Monday, June 22, 2009

Utterly awesome!

This is awesome!

Just last post I decried the pathetically easy NAEP questions where Janet Hyde was probing for a gender gap.They were so damn easy.

Now go read this utterly awesome demolition of NAEP questions by a math B.A.,Physics M.A and Economics PhD.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

I am getting angry at Hyde-Part I

Yeah,behold my power of hardass dickery!

No, seriously.Hyde and Mertz have written a paper-and oh boy,is it bullshit.

Hyde and colleagues reported a 1990 meta-analysis on gender differences in mathematics performance involving 100 studies representing the testing of >3 million individuals, most from the U.S. but some from other nations such as Australia and Canada (8). Overall, they found d = −0.05 for samples of the general population, an effect so small as to be considered no gender difference.

Alright,why is this B.S?Because this data is very conflicting with most other major data.

ACT math portion:0.13-0.16 SD(yeah,quite small,but still significant)

PISA 2006:0.15 SD(abt 0.12 SD in OECD countries)

Besides which,math gaps first bloom in puberty,and...

The results indicated a slight female advantage in computation in elementary and middle school, and no difference in high school. There were no gender differences in understanding of concepts at any age. Complex problem solving displayed no gender difference in elementary school and middle school, but a gender difference favoring males emerged in high school, with d = 0.29. This latter finding is of concern because complex problem solving is an essential skill for success in life and in STEM careers.

Guess what,Hyde?You just hit the jackpot.Male advantage in problem solving blooms in puberty when they get a boost of the big T.And guess what?Computation is NOT the most important criterion for being a harvard faculty,problem solving is.Now,why don't you say,"Yes,math is a man's game and men are better at problem solving?"It hurts your agenda maybe?

These findings were largely replicated in a 1995 meta-analysis using large datasets based on the testing of excellent probability samples of U.S. adolescents (9). For high school students, d values ranged between 0.03 and 0.26 for mathematics performance, that is, boys performed better than girls by a small amount.

Alright,move on,Hyde.You are disproving your own thesis with data like this,y'know?

Hyde then moves onto describing how her 2008 paper found no gender gaps in math thanks to more girls taking math courses.That "paper" has already been debunked by Mr. Motl here.

Now let's move on to Hyde's paper.

Averaged across these 10 states, gender differences in performance were close to zero in all grades, including high school, with d values ranging between −0.02 and 0.06

However, coding of the test items on these examinations for cognitive level indicated that none of them tapped complex problem solving at most grade levels for most states (13). Thus, it was impossible with these NCLB datasets to investigate whether a gender gap existed in complex problem solving. Therefore, the researchers also examined data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a federally managed program that tests a random sample of U.S. students each year (14). Items from 12th grade data categorized by NAEP as hard and by the researchers as requiring complex problem solving were analyzed for gender differences; effect sizes were found to average d = 0.07

As Hyde herself states,these tests suffered from a lack of hard questions.So she says that in so called hard questions,the gender gap was trivial.But the question is,were they really hard?NEVER!Take this as an example:

1. The lowest point of the St. Lawrence River is 294 feet below sea level. The top of Mt. Jacques Cartier is 1,277 feet above sea level. How many feet higher is the top of Mt. Jacques Cartier than the lowest point of the St. Lawrence River? Show your work.

From here.

Most sane people would agree harvard faculty,hell,average freshmen do not solve this type of easy questions.And for 8th graders?!!For goodness sake...I am in that grade right now....so there's no question of me being too high above the level being tested...

The other questions are no better.I finished each within 30 seconds.Any student in my class,save perhaps that dumbass Arko,could have done it.THESE.ARE.NOT.HARD.

These findings provide further evidence that U.S. girls have now reached parity with boys, even in high school, and even for measures requiring complex problem solving.

If you arbitrarily and idiosyncratically qualify simple problems as hard.I shudder to think what "simple" problems must be like.Why has american education fallen so much?

Some have argued that the absence of gender differences in mathematics performance in the general population is irrelevant to the advancement of STEM fields; rather, researchers should focus on the mathematically talented, a topic discussed below. However, Weinberger found that <1/3>650 (15). Thus, progress in STEM fields is fueled, not only by the highly talented, but also by the millions of laboratory technicians and other bachelors- and masters-level scientists whose mathematics skills might place them below the 75th percentile, but whose contributions are still essential.

I will bet that those who are thus qualified as Hyde's "also-ran" group will not make an Einsteinian or Newtonian revolution,or be a harvard faculty.The highly talented are the spearheaders,the movers,the shakers."Drudge" has always been a very irrelevant profession to the world's science pantheon.

