Still Free

Yeah, Mr. Smiley. Made it through the entire Trump presidency without being enslaved. Imagine that.

Tuesday, April 02, 2019

Science knowledge varies by race and ethnicity in U.S

By Pew Research

Given the recent rehash of the issue of blacks being given earning only 7 seats at Stuyvesant HS, I figured this would be a good piece to add to the [largely unneccessary] discussion.

I would like to bring the reader's attention to the lower third of the chart starting with "The main components in Antacids are bases". These kinds of questions reflect the kind of knowledge required to do STEM work. If Blacks make up 13% of the population and only 1/3 (Just grabbing one of the question about hypothesis about a computer slowing down) of that group has basic science understanding, then only 4.3% of the population has enough basic science understanding to even start in a STEM field. Since the average was 9% then you're talking about 1.17% of the population with what Pew refers to as "high on science knowledge scale". So hypothetically, out of 37 million black people in America only 432,900 would score "high on science knowledge scale". That's less than a million.

Another note:

Whites with less than a college degree did better than black college grads.

So does it surprise anyone that only 7 black kids earned a seat at a HS that requires a high grade on standardized tests? Is it surprising there are so few black people at the upper reaches of STEM? It can only come to as a surprise to those unfamiliar with the data.