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Students From States With Faster Internet Tend To Have Higher Test Scores
An anonymous reader sends word of correlation found between higher internet speeds and higher test scores. Quoting:
The numbers—first crunched by the Internet provider comparison site HSI — show a distinct trend between faster Internet and higher ACT test scores. On the high end, Massachusetts scores big with an average Internet speed of 13.1Mbps, and an average ACT test score of 24.1. Mississippi, on the other hand, has an average speed of just 7.6Mbps and an average score of 18.9.
In between those two states, the other 48 fall in a positive correlation that, while not perfect, is quite undeniable. According to HSI's Edwin Ivanauskas, the correlation is stronger than that between household income and test scores, which have long been considered to be firmly connected to each other. The ACT scores were gathered from ACT.org, which has the official rankings and averages for the 2013 test, and the speed ratings were taken from Internet analytics firm Akamai's latest report.
In between those two states, the other 48 fall in a positive correlation that, while not perfect, is quite undeniable. According to HSI's Edwin Ivanauskas, the correlation is stronger than that between household income and test scores, which have long been considered to be firmly connected to each other. The ACT scores were gathered from ACT.org, which has the official rankings and averages for the 2013 test, and the speed ratings were taken from Internet analytics firm Akamai's latest report.
Faster internet access means faster internet search results when cheating. Therefore the internet should be banned. /s
Silence is a state of mime.
Cheating over dial-up sucks!
The usual /. refrain of correlation is not causation definately applies here. Mississippi had low test scores long before broadband Internet came along.
http://xkcd.com/552/
i could live a little longer in this prison
Yeah, before the Internet, everybody had the same test scores across the board.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
That's paramount to the "corn-flake effect". Many people who are involved in car accidents actually ate corn flakes for breakfast. How scary is that?!??
correlation does not equal causation
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Now we have a study we can cite that proves that ISP malfeasance and lack of capital investment is actually harming the educational outcomes of US students.
thanks obama
"Correlation" is an oft-misused mathematical term of art. Have you seen that scatter plot?
And of course the data itself is suspect. Raise your hand if you believe the minimum statewide average internet speed is 7.6Mbps!
Does anyone take these rote memorization tests seriously to begin? I'm honestly baffled by the sheer amount of stupidity it takes to mention test scores as if they truly mean anything.
Faster internet comes from, in part, higher urbanization (and population density). Higher urbanization tends to encourage more government regulation of environment, more regulation of worker rights, higher wages (in part due to the regulation and in part due to the higher standards demanded by employers), an encouragement for smart parents (and hence their children) to move to such areas (aka "brain drain"), etc. Of course it's little wonder then that those who are left in "Jesusland" would support the free market since they hope to be the outsource target for companies that avoid California because of the higher costs, but there's an inherent unspoken admission that what's being called for is the stupider, stronger to have better odds. And given the fact that it was strength that was a deciding factor for generations in the south on which slave was preferred, it's little wonder there'd be such hatred against blacks as they're a threat to the white power base.
And the above paragraph? Utter, utter bullshit. But, then, it's just as valid as about anything else anyone else will say about this since this study, alone, cannot say much of anything about anything. Sure, it'll help people to reconfirm their biases. It's mostly, useless, though, as all it leads to is rampant conjecture without any real approach to actually testing a hypothesis. So, I'll put in my own conjecture that this is why the Social Sciences are so frowned upon. It's not that you can't do good Social Science work. But as much as journalism latches onto science and misrepresents it, they're double inclined to do so when it involves Social Sciences as it's much bigger clickbait. Which leads me to believe Social Science should focus less on such empty studies.
This smacks of a 3rd factor that causes both faster internet and higher grades. It could be wealth, politics, or simply smarter people move to places with higher internet speeds.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Reading the linked article and looking at the graph I see that this is not even a good correlation never mind being causal.
Want to have your kids do better? Pay attention to them. For the best results, homeschool.
"Mississippi had low test scores long before broadband Internet came along."
Son, I don't know what this "broadband Internet" thing is, but we don't cater to such hi-falutin' nonsense here in Missisippi.
Faster internet also means a larger cable bill. Maybe we are seeing inflated test scores because the people with faster internet are the people who can afford it along with better schools, private tutors, school supplies etc etc.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
Then it's time to look for a common cause behind low standardized test scores and unavailability of high-speed home Internet access.
This is data mining. If you compare enough things you'll find strange correlations. There is little plausible reason to believe there is an actual causal relationship here.
