On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:43:36 -0700, Jim Clark wrote: >>> "Mike Palij" <m...@nyu.edu> 31-Aug-09 2:12:45 PM >>> On Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:18:52 -0700, Jim Clark wrote: >>>These lists, especially by themselves, do NOT allow the kinds of >>>inferences Mike appears to make. >> >>I'm not sure I understand what kind of inferences you're referring to. >... >JC: >I was referring to inferences like Mike's in the next few lines.
Unless you're psychic or can see the future the text you quote cannot be the inferences you were referring to in your post because these comments were made in response to your "inferences" comments which, of course, were posted AFTER your inferences comment. Either you have amazing powers to warp the space-time continuum or you either neglected to use the "inferences" I made in some prior posts or I actually hadn't made such "inferences" in earlier posts and you decided to use statements AFTER your inferences comment. >JC: >My earlier posting presented evidence that in fact PhDs are over-represented >in Mike's list, being about 1% or less in the general population and 4% in the >list. The percentage I've calculated from CPS 2008 (Detailed Tables) which is available at: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/educ-attn.html is 1.25% (=2,472/196,305) and this number has sampling error associated with it. Is 1.25% significantly different from 3.96% (i.e., 4/101)? Maybe, maybe not. If the proportion of people at different levels of educational attainment is same for both the richest 101 US citizens and the rest of the population, then this suggest that educational achievement has nothing to do with becoming the richest persons in the U.S., unlike the situation with, say, Nobel Laureates. If one want to say that 3.96% of a group represents an "over-representation" relative to 1.25%, I'll grant that but remind one about the difference between statistical significance and practical significance. That is, about two more Ph.D.s are among the richest 101 than expected by random sampling from the general population (though the richest Ph.D. is ranked 33 and has a net worth of $8.70 billion while college dropouts and people with high school degrees rank among the richest: Bill Gates at #1 and Larry Ellison at #3). This still leaves the question of why aren't there more Ph.D. among the richest people while there are so many in say, Nobel Laureates? If we limit our focus to the top 25 richest people, there are no Ph.D.s at all (just one JD which many would not consider on par with a Ph.D.). >For those over 65, people not completing HS were UNDER-represented >in Mike's list compared to the over 65 general population. JC is assuming that educational attainment in the group of the richest people should mirror the proportions in the general population. It is not clear to me why this would be the case given that we know that the richest people are NOT a random sample from the general population and SHOULD differ from them in systematic ways -- afterall they are the richest and should differ on a number of dimensions though educational achievement does not appear to be particularly relevant. >So Mike's inferences >from JUST the list were incorrect. Of course, even this association does not >say anything about causality given people from wealthy families are more >likely >to go further in school AND more likely to end up wealthy themselves. Bill Gates parents were lawyers and Mr. Gates dropped out of college. All swans are not white. JC would do better to examine the educational achievement of the people on the list and comparing it to their parent's educational level. Indeed, one could argue that that because of regression toward mean, parents with higher educational level will have offspring with lower levels of educational achievement and parents with lower educational achievement will have children with higher educational achievement. Bill Gates is consistent with this though it does not apply when comparing his net worth with that of his parents. >Finally, I also presented links to a few of the many many sites that >would show a robust association between education and income in >more representative samples (sometimes populations, as in the Census). I think you are confused about the questions being asked, namely, it is NOT about whether there is an association between level of educational achievement and net worth IN THE GENERAL POPULATION, rather, it IS about whether people with high net worth also have high levels of educational achievement, suggesting that achieving high net worth is associated with high levels of educational achievement. Clearly, among the very richest, there is no association. Considering that among the top 5 richest people, 2 of them are college dropouts, this raises interesting questions about how a college education is related to becoming the richest person(s) in the U.S. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
