Some random things that i read recently+thoughts

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-rt-brazil-prisonreadingl2e8hp75l-20120625,0,7694158.story

This is an interesting idea.

http://news.yahoo.com/math-anxiety-school-scientists-too-190128180–abc-news-tech.html

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/06/22/1205259109

Not surprised. Surely, there is a similar aversion among filosofy students at my university to logic, since its the formal near-equivalent of math. And when i change to linguistics this fall, i expect to see a similar aversion to formal linguistics (say, generative grammar).

I wonder, is there an opposite effect, an aversion to words in math depts? Word/language anxiety?

http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/

“The Honest Courtesan

Frank commentary from a retired call girl”

An anti-neofeminism blog. Deals alot with dumb politicians and sex and sex trade etc. Added to my feed. Generally, i find hookers interesting. Unfortunately, i dont know any afaik.

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_Hypotheses

 “Medical Hypotheses is a medical journal published by Elsevier. It was originally intended as a forum for unconventional ideas without the traditional filter of scientific peer review, “so long as (the ideas) are coherent and clearly expressed” in order to “foster the diversity and debate upon which the scientific process thrives.”[1] Medical Hypotheses was the only Elsevier journal that did not send submitted papers to other scientists for review.[2] Articles were chosen instead by the journal’s editor-in-chief based on whether he considered the submitted work interesting and important. The journal’s policy placed full responsibility for the integrity, precision and accuracy of publications on the authors, rather than peer reviewers or the editor.[3]

The journal’s lack of peer review[4] and publication of ideas that are considered clear pseudoscience,[5] particularly AIDS denialism,[6] attracted considerable criticism, including calls to remove it from PubMed, the prestigious United States National Library of Medicine online journal database.[5] Following the AIDS papers controversy, Elsevier forced a change in the journal’s leadership. In June 2010, Elsevier announced that “Submitted manuscripts will be reviewed by the Editor and external reviewers to ensure their scientific merit”, suggesting that peer review is now in place.[7]

Too bad. Pre-print peer-review is not that good an idea (perhaps not a good idea at all), as i have previously posted about, twice.

The author of the blog is quite interesting, even if he is a crazy xtian (see his other blog).

I have been reading alot of posts from his blog:

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/why-are-women-so-intelligent.html

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/do-elite-us-colleges-choose-personality.html

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/why-are-modern-scientists-so-dull.html

This one was especially interesting. Also, R. Lynn’s general model of achievement seems about right, tho not quite: IQ × Conscientiousness × opportunity = Achievement. I propose this one instead:

The reasoning being: 1) It is intelligence and not IQ that is important. IQ is only important in as far as it correlates with g. Thus, substitute those two. 2) Similarly for conscientiousness. It is only relevant in as far as it predicts amount of work/effort. One can increase workload without increasing C score, and the result is more work done = achievement. Thus, substitute C for work. 3) Some things may have a minimum threshold of g. I suppose it is impossible to teach, say, linear algebra til someone who is at g = 80. If there is no threshold within the domain, one can just set it to 0. 4) An even more general model is perhaps this:

Note the added WorkingSpeed. With matters related to intelligence, this is not relevant as ability is pretty much the same as speed, but there are some contexts where those are not the same. There is however also an issue with non-linear effects. One can get around this by having all the factors as functions like this:

I will be reading these posts in the future:

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/replacing-education-with-psychometrics.html

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/mavericks-versus-team-players.html

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/reliable-but-dumb-or-smart-but-slapdash.html

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/truthfulness-in-science-should-be-iron.html

and perhaps some more.

Leave a Reply