https://www.ceddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/5lm0i6/heat_map_of_sat_scores_in_nyc_oc/

The mods have taken it upon themselves to permit only one political interpretation of the data, and are censoring all competing explanations--even when the comments are civil and more well-sourced than the comments that are permitted to stay.

If you've been on Reddit long you can surely guess what observations/arguments have been censored: that intelligence is a heritable attribute; that SAT results are strongly tied to IQ results; and that there's a well-documented racial component to SAT scores, which has been shown to even contradict the prevailing (uncensored) theory that the most important factor is the student/parent's socioeconomic status.

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So far the mods have deleted 297 comments (29%). Here are some excerpts:

There's definitely a cultural component to achievement independent of family income and parental educational status.

There's also definitely academic achievement gaps that persist between racial groups after controlling for income and hours spent studying on the SAT.

Walton, Gregory M., and Geoffrey L. Cohen. "Stereotype lift." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 39.5 (2003): 456-467.

Walton, Gregory M., and Geoffrey L. Cohen. "A question of belonging: race, social fit, and achievement." Journal of personality and social psychology 92.1 (2007): 82.

 

There's a book about that called The Bell Curve.

 

Don't know why you're being down voted. Why are black people generally faster than anyone else? Because of their genetics.

 

The rise of anti-scientific left wing radical egalitarianism I think can be traced to the post-war era. No doubt the destructive ideology of Nazi Germany pushed our public intellectuals the other way (can't have master races and ethnic cleansing if we remove the idea there are differences between groups, right?), but we're starting to see public sentiment float back.

Nature is nature, science is science. Just because 19th century anthropologists and Nazi Germany did evil things with the knowledge doesn't make the knowledge false.

 

So every piece of data that shows race is created by a misogynistic, bigot, racist white male?

 

Actually, affirmative action has assumed different results for different races. For instance, college admissions offices are actually fairly open about it and studies have been done that show colleges expect people of asian decent to have higher test scores than other races, and will allow African Americans to be competitive with lower scores.

more

more

and you can find more if you're curious.

I would also love to see a heat map weighted by race, not for any racist intents, but to see how justified the affirmative action is in college admissions, because through personal experience it has been taken too far to an extreme, admitting people who shouldn't be admitted and vica versa.

 

I think it's ridiculous we still have affirmative action based on race as opposed to income disparities.

Colin Powell's kids aren't more disadvantaged than poor Asian or White kids.

 

Tho I haven't analyzed this particular data in depth yet, race/ethnicity and parental education levels usually entirely mediate the association with income or wealth.

 

SAT scores correlate about as well with IQ test scores and one IQ test does with another or SAT does with PSAT, i.e., if you know IQ you can pretty well estimate SAT and vice versa, +/- some modest error term. That's not to argue that effort or culture are completely irrelevant, but mostly that 1) SAT is heavily weighted towards general cognitive ability aka "intelligence" 2) The educational component is fairly modest and mostly tests content that is broadly similar between a wide range of US schools today. 3) SAT and other achievement tests lean on traits besides intelligence alone, but these are also quite heritable.

 

This is more race, less wealth. For example, black children of families making more than $250k per year score lower on the SAT than white and Asian pupils from families making less than $15k/year.

Etc., etc.