Class, brains and income

Class (SES; author uses "SEB" = Socio-Economic Background) primarily affects starting salaries, whereas intelligence affects salary growth over time. Don't tell the sociologist down the hall -- he or she might lash out at you. (Click for larger figure.)Note, in the figure the curves for above or below average SEB are computed at fixed (mean) IQ and vice versa. (So, e.g., one curve describes people with average IQ but above average SEB; another describes...

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Test preparation and SAT scores

How easy is it to raise SAT scores via test prep? The figures below come from The Effect of Admissions Test Preparation: Evidence from NELS:88, by D.C. Briggs. Black dots are students who participated in test preparation (e.g., an expensive commercial course, or even a private tutor; see below) between taking the PSAT and taking the SAT. White dots are students who did not. Click for larger versions.But who needs data like this when one can simply...

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Turing and wavefunction collapse

Some interesting discussion by Turing biographer and mathematical physicist Andrew Hodges of Turing's early thoughts about the brain as a quantum computer and the possible connection to quantum measurement. I doubt the brain makes use of quantum coherence (i.e., it can probably be efficiently simulated by a Turing machine), but nevertheless these thoughts led Turing to the fundamental problems of quantum mechanics. He came close to noticing that a quantum computer might be outside the class of machines that a Universal Turing Machine could efficiently...

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Daily Show catches linsanity

The Daily Show with Jon StewartGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on FacebookSorry if this is a bit late. It's even funnier than the SNL video I linked to earli...

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Beyond Race in Affirmative Action

The NYTimes asked me to comment on Fisher v. Texas, the case involving affirmative action in higher education that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear.Needless to say I anticipate being viciously attacked. I invite you to visit the Times comment section and engage my detractors ;-)Rely on Merit, Not RaceIn considering Fisher v. University of Texas, let’s acknowledge a key factual point about affirmative action: We have good tools for predicting college success, and those tools work about equally well across all ethnic groups and even for rich...

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Linsanity on SNL

Pseudo-Chinese gibberish -- didn't Shaq do the same to Yao Ming when he first came in the league? I think Yao Ming played it off: "Chinese is hard!" or something like that.Wikipedia: ... Lin has regularly heard bigoted jeers at games such as "Wonton soup", "Sweet and sour pork", "Open your eyes!", "Go back to China", "Orchestra is on the other side of campus", or pseudo-Chinese gibberish.[7][155][157] Lin says this occurred at most if not all Ivy League gyms. He does not react to it. "I expect it, I'm used to it, it is what it is," says Lin.[155]...

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Luke and Maddie revisited

Econtalk interviews Adam Davidson about his recent Atlantic article on US manufacturing. Adam says he "is good at math and computers" and is a "certified Mac (Apple) technician" but is sure he "couldn't do Luke's job". (Luke is a skilled machinist who has to test tolerances, program a half million dollar cutting machine, visualize spatial relationships, use calculus!, etc. For this he is paid a bit over $50k per year.) What fraction of Maddies (unskilled workers) could, given access to training?(An interesting remark could be made about M,V,S cognitive...

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Intergenerational mobility: Bowles and Gintis and Clark

I went back to Bowles and Gintis to compare their results to those of Greg Clark that I posted about recently. The largest correlation reported by Bowles and Gintis for intergenerational earnings is 0.65, obtained when fathers' and sons' earnings are averaged over multiyear periods, whereas Clark finds a (roughly) 0.7 -- 0.8 correlation between parental and children's social and economic status. Clark was studying the past 200 years, using rare surnames,...

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Solvay 1961

This photo takes up an entire wall of the UC Davis physics building, next to the elevators on the theorists' fourth floor. Click for larger versi...

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Greg Clark: Are there ruling classes?

While at UC Davis to give a colloquium earlier this week, I had the pleasure of meeting economic historian Greg Clark in person. Here's a sample of his latest work, which suggests that convergence of social classes has been surprisingly slow: averaged parent-child correlations of variables such as wealth, education and occupation are in the 0.7 -- 0.8 range over the last 200 years, the same as found in India, with its caste system! IIRC, Greg said...

