- returning to a topic that faded recently - On 4 May 2004 08:19:48 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jay Warner) wrote:
[snip, about schools] mine, previous > > > > As I mentioned obliquely in discussing IQ, the 'product' is apparently > > improving steadily -- if the standardized tests are to be the guide. > > A test that is 15 years old needs to be re-standardized because > > the children are scoring half a grade higher than they did before. JW > > I think this point needs to be announced better, and documented fully. > How one measures 'IQ' or test performance is not a simple question. RE- > setting the 'norm' or standard or test difficulty only makes time based > comparisons more difficult. > > When a stock splits, the earnings per share must be recalculated to > compare before and after. Same for a test, true? But you can't use the > same test over and over, can you? You certainly can't give the same > test to someone in rapid succession, without expecting an upward trend > in result. > I've announced the Flynn effect three or four times in the sci.stat.* groups. In some circles, it has been regarded as a rather big thing. By the tautological definition that "IQ is a measure of how well people score on IQ tests," IQ is increasing, for children and for adults in those places that do a lot of measuring. The fact that re-norming had been necessary, over and over, because more items were being scored right, gave retrospective evidence that the trend went back to WW II at least. Here is a journal article with Flynn's speculation in 2001, http://www.apa.org/journals/rev/rev1082346.html , which I found by Googling < "Flynn effect" IQ > . I had not read this 101KB article before. ===== start "There are problems with the Factor X explanation for Black�White differences (see Flynn, 1980 , pp. 56�63), and those problems are clearly insurmountable for a literal Factor X explanation for IQ gains over time. Every plausible factor suggested to explain IQ gains, whether better schooling, better nutrition, altered attitudes to problem solving, smaller families, or the increasing popularity of video games, affected some before others and has a differential impact at any point in time." ===== end Flynn goes on to offer an explanation of interaction of environment and genes, and difficulties of some measurement of environment. It is too complex to summarize here -- I think he was summarizing in his couple of thousand lines. -- Rich Ulrich, [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
