What good is an estimate of the average IQ by college major? Without even a standard deviation for each, what does it tell you that could ever be useful?
Reminds me of my favorite statistical/philosophical quote:
```When one commits to making statements about the average, they may be talking about someone who never exists, but they make very nice statements.```
It reflects on our over used emphasis of the 50th percentile when making statistical statements that are meant to be informative. In policy, the average across a population, or subset of the population, is often used as a form of a "fairness" rule. IMHO, examining other quantiles can be much more informative about the nature of a distribution, perhaps for economic policy reasons.
If the minimum average IQ for a major is X, then there will be many students in that major with IQs less than X.
Also, keep in mind that the study is deriving IQ from students' performance on standardized tests. These tests are primarily intended to measure education, rather than intelligence, and so this might simply be showing that the average education level of college students is higher than the average of the general population.
If they wanted to be honest about the reliability of their data, they would have left the IQ column off completely.
7 comments
[ 281 ms ] story [ 267 ms ] thread```When one commits to making statements about the average, they may be talking about someone who never exists, but they make very nice statements.```
It reflects on our over used emphasis of the 50th percentile when making statistical statements that are meant to be informative. In policy, the average across a population, or subset of the population, is often used as a form of a "fairness" rule. IMHO, examining other quantiles can be much more informative about the nature of a distribution, perhaps for economic policy reasons.
Also, keep in mind that the study is deriving IQ from students' performance on standardized tests. These tests are primarily intended to measure education, rather than intelligence, and so this might simply be showing that the average education level of college students is higher than the average of the general population.
If they wanted to be honest about the reliability of their data, they would have left the IQ column off completely.