It may not be anything so complicated as smarter people being closer to the ball. It looks to me as if there is an inverse correlation between IQ and the running speed necessary in a position. So the simplest explanation for this pattern is that running speed and intelligence aren't highly correlated, and you can't simultaneously optimize for both.
E.g. you can pick a smart guy to be your center even if he's slow, because he doesn't have to run much. Whereas in a wide receiver or a running back you just want the fastest guy you can find.
Here's an explanation for why foot speed and intelligence are inversely correlated:
"Upper body strength is relatively equally distributed between the races, but footspeed most definitely is not. So, tailbacks, wide receivers, and defensive players have a need for speed, so they are disproportionately black. I haven't checked recently, but in most recent years since Jason Sehorn's retirement, none of the 64 NFL starting cornerbacks at the start of the season were white, and none of the 32 starting tailbacks were white. (For some reason, this never gets as much publicity as the perceived lack of black quarterbacks.)"
"As we all know, there is about a 15 point difference IQ gap between whites and blacks, so positions that are black dominated tend to have lower average IQs than positions that are more integrated (or that are white monopolized, such as placekicker and punter)."
This seems like a much more plausible explanation of the facts than the "closer to the ball" theory. Are we really that scared of "things you can't say" not to point out something that is obvious to anybody who watches football?
You seem to be assuming that intelligence and IQ are the same thing. Is that what you meant?
Just to be clear, I believe in speaking frankly about race, so am not objecting to that aspect of your post. But I'm skeptical of attempts to bottle up something as grand as "intelligence" into a single metric. For example, I read somewhere that the original Stanford-Binet had to be modified because women were scoring higher than men (so it obviously needed correcting). That's a pretty compelling detail, if true.
(I don't remember where I first read this, but a little Googling brings up http://www.beyondsatire.us/?q=node/18, which is hardly definitive but does have an interesting author.)
Intelligence is certainly very complicated. For the sake of this discussion, I was taking intelligence to be "intelligence as defined/measured by IQ tests". Perhaps I was being sloppy and should have used a different word.
"Remember, these are averages, and all groups overlap. You can't deduce an individual's intelligence from her ethnicity. The only thing you can reasonably infer is that anyone who presumes to rate your IQ based on the color of your skin is probably dumber than you are."
> For some reason, this never gets as much publicity as the perceived lack of black quarterbacks.
The reason is that quarterback is the most glamorous and well-known position. This explanation doesn't explain why there is a lot of publicity about the underrepresentation of women in science -- "scientist" is definitely not a glamorous profession.
(I noticed all of the comments you contributed to this community are effectively unsubstantiated racism. I suspect I am wasting my time replying, so I will keep this brief.)
"foot speed and intelligence are inversely correlated...'[black people are faster and dumber and white people are slower and smarter]'"
You are missing the point entirely. While there is an inverse correlation between footspeed and intelligence in this extremely limited dataset, this evidence does not suggest there is a general inverse correlation because there are many many too many confounding variables. Look all you want, you won't find data that supports your conclusion.
There is a fundamental biological reason for this fact; no data suggests there are fundamental genetic differences between the races that result in the expression of differences in intelligence or footspeed or any other significantly complex trait.
This is because behaviorally modern humans evolved only 50,000 years ago. Modern humans were crafty and mobile enough to inhabit most corners of the world. We have not been isolated for sufficient period of time to establish the differences you are looking for.
We all are effectively the same version. (However, there are some uncomfortable questions that could be asked about Indigenous Australians because of their early and extended isolation. But, I don't know enough to draw any conclusions.)
I will gamble there is a significant inverse correlation between education and racism.
edit: I don't think we ought to tolerate racism here simply because it is dumb.
The existence of a racial gap in IQ is simply not in dispute. It shows up in SAT scores, it shows up in military IQ tests during times with a draft, and it shows up in numerous psychological studies. See for instance this paper from Brookings Institute, which is about as mainstream liberal as you can get ( http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_iq.pd... )
The only question is if the difference or environmental or genetic. I'm not positive what causes the difference myself. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to make a bet, I'd probably say a substantial portion of the gap is genetic in origin. For evidence of this, I'll point you to this article in Slate (a very mainstream news source): http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/
no data suggests there are fundamental genetic differences between the races that result in the expression of differences in intelligence or footspeed or any other significantly complex trait.
