't remember what the study was, but I remember reading that research showed that 12-20% of Filipinos have some Chinese ancestry, with a strong oversampling in urban areas. Given that Filipino migrants to America are usually urbanites, I wouldn't be surprised if the pattern follows

"The language spoken in the home when these law school graduates were growing up was statistically independent of bar examination outcome for all groups except whites and, although the chi-square statistic was significant for whites, the effect size was not sufficient to be considered of any practical significance (w = .04)"

Well, I can't argue with that result if they did the analysis right.

But, the claim that because someone was admitted to law school there can't have been an environmental influence on their verbal development is still poor logic. It's like saying that anyone who is over 6 feet tall cannot have had their growth stunted by malnutrition.

Regarding PISA, yes the results certainly depend on the national education systems involved. I still think the gold standard would be adoption studies like the Belgian one.

I just looked at the LaGriffe du superficial reasoning site itself and found this:

In 1989, the Law School Admission Council commissioned a study of bar passage rates. Its report, The LSAC National Longitudinal Bar Passage Study was published in 1998, with results disaggregated by race and ethnicity. Linda F. Wightman, the project head, collected data from more than 27,000 students who entered ABA approved law schools in fall 1991. The study found that only 80.75% of Asians passed the bar on the first try compared with 91.93% of non-Hispanic whites. This corresponds to a white-Asian mean-score difference of 0.53 standard deviation or in IQ terms a verbal gap of 8 points!

Unfortunately, Wightman put NE Asians into one big Asian box along with Filipinos, Hmong and others whose IQs are more than a standard deviation lower than Chinese, Koreans and Japanese. It is true that relatively few from low-IQ groups make it to the bar exam, but some do. Consequently, 8 points must be regarded as an upper bound to the white-NE Asian verbal gap.

How do the researchers relate bar passage rates to verbal IQ? Do they simply use the passage rate to LSAT to IQ correlation? In that case they should just look at LSATs by ethnic group, but that says little about the overall population since the people who go to law school are a self-selected subgroup. Surely, just as PISA scores are moderated by educational system, bar passage rates can't be judged a pure measure of verbal IQ. (And in any case one would just be testing the sub-population of a group that attends law school.)

As I understand it top law schools aren't focused on bar preparation at all, and most of their graduates get ready via prep courses. Is anyone trying to argue that the bar itself is verbal g-loaded?

In conclusion, I'm still waiting for some good data on this subject...

So Spike, would you presume that a disproportionate share of Filipino-Americans have Chinese ancestry?

But, the claim that because someone was admitted to law school there can't have been an environmental influence on their verbal development is still poor logic. It's like saying that anyone who is over 6 feet tall cannot have had their growth stunted by malnutrition

Well, Asian kids aren't growing up without verbal interaction. They're growing up with verbal interaction partly in their own native language and partly in another language. So perhaps
their analytic skills aren't diminished, but you're right that they need to adapt to the vocabulary and structure of two different languages. I was speculating that most kids (at least the ones with high verbal IQs that take the LSATs) learn enough vocabulary from their daily interactions in school and everyday life, but I could be wrong....

I'm definitely no expert on this subject, so it's quite possible you're right about this. I'd be curious if there are any studies that compare bilingual adolescents to uniligual adolescents (controlling for SES). Would a native born kid from a high SES Chinese-American or Mexican-American family lag behind in English fluency? This is definitely something worth exploring in more detail. Comparing verbal IQ is definitely more challenging than something like visuospatial skills, so I'd have an open mind on this topic.....

Regarding PISA, yes the results certainly depend on the national education systems involved. I still think the gold standard would be adoption studies like the Belgian one.

Would you trust studies of 3rd/4th generations of immigrants?

Here are the corresponding verbal IQ gaps, relative to the white mean:

black: 17.6 points
Mexican-American: 10.9 points
Asian: 8 points

For Mexicans and blacks, the gaps appear consistent with other data and studies. So I'm assuming that La Griffe assumed that LSATs were a good proxy for a verbal/analytic IQ test and extrapolated to Asians. I don't know how accurate of as assumption this is though....

