Dr Watson's views on race seem very sensible.

The variance is too high for the difference to be significant

 

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We know all that. The point is, a random man picked off the street is more likely to be taller than the average random woman picked off the street.

 

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The 15 point gap in average IQ between blacks and whites is not significant?

 

It does when someone isn't mixed. It does even when they are mixed. When I see, 50% white, 50% black, I almost always see a black person.

 

No because the variance is too high. Statistically not significant.

http://www.graphpad.com/articles/errorbars.htm

 

I see a Cuban!

 

If you lived in Australia you would certainly know the difference because white people suffer terrible rates of skin cancer.

A white man following your logic would simply assume he was the same as an Aborigine and end up dead as a result.

Our lives are not lived on a genetic level.

 

Just goes to show that phenotype is no indication of genotype. You could be more than 50% "white" and not have to worry about getting burned in the sun.

 

What a load of horseshit.

 

Too bad ALL science is based on it. You'd be mighty glad if it was the poisonous effect of drugs they were testing and ignored the significance aspect.

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I took first year stats and I forgot all that ANOVA shit and all that other crap because I haven't used it since getting an A in the course.

Show me someone who is half black and half white and could be mistaken for white. I can't think of a single person.

 

You got an A in statistics and you don't know why variance defines significance?

You need to go and return that A.

Based on your comprehension of this thread, I think you also need to check your DNA ancestry and your IQ. Who knows, you may even prove your own hypothesis.

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If by variance you mean standard deviation, I know exactly what you mean. Since 1 standard deviation in IQ is 15 points, a 15 point difference in the average of blacks and whites is a huge fucking gap. It means that only 16.67% of blacks have an IQ of 100 or more while 50% of whites do.

 

But you would know whether you burned in the sun from experience not from looking at your genes.

All this science is after the fact.

Nature has made us different and all the time in the world spent studying the genome isn't going to tell us why.

Can't we for once admit we are not the masters of nature?

 

The issue with the IQ gap is not statistical significance, but more fundamental matters. I.e., "what does IQ even measure in the first place?" and "to what extent are population differences attributable to genetics vs. society vs. whatever?"

The following is a Wikipedia summary of the American Psychological Association's Board of Scientific Affairs task force publication in response to The Bell Curve :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ#The_view_of_the_American_Psychological_Association

 

You've done statistics right? What is the variance around that mean?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence_(test_data)

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Here is an image of the variance around the mean by race. As you can clearly see, the standard error bars overlap. Hence the difference is not statistically significant, due to the high variance within the groups.

Here is an excellent article from Nature that defines how IQ is affected.

http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v92/n4/full/6800418a.html

 

Is this your final edit?

 

Uh, S.A.M., those plots don't really help your point here. (Which is probably why you edited them out while I was writing this. Also, now that you've edited one of them back in, notice that the error bars in the black group don't overlap their counterparts in the Asian or white groups.)

The population differences in IQ scores themselves are significant enough to worry about (although not nearly significant enough to justify prejudice, as you and James R have been pointing out).

What *hasn't* been shown is that any of these differences are genetic. It's the results of tests for the genetic factor that have not been significant. Which is to say that, as far as we know, the population differences in IQ result entirely from social status. Far from justifying the view of black people as genetically "inferior" to white people, as Watson suggests, the science shows that what we are measuring here is the damage that racism has done, and continues to do, to minorities.

Although we shouldn't get too carried away with that idea either, lest we conclude that Asians have not been hurt by racism.