Percent of body fat, physique, testosterone levels, and brain size have all shown to be correlated with race.
Men of West African decent have broken 10 second barrier on the 100m dash 134 times. No member from any other ethnic group has ever broken 10 seconds. Meanwhile, East Africans routinely monopolize gold medals in the long distance events ( 10,000 meters, marathons). Can you think of any non-genetic explanation for this? Examining the physiques of West Africans versus East Africans makes the genetic explanation pretty obvious.
Studies of IQ highly correlate with latitude. People of northern Chinese and Mongolian origin score higher than the Vietnamese. In limited studies, Intuits score higher than Native Americans from Central America. 60,000 years is actually quite a long time, and the skills necessary to survive harsh northern winters are very different than those needed to survive in tropical jungles.
I will gamble there is a significant inverse correlation between education and racism.
I'd agree with you there. But note that education is an industry. And just like Coke tries to convince you that drinking coke will make you cool, the education industry tries to convince you that there is no problem that cannot be remedied just by spending more on education. In academia, freedom of thought about the issue of IQ is simply not allowed (see Larry Summers and James Watson).
For the record, I am Ivy league educated myself. I would love it if the IQ gap was environmental, and we could figure out the formula for making it disappear. I spent a fair amount of time working for charities in the inner city. But I believe that we must try to get an accurate view of reality, even if the truth might be unpleasant. Willfully denying evidence helps nobody.
FYI, I specially created this account to post on this thread, because I was scared of being called a racist and didn't want that tarnishing my normal account.
FYI, I specially created this account to post on this thread, because I was scared of being called a racist and didn't want that tarnishing my normal account.
I think it is funny that you talk about how we "should not be scared of things 'you can't say" and about how we should "try to get an accurate view of reality" when you have basically created a sockpuppet to post this. If you really believe these things and think rational discussion about them is important, you should be using your normal account.
On my street, there were 8 black children. All 8 scored above 1200 on their SATs -- 5 of them scored 1500 or above, with one garnering perfect score. One (myself) scored a perfect score on the ASVAB (Military IQ test, as you put it -- I have not met anyone else, black or white, who has done this). Two to MIT, one to U Chicago, 5 to four-year public institution (although three of the five were accepted into Ivy League schools, and indeed offered scholarships).
I agree. I think that's why so people ( including me once upon a time) want to avoid talking about genetic explanations for the IQ gap as long as there is any possibility of it being environmental.
But I also think a lot of damage can be done by avoiding talk of genetic differences. The media, politicians, and educational institutions have been telling black people that the problems in the black community are all a result of racism. This has created a hostility towards whites that only harms the cause of economic advancement.
1) if black communities are still feeling the negative effects of slavery and discrimination, then we should recognize this, regardless of its effects on economic advancement (ie, tell the truth, even when it hurts)
2) the phrase "telling black people that" really bothers me because it subtly implies black people can't figure it out without help
3) maybe it's because I live in Texas or maybe because I'm a minority, but I sense more hostility from whites towards blacks than vice versa
4) I haven't seen any research that has tied racial hostilities to lack of economic advancement in the US. You could actually argue the opposite since US became an economic powerhouse after WWII, and racial tensions were very high then
maybe it's because I live in Texas or maybe because I'm a minority, but I sense more hostility from whites towards blacks than vice versa
My experience as a white person living in northern cities is very different. I've been called racial slurs when walking through black neighborhoods, and several of my friends have been mugged. Walking through black neighbords and hearing hip-hop blasting that demonizes people of my skin color is not a very comfortable experience. This blog post is good introduction to the topic, from the black northerner perspective: http://www.ta-nehisi.com/2008/07/a-very-uncomfortable-post-a...
the phrase "telling black people that" really bothers me because it subtly implies black people can't figure it out without help
Most people rely on the media and educational institutions for their information, that's the job of those institutions. And a lot of it is black leaders telling black people that racism is the problem.
