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A Woman’s Story

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: A Woman’s Story

#21

Post by raganwald »

mhartl wrote: post #9

There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it’s the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which s…

For what it’s worth, the test was probably IBM’s Programmer Aptitude Test, I can find references to it going back to 1950 or so.

http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/IBM-ProgApti-120-6762-2.html

Re: A Woman’s Story

#22

Post by html5iscancer »

davedx wrote: post #18
exit wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that she was a woman and black ultimately didn't make a difference to the, presumably, white men that hired her. so sticking it out is a credit to her. it's likely though that the industry missed out on others who were qualified, but too put off to get that far.

And it's still missing out. My girlfriend was told that she was "in the wrong room" for one of her comp sci exams, back in the dark ages of... 2000 or so, in one of the most progressive countries in the world.

And she quit? We've become an oversensitive society of weaklings. When I was in school I was physically harassed daily. I had to fight people because I was into computers. People would come right out and say that they hated computer nerds and that they were going to "bash" me. It was fucking awful and I was miserable the entire time, but at no point did I consider giving computers up. So I have zero sympathy for the fashionable whining about how "hard" it is for some group of people to get into computers. It's never been easier to get into computers. You don't even need talent these days. The computer is practically designed for lazy, factory-style programmers.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#23

Post by pleasebehonest »

starwed wrote: post #16
mhartl wrote: post #9

There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it’s the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which s…

I had a good friend who studied school psychology, and she let me see some of the IQ tests in use. I think you'd be surprised just how biased some of them are, and how reliant on cultural knowledge.

I would be surprised. Do you have an example?

Re: A Woman’s Story

#24

Post by mhartl »

starwed wrote: post #16
mhartl wrote: post #9

There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it’s the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which s…

I had a good friend who studied school psychology, and she let me see some of the IQ tests in use. I think you'd be surprised just how biased some of them are, and how reliant on cultural knowledge.

I doubt I'd be surprised: my mother is a retired school psychologist, and her trainees used me as a guinea pig for lots of different IQ tests over the years. I've pretty much seen it all.

With respect to the content of IQ tests, I tend to avoid the term "biased", as cultural knowledge is relevant in many real-life contexts, but the best IQ tests focus on exactly the kinds of questions described in the OP: math, logic, shapes, etc.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#25

Post by rmc »

mhartl wrote: post #9

There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it’s the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which s…

This is essentially an IQ test, and what they discovered was that Gwen was highly intelligent. They then did the smart thing and judged her based on her demonstrated aptitude rather than on the prevailing prejudices of the day

Actually, if you read the whole thing, they didn't believe her "demonstrated aptitude" because of their "prevailing prejedices". She had to fight to get them to see her demonstrated aptitude. Many people would be tired of fighting and would have given up then (or earlier in the process). If the applicant was in the privileged position, they would not have had to fight.

it is illegal in the U.S. to give IQ tests to job applicants

That's because in the past, the IQ tests were not fair, objective and colour-blind, but were set up in such a way as to bias against poorer people (which will be mostly black in the USA). This is easy to do with IQ tests, just ask lots of questions that require good schooling and education (e.g. word questions).

Companies used to use IQ tests, and hence claim not be racist, and then be racist. The ban on IQ tests in job interviews stems from this US Supreme Court case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Company and has hence probably improved equality.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#26

Post by raganwald »

pleasebehonest wrote: post #23
starwed wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a good friend who studied school psychology, and she let me see some of the IQ tests in use. I think you'd be surprised just how biased some of them are, and how reliant on cultural knowledge.

I would be surprised. Do you have an example?

There’s a long history of discussion about what exactly intelligence is, how whatever it is is measured, and why some social groups have statistically higher scores than others. Here’s an easy place to start looking into it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

Re: A Woman’s Story

#28

Post by lifeisstillgood »

The biggest lesson I see here is how much family solidarity and positive expectations makes in a childs education and life. Without her male tribe, and presumably the female tribe who sent the male tribe along, Reg's mum would have taken a different path.

As a father of a young family with a spotty family past I wanted to focus on things I knew for my children. Perhaps I need to focus more on building that kind of supportive family or pseudo family.

Inspiring stories have a tendancy to inspire things not first thought of.

Thank you

Re: A Woman’s Story

#29

Post by d2vid »

mhartl wrote: post #9

There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it’s the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which s…

>unfounded prejudice is unstable in a competitive market for labor.

Only with perfect information. In the absence of straightforward tests to evaluate job applicant quality, discrimination can unfortunately be a stable and rational strategy (albeit morally wrong and illegal). Because of information asymmetries, the employer can use race as a signal to infer lower quality. By rejecting minority candidates, the average quality of their applicant pool increases.

See page 494 of this paper for which George Akerlof won the Nobel Prize: http://web.usal.es/~emmam/Docencia/Modelizacion/papers/The%2...

Agreed that banning IQ tests may be misguided, as you point out the solution is to add more information to the market.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#30

Post by nerfhammer »

mhartl wrote: post #9

There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it’s the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which s…

You could figure out an IQ score using multiple regression on questions you are allowed to ask quite accurately.

IQ correlates highly with SAT score and GPA, so you could probably get 85% of the way there with just those two variables.

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