[ via Metafilter ] Here’s something that ought to spark a lot of heated debate — a chart titled Average IQ by state and how they voted. The chart’s makers claim that the average state IQ was taken from the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations. I don’t have access to the book, so I have no idea how they came to derive that data.
Any good statistician (or a half-decent math guy such as myself) will
tell you that the correlation between the average IQ and the electoral
result is loose, and any good political humorist (or a half-decent wag
such as myself) will say that the connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda
is much, much looser, but that was good enough to mobilize, no?
| State | Avg. IQ | 2000 | |
| 1 | Connecticut | 113 | Gore |
| 2 | Massachusetts | 111 | Gore |
| 3 | New Jersey | 111 | Gore |
| 4 | New York | 109 | Gore |
| 5 | Rhode Island | 107 | Gore |
| 6 | Hawaii | 106 | Gore |
| 7 | Maryland | 105 | Gore |
| 8 | New Hampshire | 105 | Bush |
| 9 | Illinois | 104 | Gore |
| 10 | Delaware | 103 | Gore |
| 11 | Minnesota | 102 | Gore |
| 12 | Vermont | 102 | Gore |
| 13 | Washington | 102 | Gore |
| 14 | California | 101 | Gore |
| 15 | Pennsylvania | 101 | Gore |
| 16 | Maine | 100 | Gore |
| 17 | Virginia | 100 | Bush |
| 18 | Wisconsin | 100 | Gore |
| 19 | Colorado | 99 | Bush |
| 20 | Iowa | 99 | Gore |
| 21 | Michigan | 99 | Gore |
| 22 | Nevada | 99 | Bush |
| 23 | Ohio | 99 | Bush |
| 24 | Oregon | 99 | Gore |
| 25 | Alaska | 98 | Bush |
| 26 | Florida | 98 | Bush |
| 27 | Missouri | 98 | Bush |
| 28 | Kansas | 96 | Bush |
| 29 | Nebraska | 95 | Bush |
| 30 | Arizona | 94 | Bush |
| 31 | Indiana | 94 | Bush |
| 32 | Tennessee | 94 | Bush |
| 33 | North Carolina | 93 | Bush |
| 34 | West Virginia | 93 | Bush |
| 35 | Arkansas | 92 | Bush |
| 36 | Georgia | 92 | Bush |
| 37 | Kentucky | 92 | Bush |
| 38 | New Mexico | 92 | Gore |
| 39 | North Dakota | 92 | Bush |
| 40 | Texas | 92 | Bush |
| 41 | Alabama | 90 | Bush |
| 42 | Louisiana | 90 | Bush |
| 43 | Montana | 90 | Bush |
| 44 | Oklahoma | 90 | Bush |
| 45 | South Dakota | 90 | Bush |
| 46 | South Carolina | 89 | Bush |
| 47 | Wyoming | 89 | Bush |
| 48 | Idaho | 87 | Bush |
| 49 | Utah | 87 | Bush |
| 50 | Mississippi | 85 | Bush |
The average IQ in Mississippi can’t be that low, can it?
(If you must know: I was unconvinced of the worthiness of an attack on
Iraq based on the speciousness of the WMD and 9/11 arguments, but now
that the forces are there, I think that backing out is a bad idea. I
think it would have been better by far to devote more attention to
Afghanistan and Pakistan. You could sell me on a joint
military/economic attack on Saudi Arabia — rat-bastard central, where
the funding for radicalized Islam happens — with reasonable ease.)
8 replies on “Let the flamewar begin!”
Shoot, Massachusetts isn’t first? đ
How do you feel about the death penalty, my centrist beloved?
With the notable exception of “Carrot Top” and telemarketers, I’m against it.
Yay! Well, in both cases, I’d be more for jaw-wiring.
Yes, it could be that low in Mississippi. Since IQ is measured as a bell curve with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 10, IQ in MS could average out to 1.5 SD below the mean, or in about the 7th percentile.
That is, if you believe the measurement of an intelligence quotient actually measures anything.
It’s a half-decent measure of how one did on the test. đ
I think generally the SD on IQ test normal distributions are expressed with a SD of 15 (like WAIS) or 16 (like the Stanford-Binet).
Oh well.
And so, even with a SD of 15, it would be fairly common to see a person have an IQ vary by 15. But if you took 1 million-plus people and averaged their IQ, you would expect an average of…. the average. I really doubt you’d see such a drastic variance from the mean in any 7+ digit sample.
“There are 3 types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics” – Anonymous
This is a hoax. See isteve.com for some real numbers.