"Other qualities of a far more subtle sort, chief among which in both cases is imagination, go to the making of a good artist or of a good mathematician." (http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Quotations/Bocher.html …).
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Do you have to be smart to be a research mathematician? Sure. Does the fact that black Americans score lower on IQ tests, on average, let other Americans off the hook for the extreme racial imbalance in research math? Uh, no. Because, like I DID spell out in my story, there is...
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1) no genetic evidence to suggest the average IQ gap between racial groups in America reflects genetic differences caused by natural selection acting differently on human populations in different parts of the world over millennia (their argument)
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....as opposed to environmental/cultural/political forces like centuries of legally-enforced racism that have resulted in vast racial disparities in education, income and wealth.
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2) No reason to think that even if the IQ gap is in fact partly genetic, it would not also be affected by culture/environment. (The average genetic contribution to various human behavioral traits IS likely different across geographic ancestry groups, population geneticists say...
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...there's just no evidence how different or in which directions for IQ in particular, not to mention cognition more broadly. And, the geneticists say, untangling it is going to be exceedingly hard).
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3) Most pertinent to this specific flavor of Race-IQ Twitter's interest in the right-tails of IQ curves, to which they attribute the explanation for much of social inequality: No evidence super-high I.Q. is the key to math ability, per quotes above and others (h/t
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Replying to @amy_harmon @MathPrinceps
"per quotes" so you're just going to take their word for it instead of looking at a regression plot? Why don't you ask them how they choose their juniors? (ans: high scoring on standardized tests)
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Replying to @BalkanizerBlog @amy_harmon
No serious graduate program in mathematics bases its admissions decisions primarily on the standardized test scores of applicants. No competent mathematics professor agrees to supervise the doctoral work of any student because that student has high standardized test scores.
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Standardized test scores are typically the least important variables in all these decisions. Indeed, professors seldom bother even to consult them when deciding whether to advise a student's graduate work. Other far more revealing data are available by that time.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @amy_harmon
That's what i've heard from other PhDs in other programs (combo of SATs, grades & CVs), but not maths specifically. Your direct experience can probably speak to it more though, thanks for the info.
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