These are also "irrefutable correlations":
US spending on science, space, and technology correlates with Suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation:
http://www.tylervigen.com/view...
Number people who drowned by falling into a swimming-pool correlates with Number of films Nicolas Cage appeared in
http://tylervigen.com/view_cor...
Per capita consumption of cheese (US) correlates with Number of people who died by becoming tangled in their bedsheets:
http://tylervigen.com/view_cor...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
It's picking up other stuff omitted in the study.
between articles submitted with the term "correlation" in the summary, and with comments taking the article to task for being wrong about correlation implying causation.
Nevermind that most of the articles make no such claim at all.
But is it causal? Hmm..
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)
For the best results, homeschool.
There are plenty of countries where you can be thrown in prison for doing that to your kids. Germany is among them.
If there was any data to suggest the ACT tests are statistically valid (they test the thing you think they test) or reliable (they would get the same result if you tested again) then the correlation may be a clue to something. However when the underlying test is neither valid nor reliable, the correlation it shows doesn't even show you there is correlation.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The upshot: Even if a causal relationship corresponds to the study's findings, causes of state-level rates of test achievement are fundamentally different things than causes of student-level rates of test achievement.
In other news, researches have discovered a correlation between the number of pirates and global temperatures. As the number of pirates has decreased global temperatures have tended to rise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
Correlation does not imply causation.
the Borg is more cohesive with faster Internet. we are closer every day to domination.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Rich kids tend to have higher test scores...
The two rules for success are:
1) Never tell them everything you know.
COMCAST guarantees you lowest IQ score in our entire country. Can we sell you something?
Camden and a couple other black cities
This image shows it to be a mix of greens, whites, browns, blacks, and a few other colors.
I don't see what the the color of the buildings and pavement/concrete has to do with the city's literacy rate though. Please enlighten me.
--
Warning: Above message contains satire.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You can find all sorts of weird correlations if you look for them but the mere existence of a correlation is meaningless by itself. In this case my first question would be about money. States with more money will be able to afford both faster internet and better schools. Other factors that need to be controlled for include population density, local industry, demographic makeup, etc to be able to put some meaning to this.
Basically this is a meaningless correlation which provides no context to draw useful conclusions from. Obligatory XKCD.
Go Massholes!
And I see that correlative studies are useless and trivial intellectual masturbation unless they have a causational element, and that there is a correlation between those who feel a "news" site should be reporting actual things of interest instead of mindless trivia and calling such articles bullshit for determining straight correlations are newsworthy.
If it takes you longer to download your porn you have less time to study.
In other news, recent research shows that higher-speed internet is typically purchased by higher-income families, which also happen to have access to higher-quality educations.
Like... duh?
Faster internet - more affluent - not black, etc etc etc
You can stop at "more $". That's the real reason why students in MA do better than students in MS.
Not money that's used to buy kids iPads or Surfaces, mind you. Money that's spent to modernize schools built in the 1960s, or tear them down entirely and put up new ones. Money that's spent to pay teachers more, and attract better teaching talent. Money that's spent on the community and infrastructure to make teachers want to live there.
Also, it's much more profitable for the private companies that "public" education relies on these days, when they have a higher density of students in schools. It's simply not practical to have as many students in a school in rural MS as it is in a school in urban MA. The urbanites get better educations because the private companies that do fund raisers, home and school internet connectivity, buses, general contracting on the buildings, etc. are making more money when they have more students in one place. It's the same reason why Verizon rolled out FiOS to the top 30% most densely populated suburbs and left the rest in the dark.
You can't trust private corporations to do anything other than act in their own self interest. The public sector as originally conceived was supposed to fill in the gaps, working under the assumption that all human citizens of the great USA deserve the same opportunity to have access to high quality education and thus high quality jobs. But such an assumption requires you to accept that each human being is meritorious of their own moral standing, just by virtue of the fact that they exist and are living and breathing. Corporations aren't people, and they don't assign any moral standing to anything except their bottom line.
We wanted nice things and we got exactly what we wanted. But you see, if you're not living in urban America, you aren't worthy of moral concern because you aren't worth enough money to our corporate benefactors.
The message is awfully clear. If you want a chance to prosper in today's economy, jam yourself in a tiny apartment and bleat through the herd of thousands through the doors of your local well-funded school. Welcome to The Haves Caste, USA, citizen. You are entity number 126,438,921.
For general information, there is no good way to adjust for the proportion of the students taking the test, or re-taking the test. Both ACT and SAT refuse to release the test score breakdowns other then by state averages. To do the adjustment you would need to know the number of students at each score level.