McGraw:

I would, actually. There's also my anecdotal experience here in Hawaii that there is a significant fraction of the Filipino population that rapidly assimilates (my maternal grandfather is second gen and never learned how to speak Tagalong as a child) and another that tends to stay in the ethnic barrios speaking their own tongue at home for three generations. Oddly it seems to correlate to ancestral SES status back in the Philipines.

Would a native born kid from a high SES Chinese-American or Mexican-American family lag behind in English fluency?

In studies of language acquisition I have seen there is evidence for a conservation law: the (on average fixed) total rate of word acquisition has to be split between two languages in the bilingual case. Bilingual kids at first lag behind monolingual kids in the common language vocabulary. Eventually they catch up (on average) but one doesn't know whether anything was permanently lost or when or if the bilingual kid reaches full potential. To answer your question, a kid with slightly higher verbal IQ who is learning 2 languages could easily lag behind another kid with similar verbal IQ in the common language if the second kid is monolingual.

I would guess that by adulthood the bilingual kid catches up, but who knows -- there could be a long term effect. Certainly if a verbal IQ study is done on school age kids the results would be affected by the lag described above.

I agree that studies of 3rd or 4th generation kids would be almost as good as adoption studies.

Pretty much all data I have seen have obvious (to me) systematic flaws except the adoption studies. The only problem I can see with the Belgian study is small N.

Think how hard it is to compare verbal IQs in two languages in two groups. Take an analogy or vocabulary question, for example. Who knows whether the translated version of the question is harder or easier or the same difficulty as the original? If all you want is the ranking of an individual *in their own group* that is ok, but how can you compare the relative performances of the two groups on the translated versions of the same test?

i.e. Shetland is to dog as Jersey is to .... cow, sheep, pig, car?

Who knows whether the translated version of the question is easier or harder than the original? There's no culture fair verbal IQ test analogous to Raven's matrices or mental rotations of objects, or even something as fair as asking to calculate the area of a polygon.

All those studies quoted by Lynn etc. are very questionable when it comes to verbal IQ comparisons across language groups.

Hsu, in the PISA test 5 out of the top 6 countries in verbal scores were European or Western countries, so I fail to see where this higher Asian PISA score on reading is coming from. The only one that wasn't was Korea, consitent with my previous post and the Weschler IQ test scores I cited, and the data used from McGraw. The Belgian adoptees was a relatively small sample, so we might be able to assume the many of them were prostitute bastards from high IQ executives. Ok, its a stretch, but it is a possibility. We can hardly use adoptees as representative of the entire population. But even if you were to assume that they are, at best it proves that we have contradictary data, not a proven higher verbal IQ for Asians. You can see the PISA data below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PISA

It is funny that Canada scores pretty high on the PISA tests. This could be a result of the strict immigration laws in recent Canadian history, which only allow high income (high IQ) people to come in.

I would guess that by adulthood the bilingual kid catches up, but who knows -- there could be a long term effect. Certainly if a verbal IQ study is done on school age kids the results would be affected by the lag described above.



Then lets compare non-English European immigrants to Asian immingrants? Do you think there would still be a difference?

We also have to assume that many people may selectively adopt kids that seem to be brigher and healthier. So there is a systematic bias in those studies as well.

JTD: In the Belgian case it was through agencies after the Korean war -- I don't think parents traveled there and selected kids the way they do now. Also many of the kids had suffered malnutrition. It's possible the kids came from high SES Korean families, but that seems unlikely since rich people probably were better able to take care of their kids (on average) than poor or middle class people. Admittedly no one knows and there could be a systematic effect.

Many US Korean adoptions just after the war happened through the Holt agency which happens to be here in Eugene and I think it's clear in their case the kids weren't selected -- they were typically from destitute families -- so it would be interesting to look at their IQ scores. A twins study in which one could establish no selection (or negative selection - mainly low SES kids put up for adoption) would be the gold standard for this question.

Re: your PISA analysis, you can't go by top 5 countries. Many of those countries are small. Look at the actual data and you can compare the European OECD average to scores from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, HK, etc. Your logic is like saying that the top 5 high schools in the US have higher test scores than the best high school in Singapore so US kids must have on average better scores than Singaporeans. The conclusion does not follow mathematically.

