Morse's Agenda (let's keep it real) Forum

[Mr. Matlock]

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-ran ... /comments/

Dear PDaddy:

Hi, Ivan of DC!

I forget that other nerds read that book as well:

Okay, PhD in chemistry here with a question for Bob Morse.

In the natural sciences there is a fundamental rule that when performing an experiment (or a survey in your case), you must never report more significant figures in your final data than were in the data you gathered during your experiment (or survey). And yet, that is precisely what you do here. You take survey results, which are only reported to one significant figure (1, 2, 3, 4, or 5) and then you average them and give us a number that has two significant figures. In the natural sciences, we consider that to be a flawed number because it is attributing more precision to your measurement than you could theoretically ever have.

I understand that one would average the data to see whether or not to assign a 4 versus a 5, but compiling the data to produce a more precise number than is theoretically possible is not scientific. And then you make matters worse by using those fictional numbers to determine 25% of the final rankings!

Can you please go into more detail about your methodology and why you make the assumption that averaging the data to a fake tenth decimal place is appropriate? Have you published your methods in any peer-reviewed articles that I could read?

Thanks!

concerned chemist

I can't get the picture of Beaker from the Muppets out of my head on that one.

[Always Credited]

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-ran ... /comments/

Dear PDaddy:

Hi, Ivan of DC!

I forget that other nerds read that book as well:

Okay, PhD in chemistry here with a question for Bob Morse.

In the natural sciences there is a fundamental rule that when performing an experiment (or a survey in your case), you must never report more significant figures in your final data than were in the data you gathered during your experiment (or survey). And yet, that is precisely what you do here. You take survey results, which are only reported to one significant figure (1, 2, 3, 4, or 5) and then you average them and give us a number that has two significant figures. In the natural sciences, we consider that to be a flawed number because it is attributing more precision to your measurement than you could theoretically ever have.

I understand that one would average the data to see whether or not to assign a 4 versus a 5, but compiling the data to produce a more precise number than is theoretically possible is not scientific. And then you make matters worse by using those fictional numbers to determine 25% of the final rankings!

Can you please go into more detail about your methodology and why you make the assumption that averaging the data to a fake tenth decimal place is appropriate? Have you published your methods in any peer-reviewed articles that I could read?

Thanks!

concerned chemist

I can't get the picture of Beaker from the Muppets out of my head on that one.

My head just asploded

[newyorker88]

What did you correct? What you cited doesn't back up anything you just said. You keep saying well IF he was this then x is true. You haven't stated any facts just given hypotheticals. I posted facts, Earl is 1/4th chinese, 1/2th black, and 1/4th native american and cited a source. Can you discredit the source? Do you have anything to say the source made it up or is basing it's information off of a joke it heard.

Now I'm very confused. The source described Earl Woods' parents, with his father being Black and his mom being 1/2 Black. And on top of that, it said that the rumor of his having Chinese in him spurned from a joke. Didn't think I needed to explain, and I couldn't find the actual obituary to quote the whole thing so I inserted a relevant part from a direct quote within the paper I wrote. Found it though: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituar ... Woods.html But seriously, not that big of a deal.

It's really not so I'm not going to respond anymore. Your source does not say what you claim it does. Further discussion with you is pointless.

[Kohinoor]

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-ran ... /comments/

Dear PDaddy:

Hi, Ivan of DC!

No black people named Ivan is an obvious flaw to your theory.

[Unemployed]

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-ran ... /comments/

Dear PDaddy:

Hi, Ivan of DC!

No black people named Ivan is an obvious flaw to your theory.

Maybe he's Tim "Ivan" Wise

[Mickey Quicknumbers]

The score gap between blacks and whites/Asians remains constant along the socio-economic spectrum. That is, rich black kids from the suburbs under perform rich white kids from the suburbs. Poor black kids under perform poor white kids. This means that "black just don't use Kaplan" can't explain the difference. Taking blacks "out of the ghettos" so to speak doesn't result in equal scores. There's something about being black that [strike]results[/strike] correlates to a lower score. Whether that is lower IQ or a racially biased test remains to be settled.

Yes. Yes indeed. I'm not exactly sober which correlates to me not being on the top of my game haha

You still have not proven that the test is biased. Economic factors are just one of many ways of looking at this. Culture, small pool of black lawyer role models, maybe certain groups have a higher percentage of people who wanted law from early on and started thinking about it and meeting other lawyers from a younger age...

Point is that there could be a wealth of variables that exist that could play a role in this finding.

If you refer to the video linked earlier, they have professional statisticians checking each question across gender, race, etc. and throw out any question that proves to deviate. Therefore, we can all save ourselves some breath because THE LSAT HAS NO RACIAL BIAS. We don't need an alternative explanation to disprove that idea because it's already been disproved.

The correct answer to this debate is: nobody knows why there is a gap between race, even when controlled for socioeconomic status, and nobody on this thread is going to provide unique insight as to why. So let's just leave it at that, and get back to making fun of Pdaddy.

[erniesto]

I think an important step in our societal maturation involves practicing belief in the general goodness of self-interested industry professionals concerning the LSAT, law school admissions and USNWR rankings.

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