I haven't seen any research that has tied racial hostilities to lack of economic advancement in the US. You could actually argue the opposite since US became an economic powerhouse after WWII, and racial tensions were very high then
In the north, there is far more residential segregation today than there was fifty years ago. I think a major factor for this is that it's just not very safe for a white person to live in many predominately black neighborhoods. This ends up cutting off the black community economically.
"In a study of the demographic characteristics of elite Ethiopian athletes, 38% of the elite marathon runners were from the region of Arsi, which accounts for less than 5% of the Ethiopian population 2. As shown in Figure 1, these findings were mirrored in Kenya, where 81% of the best Kenyan runners originated from the Rift Valley province, which accounts for less than a quarter of the Kenyan population 1. "
"These initial studies of elite Kenyan athletes by Saltin et al. 6;14 demonstrate that factors such as increased childhood physical activity and hard training are probably the major contributors to the superior performances of Kenyan runners"
"The concept of ‘black’ athletic superiority is based on a preconception that each race constitutes a genetically homogeneous group, with race defined simply by skin colour. This belief is contrary to the assertion that there is more genetic variation among Africans than between African and Eurasian populations 24."
"interesting that Ethiopia and Kenya do not share a similar genetic ancestry, as defined by mtDNA 22;43, but what they do share is a similar environment: moderate altitude and high levels of physical activity. Few other regions of the world have such high levels of childhood physical activity combined with such cultural/financial importance being placed on distance running. This information clearly implicates environmental factors as being more influential than genetic factors in the success of East African distance runners. In an economically deprived region such as East Africa, economic factors also provide an additional motivation, if not a necessity, to succeed in distance running. In summary, it is unjustified at present to regard the phenomenon of East African running success as genetically mediated; to justify doing so one must identify the genes that are important. To do so also disregards the intense training regimens for which East African athletes are famous 56."
conclusion: not based on color of skin, nor based on genetics.
I don't doubt that environment plays a role. And note that the paper you cite did not rule out genetics, and I think he quite overstated the conclusion based on the evidence presented. For the opposing case, try this article: http://www.jonentine.com/reviews/UPI_reconstruction.htm
Even more telling is the case of West African sprinters:
1) In the past six olympics, all 48 male finalists in the 100 meter dash were of West African descent. The chances of this happening by chance is infantesimally small.
2) Despite having the same West African descent, they all grew up in very different environments ( West Africa itself, the Carribean, U.S., Canada, England)
3) Sprinting is one of the most universal of all human activities. It's also one that requires the least number of hours to acheive world class training and conditioning ( I believe I've read world class sprinters only train about 10-20 hours a week ).
Studies have also shown that men of West African decent have more fast twitch muscle and higher levels of testostorone. The evidence for a substantial genetic component seems overwhelming to me.
>Studies of IQ highly correlate with latitude. People of northern Chinese and Mongolian origin score higher than the Vietnamese. In limited studies, Intuits score higher than Native Americans from Central America. 60,000 years is actually quite a long time, and the skills necessary to survive harsh northern winters are very different than those needed to survive in tropical jungles.
Hpw about Ashkenazi Jews, whom have the highest IQ and yet do not originate from a high latitude?
They originate from a higher latitude than they like to think. That's why they look so different from sephardic Jews. (But this is also a controversial topic.)
1.Marian Woronin of poland ran 9.992
2.According to The Economist several groups of immigrants to America(italians, swedish, german etc) showed an iq of about 90 before integrating to society and about 100 after.Black americans seem to be stuck around 90.One possible explanation would be that they have a harder time integrating(if a swedish immigrant learn english good enough he can hide the fact that he is "a squarehead", what does it take for a black person?)
As a long time (silent) reader of Hacker News posts and comments, this comment easily ranks as one of the most offensive, and perhaps the most disturbing.
The notion that race fundamentally has anything to do with intelligence should offend any sane, rational, science-minded person who is even just scarcely familiar with the history of the pseudo-science of eugenics and the countless studies debunking it many claims.
However, more offensive than that, I find the fact that this comment is still here and in fact, up-modded, as offensive to the very core…
What the comment says implicitly is that “Blacks are dumber than Whites - DUH.” If he had simply typed this, perhaps the comment would have been removed or at the very least down-modded to oblivion so that my reading it would have been my own damned fault.
