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Let the flamewar begin!

[ 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? 🙂

How do you feel about the death penalty, my centrist beloved?

With the notable exception of “Carrot Top” and telemarketers, I’m against it.

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.

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

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