Genetics and IQ and all that

Much ink has been spilled about genes for Intelligence and IQ. A recent article in the New Replublic by Steven Pinker, a Harvard Professor of Pyschology, points out that the appearance of an advantage in intelligent is much easier to establish than its causes. So what exacly is the appearance? Consider Ashkenazic Jews. Pinker writes "though never exceeding 3 percent of the American population, Jews account for 37 percent of the winners of the U.S. National Medal of Science, 25 percent of the American Nobel Prize winners in literature, 40 percent of the American Nobel Prize winners in science and economics, and so on". While the average US Jewish IQ is 8-15 points higher than the average US IQ, this smallish difference in mean translates out into a large difference in the tails- large enough to overcome the population inbalance. Larry Summers in his much chattered about speech on Women in Science, challenged researchers to consider all possible reasons for the underepresentation of women in Math and Science departments. Even the possibility that there is a sex linked genetic advantage. He suggests specifically that the causal factor is the differences in group variances. If two populations are Normally distributed then the group with the higher variance will dominate in the tails. As usual it is easier to establish the appearance of a difference than to establish its causes. Could the difference in variance have a biological basis? That is a legitimate subject of inquiry, which is all that Summers suggested. What was the problem? Dean? Inspired by the statistics, I concocted the following exam question: Suppose for the sake of this problem only, that the average IQ for men is 100 with an SD of 15 and the average IQ for women is 105 with an SD of 10. Both distributions are Normal. Assume that there are equal numbers of men and women in the population. What fraction of men have smaller IQ’s that the median Woman? A person is considered a genius if their IQ is greater than 145. What is the relative proportion of men among the geniuses? Is it too PIC to adiminister?

Global warming in pictures

Using the wikipedia, this guy put together a site that consists of all the graphs he can find about global warming. Since its a wiki, using the wikimedia software, changes are logged. So it is less fun to be biased in writing since it will just be converted by another reader. Hence this represents the "average" belief of the internet. Probably not a good way to do science, but a pretty cool way to generate graphs about a cause.

Anti-science president of a college

THe president of Lakehead college argues that we haven't proven that wireless internet doesn't cause cancer, so we shouldn't use it on campus. Let's help him out with some more advances:

• Where's the proof that going to class doesn't cause cancer? So, let's cancel classes.
• Where's the proof that having exams doesn't cause cancer?
• Ok, your turn to add some. :-)

How good is an exit poll?

January 25th marked the second time that the Palestinians held parliamentary elections: according the BBC - "Exit polls suggest that the ruling Fatah party has won a narrow victory in the first Palestinian parliamentary elections for a decade. The first official exit poll suggests Fatah took more than 46%, compared to 39.5% for Islamic militant group Hamas. The official results may not be announced for several more days" Well official results did come out and Hamas won a landslide! getting 70% of the seats in the new parliament. How did this come about? Well, for about a month I have been saying "look! Exits polls are stupid since people can lie and will lie." Of course, this statement is often an accurate reflection of what is going on. But the numbers here tell a much more interesting story. According to final tallys Fatah won 41% and Hamas 45%. Yes, the numbers to reverse, but not so bizzarely as what the direct comparison between the exit poll percentage of the popular vote and the acutal percentage of awarded seats indicate. It turns out that the subtlety lies in the style of the democracy. What Palestine has is some combination of the American two-party system and the European/Israeli multi-party system. In the two party system a party can just barely win the popular vote and still win a landslide. That's what happened. . Dean can tell you more about why this is actually a very good thing. Dean?

The pulse of the world

Which wars of our two wars have won the hearts of the public? You do recall we started with a war in Afgan? Well, that war has been a true success. We have like 85% support over there. Not so good in iraq. To see a bunch of these sorts of polls, check out this international meta polling cite: World Public Opinion

Aluminum Foil Helmets

I thought everyone would appreciate a glimpse into recent cutting-edge research on the effects of aluminum foil helmets on blocking signals from the government. For those without the proper exposure to extremely paranoid people, I should explain that aluminum foil helmets are often used to block the reception and transmission of radio signals between the wearer and some nefarious agency, such as the CIA or NSA. A recent MIT study concluded that aluminum foil helmets are not effective at blocking all frequencies of radio signals, and in fact, can amplify certain government-controlled frequencies. These results are disputed, however, by this online post, which criticizes the MIT study for focusing only on simple radio frequencies instead of the more important psychotronic energy emissions. For those of you who don't know about psychotronic energy, the poster suggests you buy his book, though it might be just as helpful (and certainly cheaper) to just rent the original Ghostbusters movie. The real tragedy of this entire dialogue is that very little statistical discussion is present, and data is not provided for any sort of followup investigation. Considering the importance of this issue, I'm surprised that there hasn't been a greater cry for data availability.

Oh once there was a fisherman

According to the US Department of Labor, 1 of every 718 fisherman died on the job in 1998. In contrast, 1 out 4613 policemen died on the job in the same year. Not exactly, PIC but interesting nevertheless. Thanks, Mike. A question? I had read (can't remember where) that the really dangerous fishing is up in Alaska and the compensation is really high. Confirmation?

Not Causation...

Anyone watch Law & Order SUV? During last night's episode, a doctor was forced to admit during cross examination that causality cannot be established without experiment. Statistics makes the big time.

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