Cool.
Yes, the Pitt is where peoples true colors do tend to emerge.
Indeed.
You’ve got to be goddamned kidding me. No, I’m not going to follow him down that road any further, because that’s the opposite of the point I’m making.
The point I appear to see you making is to deny the correlation between pre-writing SAT scores and general intelligence, which is not doing you any favors in the looking smart department yourself. The other point I’m seeing is, as I said, you getting really defensive about this. If you have a score that is nice and high, and if 1480 is amateur-league in your opinion, you could just share your score and have a great credential as to how much more we should value your opinion on the value of test scores. Just claiming that it’s higher (and then demanding that all future conversation about such scores cease) do make me wonder if you got a 1490 or so.
Also, why are we assuming a causative relationship between the racist educational policies of yester-decade and current academic performance? When we look at previous disenfranchised and discriminated against groups in America, what do their relative test scores look like during those policies, once those poliices are lifted, a generation after, and so forth?
I mean, I’m Jewish, so I’m not really sympathetic to the argument “Being discriminated against makes you unable to score high on IQ tests and IQ-proxy tests like the pre-1995 SAT.” But I’d love to dig out some other discriminated-against groups, look specifically at how they were treated by the public school system at various times in various places, and then come up with an index showing exactly how discrimination affects educational attainment in the average case.
“Defensive”? Goddamn, you’re stupid. If it’s really fucking important to you to know what I scored on a test a quarter century ago, PM me, and I’ll give you my score–but I’ll also call you an idiot for asking for it, since it has nothing to do with the point I’m making.
See, I agree with that. One individual with impeccable credentials of general intelligence is not necessarily an expert capable of group analysis, and one expert capable of group analysis is not necessarily capable of examining, documenting, and accounting for subfactors outside their specialty. There’s a reason we look to scientific consensus over time and expressed through many well-replicated and well-documented studies over any individual, no matter how credible.
But if you don’t think that you look defensive about test scores here, you’re wrong. No one (well, no one reasonable) would claim that test scores ensure intelligence or life success, but just about every study shows that high IQ and IQ-proxy scores are correlated with high educational and life success outcomes, and low scores are likewise correlated with low outcomes. The only reason I could imagine for you responding with vitrol and insults rather than “Your score, no matter what it proves for you in terms of general intelligence, does not make you an expert in this subject area.” is if you want to denigrate the very idea of being able to test people for general intelligence and then go back and look at how people who scored low or high on average did later.
Am I off base here? Can we start by agreeing that IQ and IQ-proxy is highly correlated to educational and life outcomes, and then look at examining how that link works?
Reading what you suggested I say, it’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that those scores are of limited value. The vitriol and insults are because I’m sick of this dude telling everyone how smart he is based on some test he took a long time ago.
Sure they’re correlated. Who said they weren’t? But a person with a high score can say something very stupid, can be very stupid in large areas of life; and a person with a low score may both have a low score and have poor educational outcomes due to a third factor (e.g., living in a high-stress impoverished environment, being subject to racism in schools, etc.)
Simplistic claims about the utility of tests are the other thing that drives me up the wall. And it’s personal for me. I teach those kids with low test scores who show glimmers of brilliance, and I watch them not get into the AIG program, and it kills me. What others are dismissing as statistics, I’m seeing specific kids being maltreated by our current system of AIG identification.
Give me a break, if you think Left Hand gives two shits about your scores you’re delusional and if you actually still think about what you scores decades ago then you are no different than a guy so know who’s in his mid-30s and still wears his high school letter jacket, except he’s a nice guy.
If it will make you feel better, my own score on the SAT was 1280, so feel free to ridicule me.
Left Hand of Dorkness can feel free to do the same but I seriously doubt he’ll care and whether he thinks I’m smart or dumb, how I scored on a test over twenty years ago will have little effect on that.
Yeah, I can appreciate how smart everyone is - but I never actually hear of anyone who is actively doing anything with their native intelligence actually talk about their test scores.
It’s kind of like being the Al Bundy of nerds in a way - but less likable.
FWIW, I sometimes form an opinion of someone’s intelligence based on what they write. For example:
-If they write something extra-brilliant, I notice.
-If they keep writing super-dumb things, I notice.
-If they brag about their test scores, I think they’re kind of pathetic and useless, and in a very important way they’re an idiot.
You? I haven’t really thought about how smart you might be. You sometimes have annoyed me, you’ve sometimes enlightened me. We don’t agree on everything, but when we disagree, sometimes it’s a productive disagreement. That’s way more important to me than test scores.
Agreed. It’s sort of like how people who have to constantly remind people they went to an Ivy League school almost without exception are clearly compensating for something.
One of my many flaws is I can sometimes watch lots of crap TV, and I remember a season of The Apprentice(yes, I hang my head in shame) one guy I liked and semi rooted for, Tarek, because he was from near where I lived and also a fellow Middle Easterner as well as my then GF practically started drooling whenever he came on TV, really made me wince when seemingly at random he bragged about being a member of Mensa.
Of course it would turn out that in reality it wasn’t something he really cared about, just some producers encouraged him to say it for storyline and “dramatic” purposes.
Thank you and the feeling is reciprocated and I’d say the same regarding you.
This appears to be directed at me, which is odd since you had just quoted me in that very same post as saying (emphasis added):
However, if you are not in that ballpark, you are not gifted, in an academic sense. I’m sorry, but you just aren’t. (Assuming you made an effort to answer the questions to the best of your ability.) This does not mean you might not be a wonderful and talented person with much to offer the world. It just means you are not academically gifted.
That I should even have to argue such a fundamental point, or that it would be in any way controversial, kind of blows my mind.
