Nate Silver on a Strategic Vision poll of Oklahoma Students

[BzaDem]

This might be interesting to those who have been following the recent Nate Silver vs. Strategic Vision battle.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/09/are-oklahoma-students-really-this-dumb.html

"Only 2.8 percent of Oklahoma's high school students passed the test, claim OCPA and Strategic Vision, which is defined by having gotten at least 6 of the 10 answers right. Moreover, the results to some particular questions were strikingly low. Ostensibly, only 23 percent of the students correctly identified George Washington as the first President, and only 43 percent correctly named the Democrats and Republicans as the two major political parties (11 percent of the students, COPA and Strategic Vision claim, provided the answer "Communist and Republican").

For me, some of these results don't pass the smell test. I agree that public schooling in the United States needs to be improved, particularly in the areas of government and citizenship. But only 23 percent of high school students in Oklahoma knew that George Washington was the first President? Really? I have difficulty accepting that claim at face value. In 2008, 68 percent of Oklahoma fifth graders passed the Oklahoma Core Curriculum Social Studies Test. You can read some of the questions on that test beginning on page 50 of this PDF; they're generally quite a bit more difficult than the ones that Strategic Vision asks. (For instance, "Which was the most profitable export of the Jamestown settlement?" and "Which group would most likely agree with ideas presented in Common Sense?"). So either those smart fifth graders were really forgetful by the time they got to high school, or there's something very wrong with this poll.

..."

[BlooInBloo]

1. hahaha! I want a private investigator teevee show with a mathematician as the star!

:rofl:

Money quote:

"... what I found strange was that there were no students, out of 1,000, who answered as many of eight out of the ten questions correctly."

That is, of course, completely unbelievable.

And the he goes on to reverse-engineer the distribution claimed by SV! :rofl:

Quit while you're behind, SV.

[kristopher]

2. There is a serious problem with Nate's analysis...

He didn't explore the possibility that the sample consisted exclusively of the children of Republican parents.

That would explain everything.