2006 PISA: OECD reading avg is about 490. France 488, Germany 495, UK 495, Italy 469, Spain 461 basically determine the average, as they are the largest countries.

Japan 498 Korea 556 HK 536 Taiwan 496

Where is the reading comprehension gap? I only see a gap with the opposite sign than the one that sloppy thinkers talk about.

You can find the data through a link here:
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/200...-from- pisa.html

Also cited in my source. Only 4 of the top 20 nations in reading were East Asian. The rest were European. This is using thier own language, no? Let ween on the speculative "culural" arguments now, and debate the facts at hand.

Many of these countries are small? NE Asia only compromises at most 10 nations. Your logic is to use the entire European continent and compare it to the best Asia has to offer. By that logic, lets compare all of Europe, to all of East Asia. Or better yet, all of Europe to all of of Asia How about this, lets compare the top 10 Asian nations, to the top 10 European nations, as I shown on the post above.

Oops, I wrote "twins" when I meant "adoption" above.

JTD: did our last comments cross each other, or are you still sticking to your PISA claim?

Also, I don't think population size should play that large a role as your implying. What about 1 billion people in China (IQ 100) as representative of NE Asians? Why selectivly single out the cream of the crop in Europe, when you are using the cream of the crop in Asia?

My comments don't cross each other. Of the top 10 countries in PISA verbal, only 2 E asian countries are represented. On the top 20, only 4 are represented. Many of the Western countries on the top 20 have large population numbers, they aren't all "small"

JTD: Well, I am comparing the largest countries in each group.

(No data for China as a whole, although I don't think HK Chinese are especially selected relative to the whole, and data from the US would just undermine your case...)

I don't want to be pedantic, but since the overall OECD population is predominantly of European descent, and all of those countries are affluent, it seems fair to compare the OECD average to that of Korea, Japan and Taiwan, which are all pretty populous (even Taiwan has more people in it than any of the high scoring countires you want to cite except Canada). The result is clearly in my favor.

Note I've already pointed out that PISA data is affected by national educational system, so it's not a perfect data set for our question either.

Do you think the Taiwan and HK (selective migration anyone? Just look at the scores of New Zealand and Canada if you are going to use Hong Kong and Taiwan) really represent the largest population of NE Asia? How about we use China, which make up the huge bulk of the population in NE Asia, if we are going to use your logic. For the record, there are over 10 Western Countries that do better then Japan and Taiwan, can we count up their total population, and compare it to the PISA scores you selectively chosen to represent Europe? I bet you they are comparable.

selective migration anyone?

NO!!!!!!!!!!!! NOT FOR TAWAIN!!!!.

I think you should look into the history of Taiwan and HK. The bulk of the Chinese pop. of Taiwan is from a poor province called Fujian, arriving centuries before the Nationalists fled the mainland. The bulk of the HK population is also descended from poor migrants. This was discussed on the GNXP thread on IQ variance, so I hope we don't have to go into it again.

I'm not making claims about the whole of the PRC, because we don't have any data. But I seriously doubt that Koreans or Japanese will turn out to have higher IQs once the GDP per capita in China has reached OECD levels. In fact, people who are familiar with the history of HK and Taiwan would argue for that conclusion based on the histories of those places.

I guess I don't see how using the largest European countries to represent Europe is unreasonable. If we only had data on, say, Germany vs Japan, Korea, Taiwan would you be complaining?

Obviously there are big variations due to local educational factors on PISA. If you want to claim that New Zealanders, for example, have higher verbal IQs than NE Asians then I guess you would claim they also have higher verbal IQs than people in the UK?

I am calculating the total population of the top 15 European nations on the PISA exam (minus the ones you chose), then comparing the total population of your own chosen countries to represent Europe, to see if you argment holds any weight.

so I hope we don't have to go into it again.

new rule: i'm going to start deleting stupid comments about east asian countries that rehash issues we've discussed 12,000 times over the 6 years of this weblog (some as recently as less than 1 month ago). practically to continue extracting value out of these discussions we need to progress and just assume some facts as givens, whig-like. otherwise this will turn into a literature blog (no offense to literature). so,

1) skepticism of east asian IQs needs to be backed up by data. otherwise, deleted

2) no more stuff about IQ variance unless backed up by cites

3) since the histories of nations like taiwan can be found in things called books which are deposited in buildings called libraries, i expect people to actually consult these before speculating. otherwise, deleted

with that, discussion can go on....