Another obvious adjustment which would make this more useful would be to adjust for the population density of each state. The same internet infrastructure investment goes further when the population is more densely packed.
http://xkcd.com/1138/
Conclusion, Comcast makes kids dumber.
The more waves --electromagnetic, wires, fiber-- the larger the opportunity for so called 'rub off' of thise waves. Actually the better-performing students do not know anything more than the average student, nor have better insights, higher intelligence (technically though, yes they do), etc. It's just that they 'pick up' more of the accepted view of the current state of knowledge. Morphic resonance.
There are also other factors that correlates with faster bandwidth: .that 3rd graders are likely to make.
Income level fro example
It is sad that researchers in 2014 are still doing the same mistakes
Maybe headline should be faster broadband can't fix stupid.
This just in!! Students with rich and strict parents have higher test scores ... This is News at NEVER ... DUH.
The states with highest internet speeds AND ACT scores are almost all Blue...
try saying states with higher test scores tend to have faster internet, makes more sense because the smarter the people are the more money is likely to gather and as a result raise living standards...
The reason certain states have faster internet is definitely because they have higher ACT scores.
I'm looking for funding for a study to show a relationship between useless pseudoscience and states with high internet bandwidth per capita.
Students from intact families with more than four times the mean income have higher test scores.
Students who don't waste time with drugs and who study more have higher test scores.
Students who make some personal sacrifices as a future investment have higher test scores.
Students who care about learning as a path to security and personal satisfaction have higher test scores.
And, the highest correlation of all:
Students with higher test scores have higher test scores.
The expense of the housing in which a student lives has been a great predictor of success in schools. Expensive dwellings indicate an ability to spend and that means that service providers will invest more in hopes of capturing an account. Such homes can spend freely for expensive services such as HBO, Showtime, alarm systems and being the phone service as well. Whereas poor communities simply can not afford such things. It is not income levels that one measures. After all for the rich taxable income is shielded in such a way that wealth increases while tax statements may reflect no income at all. The people between the rich and the poor are the ones that tend to be forced to report incomes with accuracy. It is difficult to coerce the poor into reporting income as prison can be a step up compared to their free lives and for such folk prison can only punish the tax payers.
Arent most 'high speed' states the populated socialist infused ones where truth doesnt matter and teachers unions and teachers dont care are only interested in doing the least work for the most pay ?
MAybe there is a correlation with highest speed internet and corrupt politicians also ??
The ecological fallacy concerns making conclusions about individuals from aggregates (states). ... The four common statistical ecological fallacies are: confusion between ecological correlations and individual correlations, confusion between group average and total average, Simpson's paradox, and confusion between higher average and higher likelihood."
From Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy
"An ecological fallacy is a logical fallacy in the interpretation of statistical data where inferences about the nature of individuals are deduced from inference for the group to which those individuals belong.
An example is Red State/ Blue State and income.
Using states, we could conclude that poor states (southern or red states) vote republican.
Yet when run on individuals, rich people vote 60% republican.
The same thing happens in the pharmaceutical industry.
Rather than states, some researchers merely use other researchers published (aggregate) results,
collecting results from many academic pharmaceutical articles (each acting like a state).
Bayer found that they could not reproduce 75% of pharmaceutical academic articles.
When you aggregate (meta-statistics), the knowledgeable complain that you should use individual data, not aggregate data (from articles) to make proper conclusions.
Further examples of the "ecological fallacy" are numerous.
State confounds with another variable, and its extrication can take decades of research, though Bayesian hierarchical models with separate errors at each level can probably extricate the problem these days.
Using aggregate data to make conclusions about individuals has been rejected since the 1950 seminal article by the researcher William S. Robinson. That's 60 years ago! We should become more statistically literate!
The students who take the ACT are not necessarily representative of the state's population. For example, I took the SAT, and not the ACT, because all the colleges I applied to accepted SAT results, but not all accepted ACT results. Students who were going to the local state school just took the ACT alone. I bet the reverse is true in different states. It doesn't take much thought to see these results are totally meaningless.
Correlation is not causation
y = Ax + B + error
for the regression. Or
x = (y - B) / A + error
Perhaps y is a predictor of x.
I think they may have something here; however, the only problem is they have it backwards...
It isn't that faster internet speeds correlate to higher test scores - it's that higher test scores correlate to faster internet speeds!
We should immediately start a nationwide campaign to encourage cheating on the ACTs so that we can all reap the benefits of faster internet!!!