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From: hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Spelling and IQ (was: Effects of poor writing?)
Message-ID: <4523@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Date: 31 May 89 18:52:01 GMT
References: <750@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> <18956@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: hollombe@ttidcb.tti.com (The Polymath)
Organization: The Cat Factory
Lines: 23

In article <18956@cup.portal.com> mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) writes:
}It would be surprising if IQ did not correlate with spelling. Consider this
}(quoted from BIAS IN MENTAL TESTING by Arthur Jensen):
}
}"Intelligence test scores have been shown to have significant low to moderate
}positive correlations with a variety of other variables, such as ...

     [ long list deleted ]

So, because IQ has been found to correlate with some things, it should
also correlate with spelling?  Can you say "Hogwash!"?

A second point is the difference between a "significant" correlation and a
"large" correlation (a difference Jensen, at least implicitly,
acknowledges).  With a large enough sample size, you can make almost any
correlation significant, even if it's only .0001 or less. "Significant but
trivial" might be an appropriate description of such a situation.

-- 
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, hollombe@ttidca.tti.com)  Illegitimati Nil
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