I guess I don't see how using the largest European countries to represent Europe is unreasonable. If we only had data on, say, Germany vs Japan, Korea, Taiwan would you be complaining?

Actually, it is unreasonable if you don't look at the total population of the countries that had comparable PISA results to the top 4 countries you used. Lets base the PISA scores on population for the West, but use the Top 4 scores regardless of population for the East, seems very unreasonable to me.

Uhh, your mathematical procedure is called cherry picking or "selection" ! It gives information about the small European countries that happen to have very effect education systems at the moment. What about the small European countries that happen to have *bad* systems at the moment? (Or the good old USA :-) You aren't including those in your calculation.

I can't find a single NE Asian unit that has lower reading score than the OECD avg. Japan, Korea, Taiwan, HK and Singapore all outperform. Don't you think that is significant? (Actually I don't have the Singapore number -- it's not in PISA -- but they typically do very well.)

As was just pointed out by Razib, and by me, Taiwan is very likely a good proxy for 1.2 billion mainlanders. So it's absolutely reasonable to compare Taiwan to OECD avg. If you think hard enough about that you might understand -- unless you are still claiming selection.

On the other hand, imagine I choose the top 10 high schools in Japan and compare their average to that of the US. I don't think that would tell us much about the question we are asking, but that's analogous to what you are doing.

I don't feel I can add too much more to this discussion, so see you tomorrow!

As was just pointed out by Razib, and by me, Taiwan is very likely a good proxy for 1.2 billion mainlanders. So it's absolutely reasonable to compare Taiwan to OECD avg. If you think hard enough about that you might understand -- unless you are still claiming selection.

First, many of the Western countries that were on the Top 20 had comparable populations to the 6 nations you chosen. So I don't see why they failed the pick.

A fair judgement would be to compare all the available data we have on PISA NE Asia, then all the data we have on PISA Western countries, then see what the average score is, hopefully weighted for population as well. If we did it this way, I would think that the PISA IQ for Asians would be higher, even in reading (do to many Western nations having a PISA IQ in the 95 range. Then again, if we did it this way, why don't we use SE Asia as well?). This doesn't discount the fact that individual ethnicities have comparable averages to NE Asians (which really only compromise of less then 6 main ethnic groups) Ashkenazi Jews only make up a small portion of the global population, do we discount their averages as well?

I was only pointing out your flawed argument to select only 6 countries to represent Europe, while simoltaniously selecting the top 4 scores to represent Asia. I said nothing of the average scores of Europe and NE Asia (which could very well be higher)

On the other hand, imagine I choose the top 10 high schools in Japan and compare their average to that of the US. I don't think that would tell us much about the question we are asking, but that's analogous to what you are doing.

But that is exactly what your doing my friend. You are using the top 4 verbal PISA scores to represent NE Asia, are you not?

Total population of the Western Nations in the Top 20 minus the ones chosen by Hsu: 157 mil

Total pop of Western nations chosen by Hsu: 310 mil

While it is higher, it is not drastic. I propose simply taking the average verbal PISA score of every Western nation, then the average verbal PISA score of every NE nation. And see how they compare. Perhaps NE Asia might still be bigger (I haven't done the calculations myself), but it is still far more logical then simply taking 6 nations to represent the entire West, while taking the top 4 scores to represent NE.

NE Asia only compromises at most 10 nations.

list the 10 nations. i'm not seeing how there are 10. you're posting the results of your 'calculations' but not much of the background work. please do so, you're really starting to get on my nerves. you've already thrown in the false IQ variance argument as well as the taiwan-selection-biased argument. i'm not impressed by your brilliance at this point. we've had these discussion MANY times, please tighten your prose, you're starting to get stream of consciousness and pretty much incoherent.

i'm closing this thread. i think we've gotten most of what we want. interesting to note how some people's priors in regards to the skeptical eye shift when psychometric results don't go in the direction they find "plausible" :-) i've already deleted multiple comments about chinese dishwashers & drunks.