Moreover, numeracy is important for everyone, with mathematical competency being crucial to anyone shopping for a home mortgage, investing their savings for retirement, or deciding among several treatment options for a serious medical ailment. The recent example of consumers' failure to comprehend adjustable-rate mortgages is a sobering case in point. Mathematical skills are essential, not only for accountants, economists, and physicists, but also for teachers, nurses, politicians, and the lay public in general.

The first sensible thing Hyde says.

Stay tuned for part 2-wherein the arrogant prodigy uses his mighty dick to probe Hyde's answer to the million-dollar question:

Do Gender Differences Exist Among the Mathematically Talented?

Friday, June 5, 2009

Spelke:Liar for misrepresentation

I wrote a post on Spelke a couple while back.You had to be brainwashed to believe the shit she wrote,yet it was in a peer reviewed journal.Sigh...

Now I come upon this gem of hers from a debate:

At the top of their list of myths was the idea that males are primarily interested in objects and females are primarily interested in people. They reviewed an enormous literature, in which babies were presented with objects and people to see if they were more interested in one than the other. They concluded that there were no sex differences in these interests.

Steady there.The book which she says did this is an old 1974 book,called the Psychology of Sex differences.Such an old book is not prima facie evidence because science gets updated often.Let's see nonetheless what the book had to say:

There is evidence that boys and girls make somewhat different choices even at this early age,but the toy attributes responsible for the choices are obscure.

So boys and girls really do play with different toys,even though the cause is unclear,i.e. it cannot be understood whether boys want objects or girls people.

Hold on,though.To spelke's position,any gender difference in toy preference is anathema,because it suggests fundamental psychological sex differences.Spelke is, as far as I know, a denier of these(skeptics can simply google it-it's true).So why does she cite something that will likely be problematic for her position?

Because 99.99% of readers will never ever check up on the old psychology tome to see whether Spelke was wrong or right.(Incidentally,Spelke also cites SMPY data in one of her papers(which I have discussed) which contains a few elements supportive of her,which not unsurprisingly is the only portion of the data she cites.The rest of the SMPY data contradicts her thesis outright,yet she goes ahead and ignores it...because 99.99% won't even check.)

Now obviously,usually we do see boys preferring objects over people a bit,so I am quite confused as to why the Psychology of sex differences drew its conclusion.Apparently boys were concentrated quite a bit on masculine toys,but they did not always prefer object toys-on one occasion apparently they chose dolls for novelty according to the book.While that's all well and good-here is some more info.

Sex differences in the brain,a book by Becker,Barkley and Geary,gives an interesting table of sex-typed play:

(The differences are in d, that is,standard deviations)

Balls:.66

Bikes:.74

Blocks:1.05

Play figure male:1.01

Pretend play male:1.01

Trucks:0.92

There are some definite anomalies here:for example,look at play figures and pretend play.They are both more people oriented than trucks-yet more heavily segregrated by gender.What the hell?

The real issue is that more than object vs people dynamics are in play.Recall the savannah,where all male hunting teams went for some killing.Play figures may simply reflect the same-sex co-operation required for such an activity reflected in a need to play with figures representing male teammates.Such hunting teams still exist now-they have just changed names and purpose(Sports,D'oh!)

Pretend play is much the same case-the Psychology of sex differences says boys tend to be more sex-stereotyped in play and this pretend play may reflect their need to assert masculinity.

Above all,keep in mind that these are just hypotheses.Don't take these for gospel truth.Just remember that psychology is a lot more complex than an objects=boys/people=girls generalization.

How to achieve enlightenment.....

...On horizontal gene transfer.

Granted,it's an obscure topic.But you are probably a geek anyway if you're reading this...so,why not.

Here's the long thread .

It all started when silly me,thinking he had a revolutionary idea,stormed into talkorigins and began talking about evolution,the tree of life and horizontal gene transfer.

I was promptly shown science which made my head reel,which made me achieve..knowledge.

Being a scientist is cool.You always get to debunk pseudoscience..and teach young people about me on science.Viva la talkorigins!

On an extremely unrelated note,new scientist,the magazine which first got HGT into my brain,recently published a crock of BullShit saying,in essence,genius is born and not made.They actually had the audacity to use Mozart as an example.Anybody who has an actual inkling of knowledge knows Mozart got his training after he showed his talent...which means he had the genes and the environment.They are delusional to deny the first factor-it is as ridiculous as insisting that chimpanzees given proper training could become geniuses.

Jackasses without any knowledge of genetics.Rot, just rot.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Elizabeth Spelke's pseudoscientific paper

Elizabeth Spelke has written a paper avidly denying the well-documented cognitive sex differences.I have known these differences long,so I'll take some time for criticism.I will focus on her denial of the fact that males exhibit greater genetic variability than females regarding math.I'll skip right ahead to Spelke's treatment of SMPY data.