Just remind me - what is your Phd in again?
Oh, only Ph.D.s are allowed to engage in discourse about the schools? How odd, then, that from local school boards to state legislatures, to Congress and the presidency, and for that matter the voters who vote for all of the above plus bond issues, education policy is being set largely by people without this credential.
I think you’re missing the point:)
First of all, you’re not sorry. You like to brag about your own supposed intelligence every chance you get and trumpet sill scores like that every time you get a chance. It doesn’t make you look smart. It makes you look desperate and insecure and while the opinions strangers on the internet have of me is not terribly important to me, the opinions of strangers who are pathetic and sad means even less.
Secondly, it’s rather odd that you decide that a 1300 indicates someone who is “gifted” but a 1280 means someone who’s clearly not “gifted”. 20 points is a pretty small different and has to be within the margin of error, a difference of a few different questions. I’m particularly surprised since you said any scores “in that ballpark” and I think the ballpark would have to be really tiny for 20 points to not be “in that ballpark”.
For the record, I’ve never thought of or considered myself academically gifted though others thought that of me.
Third, it really seems like the you’re desperate to have your own brilliance recognized and seem to harp on about these “scores” because they’re the only thing you have to prove this as opposed to actual accomplishments or display of knowledge and your writing style does not really scream “brilliant” but more like a parody of how anti-intellectuals think intellectuals actually talk.
Anyway, if you’d like to continue this conversation feel free to, though I don’t know if I’ll respond since I generally have to find a person at least interesting or the subject interesting to engage in a long conversation on such subject. One thing I’d suggest is that if you want to yank my chain you’re better mentioning something other than my score on a test that I took almost 25 years ago. There are subjects that would upset me, but since I readily admitted the score without even being asked, I’m not sure what makes you think I’d be remotely defensive about it.
Beyond that, I’m sure you must be familiar with the time Stephen Hawking was asked his IQ and his response was “I don’t know, people who boast about their IQs are losers.”
Good lord, that post was full of confused thoughts. Hoo boy, let’s dive in and try to unpack this, though I don’t know why I bother…
Think about this for a second. If I were desperate and insecure, I wouldn’t willingly subject myself to a situation where people call me things like a “human shitstain” (LOL, that *was *at least a good line–original AFAIK). There are plenty of places, and ways, to get validation and ego stroking on the Internet. Diving into a flame thread with an aggressively stated opinion that goes against the CW (at least the local one) is not among them. (Especially when I am unwilling to be dishonest and claim credentials I don’t possess to use as a shield against the kind of attack you can see just above.) If you are going to accuse me of some kind of pathology, wouldn’t “masochistic” be more apropos?
Furthermore, the last part of that (starting with “while the opinions strangers…”) logically reads, in the context of the paragraph, as though you are saying I shouldn’t care what the “pathetic and sad” posters in these parts think. But that doesn’t really make sense, so I’m not sure what you are trying to say. The only other thing it could mean is that you’re telling me *you *don’t care what *I *think of you. Um, OK? When did it seem like I was trying to judge you to begin with?
Ah, maybe this is the source of the confusion. You seem to have read my comments in nearly the opposite way I intended them. I thought it was quite clear that…well, please just go reread post #93. I bolded the part of my previous post that I did because I was indeed saying that obviously 1280 *would *be in that ballpark. The “you” I used subsequently, in the paragraph that begins “However…” was not meant as “you, Ibn Warraq” but rather in its function as a common substitute for “one”, as in “a person”. Ironically, if I had used “one” there instead, it no doubt would have reinforced your view of my writing style being one akin to how anti-intellectuals imagine intellectuals to “talk” (which I put in quotes because I assure you, I do not talk the way I write).
This paragraph too is puzzling. I guess it stems from the same misunderstanding; but I have never said anything (at least not in recent memory) about anyone being defensive. That was said by a different poster, and not directed at you (nor at me for that matter).
You’re sorry, for sure. This is more ignorant bullshit. What definition of “academically gifted” are you using? Based on what research? Even researchers who are as enamored of test scores as you are recognize that multiple identifying criteria are important, that tests you can prep for like the SAT are not reliable indicators, and that twice-exceptional students exist such that sometimes identification without normed tests is necessary.
But hey, when you were nine you were super-smart, I forgot. Could you remind me again?
SAT Prep courses improve scores by piddling amounts, less than the standard deviation that the test itself measures. What kind of prep were you thinking of? I mean, other than a multi-year prep class of “Learn advanced English and math skills, and take dozens of tests so you’re familiar with the time limits and the pressure.”, which most people know as “high school”.
So, what is a reliable indicator, then? How accurate are the tests versus, oh, the mean predictive value of a teacher when a teacher’s endorsement can open the scholastic doors that the SAT does now? I guess I’m just imagining another world, where teachers had the first and final say over any standardized test as to which kids were gifted and which weren’t, and I’m remembering that’s kind of what we had that made us want a standardized test in the first place.
That being said, I’ve no idea where SlackerInc’s getting his numbers, or his p-values for those numbers. Tests are a useful tool, but we need to define what we’re looking for in more precise terms than ‘ballpark’ (1 standard deviation above the mean? 1.5? 3?), and recognize that since the test has a standard deviation of several tens of points when people take it multiple times, there’s an area around the cutoff where we can’t say for certain whether or not it’s likely that someone had an exceptionally bad testing day and should be in (or guessed amazingly well and shouldn’t be.)
Then we can go and look at the people we’d class as academically gifted who don’t have scores past that cutoff and see how many of them there are, and see what our false-negative rate of giftedness-identification on our standardized tests actually is.