But what is astonishing (and inexplicable, considering the great number of comments I have read on this forum, lauding and praising the seemingly high intellect of the people who frequent this forum) is that because the poster had the guile to conceal his ignorant comment with more words, not only was this comment given credibility, but many had the sheer audacity to up-mod this nonsense. This is sobering…
But what really woke me up, was realizing that the utterly ignorant comment was in response to PG – who is by all accounts the de-facto host/role-model here. I figured I would scroll down a short distance and see the straight-forward, no nonsense rebuttal I have seen him give to comments much less deserving of a dressing down – no such luck.
I shuddered. To think that this is the same man who writes all those essays wherein the common thread is a brutal application of logic – why the silence here, when given what amounts to a perfect lead-in?
Why not quickly question if it is even possible to test for intelligence? Why not describe what such a test might look like if it is indeed possible? Why not suggest that a time delineated test full of arithmetic might be the worst candidate for such a test (as it implies that computers would then be said to have such intelligence in spades)? Why not question the deep-sinking stereotypical association with speed-in-calculation ability with intellect?
Why not?
Let me not speculate as to why not. Let me just say to all who know better, but said and will continue to say nothing – SHAME.
Let me not speculate as to why not. Let me just say to all who know better, but said and will continue to say nothing – SHAME.
Flinging self-righteous accusations about only makes you seem shrill and shallow. Your use of a sockpuppet account to do it makes it cheap as well. (Yes, the other guy did that too.) Most of what you're offering here is a personal emotional response. That would be more effective if you gave it content that wasn't so formulaic (reacting from a socially conforming position and expressing outrage that others have not done the same).
Your main point appears to be that you're angry with pg for not sharing your response and rushing to say so. That suggests that you haven't read his essays very closely.
1. No accusation was flung - I just wrote a tidy summation of what happened.
2. This is not a "sock puppet" account. As I said long time (silent)reader. Never have I felt the need to respond to a comment until I read that utter ignorance and saw that it went unchecked.
3. The only thing I am angry with is that this comment is being given credence on a site that deems itself the treading ground of intellectuals. It's quite simple really, his comment amounts to the proposition "Black people are more stupid than whites"; if this is a proposition that's falseness is even a question here, perhaps I would do best to find another place to spend my time.
Sorry about 2. I mistakenly assumed "long time" meant you'd had an account for a long time.
I don't know what to say about 1 and 3 other than that I disagree.
Edit: I'll say one thing about 3, lest I seem to be secretly agreeing with your nasty straw man. Lower IQ is a factual claim (which no one here has disputed - are you saying it's false? or just that it's offensive to talk about?). This by no means implies lower intelligence unless you equate IQ with intelligence, a leap that I personally find rather dumb. lexlibra did use the word "intelligence", but the thread was entirely about IQ, so this seemed more like a careless word choice than an expression of racist hatred.
If IQ was just an arbitrary measure, that is, if the purpose of the test was to determine how well one takes the test, than this whole thread would be of no consequence. It is because IQ is purported to be a measure of intelligence however, that this conversation makes any sense at all.
So, to suggest that lexlibra was not saying in summation "Blacks are more stupid than whites", and somehow conflated IQ and intelligence ON ACCIDENT, is absurd. Lexlibra used the word intelligence because thats what lexlibra meant. And this can be further confirmed in his/her subsequent comments.
If there's one thing more poisonous than racism it's publicly equating the failure to denounce x with believing x. That is a classic tool of demagogues. In fact, arguably the classic tool of demagogues.
So here's a denunciation for you: lexlibra's comment is lame, and yours is 10x lamer.
People who advocate conclusions for which the evidence is weak merely lead one away from the truth, but people who drag debates down to the level of "whoever's not with us is against us" strike right at the heart of it.
lexlibra's comment is lame ... People who advocate conclusions for which the evidence is weak merely lead one away from the truth
I'm curious what was lame about the comment?
The evidence for the two main propositions is pretty overwhelming. People of West African descent dominate short distance running at the highest levels. For instance, in the past six olympics, all 48 male finalists in the 100 meter dash were of West African descent. Likewise, the speed positions in football are dominated by African-Americans compared to the non-speed positions.
