Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Domains

Domain: wordsworth.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to wordsworth.com.

Comments · 6

  1. Re:Are SATs racist? by Ian+Lance+Taylor · · Score: 1 · on Cal Schools May Nix SAT In Admissions Process

    Have you ever heard of the Chitlin's Test? It was an intelligence test designed for black culture, using questions and scenarios which were more likely to be familiar to them. On that test, blacks tended to outscore whites.

    Was that test racist? Or are the usual tests, written by members of the majority culture, racist? Is it even possible to write an intelligence test which does not favor some parts of society over others?

    Anybody who is interested in this subject should read Stephen Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man.

  2. Re:Political Logic by Ian+Lance+Taylor · · Score: 1 · on Cal Schools May Nix SAT In Admissions Process

    We don't like the SAT test, since its results disagree with our vision of a fair and perfect world. Therefore, the test is defective and must be eliminated.

    I don't know who you mean by "we," but that's not why I don't like it. I don't like it because the connection between what the SAT actually tests and anything that actually matters, such as intelligence, is low. The SAT is not even a particularly good predictor of good grades in college, and good grades in college is a pretty bad predictor of success in life.

    If we had a good test for intelligence, I'd be all for it. But intelligence is not a single quantity, and I'm not sure such a test is even possible.

    Anybody interested in this subject should read Stephen Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man.

  3. Re:It's a feedback loop by Ian+Lance+Taylor · · Score: 2 · on Cal Schools May Nix SAT In Admissions Process

    The people who study and work hard to perform better on the SATs will tend to get better scores on the SATs than those who slacked off. Guess which two skills are extremely important in relation to getting good grades in college? Studying and working hard. In general (always exceptions) people who study and work hard in college make better grades than those who slack off.

    In other words, any old test will do, provided people have to study and work hard to pass it. So why pretend that you are testing something else? We should scrap the Scholastic Aptitude Tests and replace them with the Useless Knowledge Memorization Test.

    Anybody interested in this issue should read Stephen Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man.

  4. Re:Damn by Apotsy · · Score: 1 · on Interesting Commercials
    I'm not sure which online book store is "in" at the moment...

    I say it should be Wordsworth. No silly patent nonsense or big-company-trying-to-crush-the-little-guy crap. p.Plus, they were on the 'net a full two years before Amazon.

  5. T-shirts by Apotsy · · Score: 2 · on The History Is In The Shirts

    There is also a book about T-shirts at Apple. The book only covers up to about 1995, but still there are over 2500 shirts listed in the book!

  6. how many dimensions? by eries · · Score: 3 · on Universe's Curvature Measured?
    For those of you who have read Brian Greene's excellent book The Elegant Universe, or have other sufficiently advanced physics background, do you know if this "curvature" extends into some or all of the 6 micro spatial dimensions?

    Want to work at Transmeta? MicronPC? Hedgefund.net? AT&T?