\nWhereas native-born children’s language skills follow a bell
\ncurve, immigrants’ children were crowded in the lower ranks: More than
\nthree-quarters of the sample scored below the 85th percentile in English
\nproficiency.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Scoring in the 85th percentile on a test means that you did better on that
\ntest than 85 percent of the people who took it. So for the population as a
\nwhole<\/em>, 85% of the people who took it scored below the 85th percentile –
\nby definition<\/em>. So, if the immigrant population were perfectly matched
\nwith the population as a whole, then you’d expect more than<\/em> 3\/4s the
\nscore below the 85th percentile.<\/p>\n As they reported it, the most reasonable conclusion would be that on the
\nwhole, immigrant children do better than<\/em> native-born children! The
\npopulation of test takers consists of native-born children and immigrant
\nchildren. (There’s no third option – if you’re going to school here, either
\nyou were born here, or you weren’t.) If 3\/4s of immigrant children are scoring
\n85th percentile or below, then that means that more than<\/em> 85% of
\nthe non-immigrant children are scoring below 85th percentile.<\/p>\n I have no idea where they’re getting their data. Nor do I have any idea of
\nwhat they thought<\/em> they were saying. But what they actually said is a
\nmind-boggling stupid thing, and I can’t imagine how anyone who had the most
\ncursory understanding of what it actually meant would miss the fact that
\nthe statistic doesn’t in any way, shape, or form support the statement it’s
\nattached to.<\/p>\n The people who write the editorials for the New York Times don’t even
\nknow what percentiles mean. It’s appalling. It’s worse that appalling – it’s
\nan absolute disgrace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been writing this blog for a long time – nearly four years. You’d think that after all of the bad math I’ve written about, I must have reached the point where I wouldn’t be surprised at the sheer innumeracy of most people – even most supposedly educated people. But alas for me, I’m a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-statistics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-dl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}