On the second proposition, for whatever the reason, black Americans of West African descent consistently score a standard deviation lower on IQ tests and IQ-like tests ( SAT, Armed Forces Qualifying Exam). The American Psychological Association reports: "The relatively low mean of the distribution of African-American intelligence test scores has been discussed for many years. Although studies using different tests and samples yield a range of results, the Black mean is typically about one standard deviation (about 15 points) below that of Whites (Loehlin et al, 1975; Jensen, 1980; Reynolds et al, 1987)." ( http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/apa_01.html ) The existence of the IQ gap is simply not in dispute.
It seems that my explanation fits the evidence better than anything else proposed here. If there is evidence controverting my view, or supporting another, I would be happy to hear it.
I don't think there is anything lame about your comment. The article in question explicitly involved IQ, and (because of differential representation by position) implicitly involved race, so your comment was relevant and on point, whether or not any given reader agrees with you.
I did not equate publicly or otherwise "failure to denounce x with believing x". Indeed (and listen well here), failure to denounce x, if one knows x to be false, is WORSE than believing x.
This is the mechanism by which ignorance persists. The above is the opposite of education and what makes it even worse is when the silent party has the demagogue-ic status to immediately educate the many with a simple statement.
I don't know what you believe - as I said before I won't speculate. All I know is that if you knew lexlibra's comment to be nonsense, your silence (and calling it lame (and my comment 10x lamer) - sigh - just an embarrassingly juvenile response of the type I thought you sought to avoid here) says something you perhaps didn't want it to say; if you didn't know - I really should be spending my time elsewhere.
Offensiveness is irrelevant. The question of whether there is an IQ gap between races is a factual issue & I think it has been settled. As far as I know there are many possible causes & the GP didn't specifically mention genes so you shouldn't automatically think eugenics.
As a long time (silent) reader of Hacker News posts and comments, this comment easily ranks as one of the most offensive, and perhaps the most disturbing.
Perhaps you should be a little less silent.
If this comment is any indication, your contributions could significantly improve the quality of our community. Don't leave it to the rest of us.
Oh damn. I tried to write an comment about how I agree in principle but this is not the place for the discussion, but re-reading your comment I realized I was wrong. It's a pertinent argument and has my upvote.
Offensive lineman have other physical traits of value though. Namely they're very large (and strong). You'd have to argue that size and intelligence are highly correlated, which seems a stretch.
His point is that there may be a larger pool of people to choose from, and that you would choose the person with the higher IQ all else being equal. Also a stretch.
No, just that size and intelligence are more correlated than speed and intelligence.
My guess is that the correlation between size and intelligence is close to zero. So that would imply there's a negative correlation between speed and intelligence. That would be easy to test: just compare the results of the players' IQ tests with their 40 yard dash speeds.
The correlation between size and intelligence is positive, because malnutrition can lower adult IQ and adult size. That correlation is a lot stronger when you control for other variables, of course.
And 'speed and intelligence' is not quite the correlation you want -- IQ correlates with mental reaction time, so smarties may be 'faster' for short distances because they get a head start.
That's a good point. I somehow didn't consider it before. I guess if they're in the 99.5th percentile of size, very very few of them will have any traits that cause lower height.
I agree that at 40 they will be faster. But for short bursts of speed, or for a run that requires frequent changes of direction (e.g. because you're being chased around) the higher IQ people will have a 'speed' advantage due to mental rather than physical agility.
It's not, really. As Galton discovered, reaction time correlates with other kinds of intelligence.
I've read that modern tests show that some groups have a faster physical reaction speed, but a slower mental reaction speed -- e.g. the signal gets from eye to brain to hand slowly, but the hand moves fast.
The thing about football quickness and reaction time, is that it is nearly all physical reaction speed. You rarely think at all. You've just repeated in practice what you need to do so many times that once you're on the field it becomes automatic. Running backs and receivers for the most part just need to be able to get downfield really, really fast. The offensive line needs to memorize more plays and formations, so a few points higher on the Wonderlic might help them in that regard. But once you're on the field, you aren't "thinking" in the sense that most people use the term. I don't think the Wonderlic scores even figure very highly into what makes a great football player. If anything, the scores are used by the coaches and trainers as a metric for figuring out the best approaches to teach the players what to do.
note: I played tight end throughout high school. I'm a bit distraught that this infographic suggests that the offensive tackles might have been smarter than me.
