[lit-ideas] Re: TGIF
- From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 16:50:47 -0400
At 04:40 PM 8/26/2005, you wrote:
THE YEAR IS 1905
One hundred years ago, today.
> Ninety percent of all U.S. doctors had no college education.
> 1 out of 5 U.S. adults couldn't read or write.
>The average I.Q. in 1905 was 90. Today it is 115.
These hardly seem consistent. (It's the last claim I'm challenging.)
'Intelligence testing' had barely gotten off the ground in 1905; the term
'intelligence quotient' had not yet been coined; the refinement of Alfred
Binet's work (which had only been completed in 1905) by Lewis Terman and
others, work which resulted in the 'Stanford-Binet' test, was made known
in 1916.
What I'm suggesting is that if the first two statements are true, the
third could not really be knowable, given not only the adjustments that
would have had to have been made between any intelligence assessments done
in 1905, and the various instruments used today, but the lack of a
sufficiently large sample of the population who might somehow have taken
an 'intelligence test.' The statistical insouciance here is fairly astonishing.
In short, who and how many took 'intelligence tests' in the US in 1905;
and how were 1905 numerical assessments of 'intelligence' made comparable
with those made today?
WHICH... is exactly the same logic I used to attempt to render the 'global
warming' moniker as nonsense a few months ago. But nobody listened, except
to call me an arrogant science jerk. [sniff sniff]
P
p.s. I'm glad you're still here to RP.
##########
Paul Stone
pas@xxxxxxxx
Kingsville, ON, Canada
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