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History is impossible

... and economic history is even harder.Andy Lo (MIT) explains that economists have yet to agree on the causes and consequences of and remedies for the recent financial crisis. This is a must read. I hope to provide further comments when I have more time.Although I covered the housing bubble (which I called a bubble as early as 2004) and ensuing financial crisis in great detail on this blog, I've spent very little time discussing books about the crisis. That's because many (most?) of the authors (who, as Lo points out, tend to disagree strongly...

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Jeremy Lin in historical perspective

This is an interesting statistical analysis of the significance of Jeremy Lin's performance in his first 4 games. As Magic said during the Lakers-Knicks half-time show: "Jeremy Lin is FOR REAL"!His 20 points and 8 assists (but below 50% shooting percentage) last night against the Timberwolves may have elevated him to roughly the 5 streak level. The other factor that needs to be considered is that these were his first 5 games as a starter. As far...

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Class and Race

This recent paper (NYTimes coverage) notes that achievement gaps between 10th and 90th percentile income families are now larger than corresponding black-white gaps. Click for larger figures. The shaded shapes indicate 10-90 gaps, whereas unshaded figures indicate B-W ga...

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UC Davis colloquium

I'll be giving a colloquium at UC Davis on Monday. Please come if you can! slidesTitle: Genetics, intelligence and other quantitative traitsAbstract: How do genes affect cognitive ability or other quantitative traits such as height? I begin with a brief review of psychometric measurements of intelligence, introducing the idea of a "general factor" or IQ score. The main results concern the stability, validity (predictive power), and heritability of adult IQ. Next, I discuss ongoing Genome Wide Association Studies which investigate the genetic...

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Wharton MBA compensation by industry

A correspondent supplied this interesting data from a 2010 survey of Wharton alumni. As expected, financiers out-earned everyone else, with hedgies at the front of the pack. The average hedgie who graduated in 2000-3 made almost 10x what his counterpart in Consumer Goods or Manufacturing or even Technology and Media made, and about 7x what those in Consulting and Professional Services made. Who are the suckers?Total compensation seems to peak about...

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Trouble ahead

A correspondent sent this depressing figure. I suppose this distribution of majors was OK when Americans could make their livings by selling houses to each other, but we're in a tougher world now.See also this post from 2005: History repeatsMore da...

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Paper Promises: Money, Debt and the new World Order

This is a great lecture, informed by Coggan's background as a historian. If you already know something about the subject I suggest starting at 36 minutes in. The talk is also available as a podcast via iTunes (look for LSE public lectures).LSE public lecture: ... as Philip Coggan shows in this new book, Paper Promises: Money, Debt and the new World Order which he will talk about in this lecture, the crisis is part of an age-old battle between creditors and borrowers. And that battle has been fought over the nature of money. Creditors always want...

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Jeremy Lin represents

Jeremy Lin, in da house! A Jason Kidd-like performance. I thought he was going to wash out of the league. Lin was not heavily recruited out of HS and played his college ball at Harva...

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Personnel Selection: horsepower matters

Personnel Selection, whether by sports teams, militaries, universities or corporations, is all about identifying statistical predictors of future performance. How good are these predictors?Let's take college football as an example. Talent evaluation is difficult, but scouts definitely know something. A five star high school football prospect is almost four times more likely to become an NCAA All-American than a four star prospect. (Graphs from this...

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Transparency in college admissions

Daniel Golden (Bloomberg) reports that the Department of Education is now investigating both Princeton and Harvard regarding discrimination against Asian-American applicants.Below is an excerpt from an op-ed Bloomberg asked me to write on this topic.What Harvard Owes Its Top Asian-American Applicants: Stephen HsuIt’s a common belief among Asian- American families that their children are held to higher academic standards than college applicants from other ethnic groups. Such practices were openly acknowledged after investigations at universities...

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