I don't mean mental reaction time in the sense of quickly weighing possible courses of action -- I mean literally the time it takes for you to register a change. The simple reaction-time experiment is to hold a ruler in front of someone, so it hangs down; they have a hand wrapped around (but not touching) the end of the ruler. You let go, they grab it, you measure how far it fell to see how fast they reacted.
The thing is, some people will start to grab it fast (high mental reaction time) and other people will actually touch it sooner (slow mental reaction time, faster physical reaction time). If you're running in a zig-zag pattern, this would mean that you would start turning faster, though other people might be able to execute a complete turn (start to finish) faster despite lower IQ.
And I would guess that the larger the muscles involved, the more important physical reaction is. So if you're talking about moving your fingers (as in the ruler example), then mental reaction is going to be more important, but if you're moving your whole arm or your legs, the physical reaction is more important.
That may be true. Though you could probably make the case that the optimal physical requirements for a center are rare as well, especially at the NFL level. If those requirements don't correlate with intelligence then centers are being selected partially for intelligence.
From my experience playing football offensive linemen and quarterbacks have significantly higher mental requirements. Personally, I always found keeping a complex offense straight against any potential defense more stressful than actually dealing with the defenders. My role on any given play wasn't set until the ball was snapped (or later). Most skill positions knew what they were supposed to do as soon as the play was called.
It looks to me as if there is an inverse correlation between IQ and the running speed necessary in a position.
The chart doesn't really support this. Cornerbacks are normally required to be a bit faster than receivers, who in turn are normally faster than tailbacks. In those cases, the Wonderlic scores are proportional to the foot speeds. Also, there are different kinds of running speed (e.g. quickness, lateral speed, straigh-away speed) which this doesn't take into account.
When asked about the balls he dropped in big spots, he responded, ‘What about the ball I caught?’” So while an exceptionally score on a standardized test might suggest dyslexia, the guy’s an egotistical bonehead even without mitigating factors.
And that is why Manningham is in the NFL and OP is the one writing about him. Excuse someone for wanting to focus on their accomplishments and not their failures and for having a little backbone -- must be a terrible thing to have. Great athletes who aren't uber confident (whether or not they express it externally) aren't great athletes.
I don't know enough people in sports to be sure about this, but my guess is that the people who try to fix their mistakes rather than crow about their successes are the ones who improve over time.
Given that OP ripped a quote out of context, we will continue to use it as such.
If a reporter/interviewer asks you about your failures, and you simply reference your success, does that necessarily mean you do not fix your mistakes?
How do you suggest you 'fix' the mistake of dropping a few balls in a game on the spot? The only answer is, you go out and continue to have big games. This would be akin to an interviewer asking Michael Jordan 'why did you miss 10,000 shots in your game' and he says 'I made XYZ game-winning shots and was NBA Finals MVP.'
If you look at any of the interviews about teammates/opponents of MJ, they all say he was very, very cocky.
Cocky != Refusal to fix mistakes.
Or perhaps, in a better context, an interviewer asking you why some of your stock purchases did not work out favorably, and you stating that you've had a lot of successes despite your failures.
I'm by no means a Michigan fan, but I saw him play a few games last year (on TV) and he was clearly a very, very good football player. Looking at Manningham's stats on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Manningham he seemed to have a pretty good season last year, when I believe the interview took place.
"Doc, the pill you gave me made me vomit uncontrollably all day, and once I recovered I realized that I was still as sick as before."
"Oh yeah? Well what about all the times I told people to get some rest and drink lots of fluids?"
Yes, I can see how this would be a good success strategy.
(I do agree that it's important to recognize when you're doing the right thing, especially in a creative field. But when you're playing a game according to strict rules, on a team, the need to avoid failure is probably greater than the need to avoid success. Especially when you consider that the people who make it to these teams probably emphasized pursuing success over avoiding failure when they were younger, because someone in the 50th percentile in a professional sport might have been in the 99th percentile as an amateur. If nothing else, they should dampen their individuality to reflect the higher average performance of their peers).
