Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!olivea!decwrl!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!usc!jarthur!ucivax!gateway From: RMG3@psuvm.psu.EDU Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: IQ tests (Was Re: sexist space) Message-ID: <91022.185956RMG3@psuvm.psu.edu> Date: 24 Jan 91 17:12:01 GMT References: <11119@helios.TAMU.EDU> <664152739@grad17.cs.duke.edu> <1991Jan18.174824.21081@odin.corp.sgi.com> <1991Jan21.014257.16464@nntp-server.caltech.edu> Organization: Penn State University Lines: 48 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: blanche.ics.uci.edu In article <1991Jan21.014257.16464@nntp-server.caltech.edu>, hmj@miranda.caltech.EDU (Helen Johnston) says: >In article <1991Jan18.174824.21081@odin.corp.sgi.com> >milt%odin.corp.sgi.com@sgi.COM (Milton Tinkoff) writes: >> >>I've _heard_ of this but I'm a bit confused. Exactly how is an IQ >>test racially biased? I thought typical questions were of the "What >>is the next number in this sequence?" or "Square is to circle as cube >>is to ?" variety. Show me some racially biased questions and then >>I'll start believing. >I don't know about racially biased, but culturally biased is easy. I >am Australian, and so had barely heard of baseball, let alone knowing >any rules. [GRE example] My mother encountered a problem on the SAT which asked (roughly) 'How much grass in fair territory in the infield could a goat on a 30 foot tether eat?'. Anyone without detailed knowledge of the layout of a baseball field (such as my mother) has no hope of answering this one. A much better place to look, rather than relying on anecdotes is Stephen Jay Gould's book 'The Mismeasure of Man'. In it he details the history of mental testing and the abuses thereof. It includes the biases built in against people not like the people who write the tests (economically, socially, by gender, religion, ...) Some crucial points from the book, taking IQ as the example: 1) You have to assume that there is such a thing as intelligence. 2) You _assume_ that it is measureable. 3) You _assume_ that it can further be represented by a _single_ number. 4) You _assume_ that your method of measurement has no effect on the result. Another piece about IQ's. The raw score on standard IQ tests levels out after about age 20, so that an average 20 year old and an average 40 year old (whatever _that_ means) score the same. Now, IQ refers to dividing the 'mental' age by the calendar age. So all 20 year olds are geniuses (having a mental age of 40 and a calendar age of 20) and all 40 years olds are morons (having a mental age of 20 and a calendar age of 40). Substitute the groups of your choice for the 20 and 40 year olds in my example and you have the arguments advanced for 'proving' that group xyz is less intelligent than group pdq. Bob Grumbine Osgood's law: Variables don't and constants aren't.