http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclectici ... s_ran.html

obviously a little skewered, but still hilarious nonetheless

Yeah, uh, this was debunked shortly after it came out.

Nice try though.

http://americanassembler.com/features/i ... erages.htm

I'm the one who posted the IQ chart correlating IQ and votes in the 2000 election. As the "humor" contributor, I am the one that tracks down amusing stories or cartoons to post here at the American Assembler.

When I posted this chart I had no idea the ruckus it would cause from both the left, who opposed conjuring up the whole IQ business, and the right, who opposed the supposed stats.

As this has gotten a bit out of hand, I feel, and the editors feel, that I should take responsibility for posting this thing and clarify my reasons and intents about using what is clearly suspect data in the first place.

It was irresponsible of me to post this chart in this format and I apologize to the American Assembler and it's readers for having done so. It was never my intent for anyone to take this seriously and I erred in judgment in not realizing that people would. Even if this chart is not a hoax, as it most probably is, it was inappropriate to post it for it is simply offensive.

I have to say that I did not invent this chart. It's been floating around for years. All I did was dress it up a bit. But I regret posting it and I regret the fallacious distraction it's caused from the real issues presented on this site. And yes, I even apologize to Republicans for implying they are stupid. Some people around here still think there's hope for you all.

I now agree with some readers, and my editors, that, while I thought this would be a bit of amusing banter, it is damaging to the credibility of the Assembler and distracting from the real issues facing our country. My attempt to mock Republicans for voting for George Bush by posting suspect IQ data was not funny or constructive.

It is not the position of the American Assembler that there is any relevance whatsoever to any attempt to correlate intelligence or academic achievement with political leanings.

Once again, please accept my apologies for bad judgment and bad taste.

Sincerely,
Bill Well
bill_well@bellsouth.net

Massachusetts, we cannot let Connecticut outsmart us! Let's napalm Yale!

I've seen this list disputed on scientific and methodological grounds, but I have never once seen somebody dispute it's conclusions.

Wherever it came from, I think the rankings are pretty close to correct.

--PunkDavid

Well since IQ tests basically try to determine someones actual intelligence, something you are born with, and not something you truly learn, then this test only proves that people in warmer climates are born dumber then others. I would love to see a widespread one done for Africa. That would produce some reall interesting results. But that would be racist, unlike elitiist northerners comparing themselves to the south. All the intellect in the world will never buy the blue states common sense.

Or perhaps, a large number of the South's finest migrate to places like New York and Boston to attend the nation's finest universities and then to take the nation's highest paying jobs.

--PunkDavid

Actually, if you look at migration numbers in the US, northerners are migrating out of their concrete jungles to come live in the south. I guess people are sick of being Union prostitutes, paying ridiculous taxes, and the companys are following suit as well. I guess that is what Kerry means by outsourcing.

Quantity vs. Quality?

--PunkDavid

Simplifying arguements to one liners doesn't make a very convincing arguement, unless you are a politician.

Well, generally if the methodology is disputed with good reason, the conclusions are disputed.

In simplier terms, if I say "All dogs bite" and someone asks how I reached my conclusion and I say "I've only seen one dog and he bit me.", they would say "You can't base a study on a sample size that small." This is disputing my methodology. Since the way the study was conducted was in a manner that would not yield meaningful results, the results themselves are disputed by way of disputing the methodology.

In other words - IF THE METHODOLOGY SUCKS, THE RESULTS ARE CRAP

Is that clear?

OK, how's this then?

I'm a lawyer, and I'm from New York. One of the primary reasons I'm not practicing law in New York City is because it is THE most competitive legal environment in the world, and I'm just not that competitive a person. To be CONSIDERED for a position at one of the big law firms in NYC, you MUST either have graduated in the top 10% of your law school class, or have graduated from a top 10 law school. It is similar at the top firms in most major cities.

The best of the best from all over the country go to the centers of their fields to work, and many of those places are in the northeast, Chicago, California, etc... You are correct that many companies have moved to places like Dallas, Atlanta, Florida, etc... in order to find cheaper labor, lower taxes, and other business incentives in the past 20 years. Many jobs have gone with them. This does not in any way translate into those being the best jobs, or that a large percentage of those are filled by the finest candidates and not merely the bets candidates for the money.

Dave Leip used to have a map on his website http://uselectionatlas.org of how every county in the US voted in the 2000 election, and that is a MUCH more telling map than the red state/blue state map. It doesn't seem to be there anymore, but I saved it on my home computer and I'll post it later (BTW, Leip assigns blue to Bush on his maps). The point of it is that nearly every center of population went to Gore, and I would venture to say that if you added up the number of colleges and universities in the Gore counties against those in Bush counties, it would be startling the disparity. Does this mean that academics vote liberal? Yes, but more importantly, the more highly educated vote liberal, and the most highly educated will tend to be the most intelligent. This is all statistics however, and anamolies do occur, hence the margin of error.

--PunkDavid

OK, the dogs biting thing is right on point.

Let me ask you this clear question. Apart from any knowledge you may or may not have of the methodology, do the results of this study strike you as being patently untrue? Do you think that thousands upon thousands of people would have forwarded this email in the past year if it stunk of bullshit?

My only point is that even if there was NO study done at all, as some have alleged, I still think these conclusions are not outlandish, and judging by how many people believed this study was true, I would say I'm being relatively objective in my opinion.

--PunkDavid

Do the results strike me as patently untrue? No, no more than they strike me as patently true. They strike me as inconclusive.

A widely circulated e-mail that stinks of bullshit? NEVER!! Then again, GW's resume has been passed around for years, and it's crap. Oh, and that one about showing the big oil companies by not going to Exxon or Mobil? What about the ones telling people they'll get a buck for each person they forward the email to?

So you believe that being objective means believing what the masses believe? Interesting...

All kinds of fake or incorrect things get sent through emails.
As far as IQ tests go, they aren't an overall great indicator of intelligence in many cases because the tests tend to be culturally biased. There's information in some of the tests that is more knowable by some groups than by others. In some cases the tests may be more indicative of someone being more educated on certain subject matter in the test, and not an actual measure of intelligence itself. There can be problems in design. In some cases people may not be actually more intelligent, just better test-takers. And interpretation of the results may differ as well. IQ isn't necessarily a fixed trait, like your eye colour.
Don't get me wrong, the results of those IQ comparisons are funny as hell, and I'm not surprised if the lower IQ people are of a lesser educational level than others. After all, they're a bunch of Bush supporters. But I think it's ridiculous to assume that all those people in all those states are inherently dumber. That makes no sense whatsoever.
I think IQ tests are okay to use on individual students so that educators or others might be able to get a rough grasp of an individual's ability, in combination with other factors and indicators. But on a mass scale like that chart shows this, it could only be a flawed study with too many socio-cultural variables not being taken into account.

I get political forwards all day, and they all stink of bullshit. I just posted a letter from the fucking author of this map above, didn't anyone fucking READ IT?

It's fake. It's nonconclusive, and it's sheer fuckery to think otherwise.

I tried to say that.

Fuckery?

*nods*

Well, I didn't. Perhaps I wasn't clear, but I also receive political emails and forwards that stink of bullshit everyday. This one however, passed my sniff test better than most.

--PunkDavid

Just because you want something to be true doesn't make it true. Other than that, you have no real reason for this one to have passed any sniff test.