I wouldn't be so sure. In sports, performance is dictated by reflex. Mistakes are eliminated by constant practice, not by ruminating over past errors. So I would expect that the players who are most optimistic would have the best performance, because they derive pleasure from their successes, quickly forget their failures, and are thus most likely to practice.
Mistakes are not eliminated by constant practice unless you practice not making mistakes. If you just keep repeating yourself, you'll just learn to optimize around your mistakes and never reach peak performance.
Yes, but it is one thing to recognize and correct mistakes made in the course of practice -- allowing performance mistakes to haunt you is quite another. A player who derives less pleasure from his successes than disappointment from his failures has little reason to continue playing. Successful players focus on the positive.
Yet in this study the Wonderlic is keyed to position, not performance in that position.
We know that people largely stay within their positions, and we know that metrics like the Wonderlic and the drafting Combine strongly influence both draft decisions, and fielding decisions. We know that such metrics are designed to correspond with existing ideas: in this case, that quarterbacks were smart and tailbacks not so much.
It is plausible that this correlation represents bias in the decisions of the coaches, not real ability.
In fact, that's what suggested by Malcolm Gladwell. He points out that if you sort by Wonderlic scores, those who come out on top haven't really panned out as great quarterback. If we then look at some of the best quarterbacks of all time, you find that, on the Wonderlic, players are all over the map.
I didn't like Gladwell's talk because he ignored baseball: teams like Oakland and Boston have started to understand what metrics do work in assessing player performance (Michael Lewis wrote about this in detail in "Moneyball").
By ignoring something because it doesn't fit in his neat theory, Gladwell loses credibility on this topic.
You might like to know that Malcolm was asked in an interview elsewhere about Moneyball, and he mentions it as one of his favorite books, and indeed he calls it one of the most important works of nonfiction of the past decade. Apparently he's found a way to resolve these difficulties, but not in a way that found it into a 20 minute talk -- I guess it has to wait for the book.
Yeah I have noticed that. Reading his stuff reminds me of junk food, kind of nice at the time but not long before either I want more, or regret having read it. I think its the journalist style writing that I find unsatisfying (his books are one of the few I end up leaving lying around, unfinished and never seem to want to pick up again).
> It is plausible that this correlation represents bias in the decisions of the coaches, not real ability.
Gladwell's point is that there is a matching problem, i.e., that quarterbacks with high Wonderlic scores are drafted ahead of those with low Wonderlic scores. In fact, one of the players on his high scores list (Tony Romo) went undrafted, while some of those on his low scores listed (McNabb, Vince Young, and Marino) were drafted in the first round.
His examples don't support his matching problem thesis. Further, people that follow the NFL know that Wonderlics aren't a huge factor in selecting players.
> Yet in this study the Wonderlic is keyed to position, not performance in that position.
It's automatically keyed to performance in the position since it's based on NFL players, who are the people at the 99.99th or 99.999th percentile at that position.
I think he means that of the small proportion of people who are good enough to make the NFL the coaches will have picked those that conformed to their biases.
I.E. QB A and QB B are both on the edge of joining the NFL for team C. The coach cannot pick between them and so he goes for QB A who does better on the Wonderlic test.
Anecdotal, but the article does cite the Patriots offensive line as high scorers on the Wonderlic. They are also considered probably the best offensive line in football.
But, yeah, Gladwell raises a lot of surprising points in that talk.
While somewhat indicative of the types of questions you could expect to see on the test the real thing is much more difficult. The questions start out very easy and get progressively more difficult. Many of the questions are not multiple choice either. You write in your answers.
Wikipedia says one football player, Pat McInally, got a perfect score. That's an absolutely huge accomplishment. There is only a relative handful of people in the world capable of that. In fact, the vast majority of people don't even finish. Mensa uses the Wonderlic as one of their admission tests and you can qualify with plenty of room to breathe even if you've left 10 questions blank.