Because these conclusions depend on students’ scores on the SAT-M, they are open to two interpretations: Either more boys than girls have extreme talent in mathematics, or
SAT-M scores overestimate the abilities of talented boys,
relative to girls.

The SAT-M is a nice test,from what I have heard.It correlates with IQ at roughly 0.8-a large correlation indeed.By comparison,self-discipline influences grades twice as much as IQ.So,the SAT-M owns grades as far as assessing intelligence goes.
In early samples, more boys than girls entered the SMPY program, and boys went on to take more demanding high school mathematics classes.
And I think I know why-there has been immense pushes for girls to excel,including at male-dominated fields.Earlier,this was absent,and occupational segregration occured more.
 In the later samples, however, the numbers of male and female participants were nearly equal, as were the numbers of boys and girls in high school mathematics classes.
See above.Also,numerical equality proves dipshit.Besides which,sex differences start during high school and blossom in college so Spelke should look at that.She does so stunningly badly:
In college, male and female SMPY veterans continued to take equally demanding classes and got equally good grades, as do college women and men generally.
How demanding a class is has got nothing to do with admissions.Many idiots take advanced stuff until they learn it's not for them.However,I'd be interested if these males and females took a test on their demanding classes' teachings.Of course,we have grades instead,and grades correlate weakly with intelligence(see above).Coursework contributing to grades,etc. are simply not intelligence and representations of actual mathematics research.In this,you need effort, not brains.Constant tests and determining the GPA from them are bad as well.Males prefer sudden death exams,a fight or flight mechanism.By comparison,a female will prefer many exams and averaging out grades to play safe,a position consistent with her reproductive value being greater to the society.Gradual evaluation prefers continous effort and females.Let's examine areas where you really need brains:
The field medal:Biggest honor in maths.Equivalent of a Nobel.No woman has ever achieved it.

USA Math Olympiad:2008 team:(click to see full pic)

Not one woman.

 
They also graduated at equal rates and obtained an equal number of doctoral degrees.
And this was based on..grades.
Sex differences were found in students’ fields of concentration: Men received more degrees in engineering and physics, whereas women received more degrees in biology and medicine.
And this is exactly what Cohen expected to find from his E-S model of cognitive sex differences.Checking SMPY data, one reaches the conclusion that males gravitate to the inorganic sciences.Example:
Inorganic sciences(Bachelor's degrees):Cohort 1 males:46.7%,Cohort 2:65.9%,Cohort 3:82.2%
Females:23.2%(Cohort 1),35%,(2),45.4%(3)
And this is damning evidence against Spelke's fantasy that females and males are equally attracted to inorganic sciences.
Nevertheless, male and female students received degrees in mathematics at nearly equal rates.In one SMPY cohort, for example, 10.3% of men and 9.7% of women received bachelor’s degrees in mathematics, and 2.2% of men and 2.1% of women went on to receive
master’s degrees in mathematics (Benbow, Lubinski, Shea,
& Eftekhari-Sanjani, 2000)

I'll tell you why Spelke gives you this biased picture.The full data is somewhat different:
Cohort 1:about 5 males for 4 females got a Bachelor's in math,11 males for 10 females got a Master's,and twice as many got a Doctorate.
Cohort 2:Spelke's cohort.She apparently didn't notice that more than 80% of math doctorates were male in this cohort.More likely she knew yet distorted the truth.
Cohort 3:Males got more than twice the number of Bachelor's as females.Somewhat strangely,9.1% of females got Master's in math,while only 7.4% of males did.Even more strangely 8.7% of males got a doctorate.None of the females did.It is likely that the small female sample size(24) contributed to these anomalies.

That ends my rant.Have a nice day and don't believe Spelke. 

P.S.If in case,you need to look at the SMPY data,here it is:http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:LyqBKhfNG0sJ:www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/DoingPsychScience2006.pdf+male+10.3+female+9.7+study+of+mathematically+precocious&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in

Introduction,aka answering the "WTF?" question

I am an arrogant prodigy.Only 13 year old,I live in India.I also happen to be a topper.This blog is,to put it simply,my ramblings on science and society to boot.I am also an atheist,and an ardent anti-creationist.Expect evolution articles from time to time.But my main interest happens to be the study of IQ.Recently,a Raven's Progressive matrices test revealed mine to be 135,2.3 SDs above the mean.Naturally all it did was to boost my pride-but then introspecting,I realized few 7th graders would understand Haldane's dilemma,or come up with the idea of truncation selection(no,honestly,I did come up with and only later realized it had been established)by themselves,study racial and gender gaps in intelligence or get a K/D ratio of 9 in Call of Duty 4(alright,I'll give you this one).

Right,that ends this article.My first ever science article will be up shortly,criticising feminism evangelist Elizabeth Spelke's latest pseudoscience.