Hi, Occam here. This is just a map of the white/black ratio of each position. There is a 15 point difference between the mean IQ of European-descended (white) Americans and African-descended (black) Americans Please note this is something You Can't Say so don't speak publicly of it.
The most interesting thing to note here is that white players score about half a standard deviation higher than the national white IQ, and black players score about half half a standard deviation higher than the national black IQ. Since life is sort of an IQ test, this isn't too surprising. There are a lot bad decisions you can make to screw up your football career before making the NFL - a higher IQ will keep you away from these things.
As always Steve Sailer is indispensable in these matters: "Are football players dumb? Actually, they are fairly smart. The NFL requires draft prospects to take the Wonderlic IQ test. Offensive guards averaged 107, centers and punters 106, quarterbacks and kickers 104. The speed positions averaged lower: halfbacks, free safeties, cornerbacks, and wide receivers averaged from 91 to 94. Still, at both the white positions and the black positions, prospects scored about a half standard deviation higher than the respective white and black national means.
Of course, IQ tests do a lousy job of measuring improvisational mental ability, which football players, especially the black ones, are particularly good at. (See my classic article "Great Black Hopes" for the full story.)"
Your last point main me feel a little better. I was really unimpressed to see that the safety positions were rated so low. In many respects, this is the hardest position on the field to play, because you need to adjust how you play it not only every play, but several times during the play.
Interesting that you simply term this a "white/black" ratio of each position. Why didn't you call it an "advantaged/disadvantaged" ratio? Why not a "beneficiary/victim" ratio?
If you are trying to chalk up these differences to some kind of genetic disparity, that in fact Has Been Said, repeatedly, for hundreds if not thousands of years, continues to be loudly parroted by certain segments, and has been repeatedly shown to be uninformed swill.
Why don't we see any discussion here about differences in IQ scores of people from different economic classes, in a nation where opportunity (and even access to healthcare) is so disparate between races?
"white kids from households with annual incomes of $20,000 to $30,000 easily outscore black kids from households with annual incomes of $80,000 to $100,000."
In an adoption study where black and white babies were both adopted by high IQ white parents, there was a one standard deviation difference ( 15 IQ points) between the black and white children.
Don’t tell Tufte that I’ve used the radius, not the proportional area, of the circle as the value for each ellipse! A cardinal sin that I’m using in this case to improve proportion and clarify a point.
I don't understand why this is okay. I imagine he means it was hard to perceive the difference between correctly scaled circles, but that means the data is close, not that you should misrepresent it.
I can see he's written a book about this, so I should assume he has good reasons, but the ones he gave don't seem it.
The problem is that simply scaling the radius exaggerates the difference between numbers because:
* 26 is 30% more than 20, but
* a circle with radius 26 is 69% larger
than a circle with radius 20.
I just read an article criticizing this exact thing, but I can't find it again.
Actually both area and radius are completely meaningless as a representation of intelligence. Perhaps some figure that represents percentile score would work better -- something like an empty glass for 0%, a glass half-full for 50%, etc; or something like the circles that Consumer Reports uses for rating products.
It's not everything though. Dan Marino had a famously low Wonderlic--15. It's definitely believable when you hear him speak, but he still got it done in amazing fashion on the field.
There's a big list here (it's a SWF and takes a while to load, but is very interesting):
I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you think the average NFL coach is not of above average intelligence? That job is far too competitive for that to be true.
I would be interested in that. It seems coaches need a lot of the sorts of intelligence (social, etc) that the IQ test misses entirely. But I'd be willing to bet they're still among the smartest guys on the team.
I can't say I agree with his conclusion. Lineman are there mainly to be big and collide with other lineman, whereas receivers have a much more skill-intensive job. They have to try to run in pattern while still breaking free of defenseman, but doing so in such a way that the quarterback still knows where to throw the ball. They have to then catch the ball (requiring them to predict its flight path and adjust their path accordingly, an exercise in physics) then run with it and avoid tackle.
I would think 10 extra IQ points would benefit a receiver or a running back far more than a lineman.
E.g. you can pick a smart guy to be your center even if he's slow, because he doesn't have to run much. Whereas in a wide receiver or a running back you just want the fastest guy you can find.