3 ms·

Despite your numerous edits, you've missed the point entirely, which is that the GP posited that the reason the class tends towards homogeneity is its difficult

by zorpner 11y ago

Despite your numerous edits, you've missed the point entirely, which is that the GP posited that the reason the class tends towards homogeneity is its difficulty. The implication is that minorities are not as smart. I really didn't feel like I had to spell this out, but here we are.

waterlesscloud 11y ago
Say you have a class that starts out with 30 students. 18 white, 10 asian, 2 black. Say the course is very hard and it cuts 2/3rds of the total students. If the cuts were proportional by race, we now have 6 white, 4 asian, and 0 blacks. There was no racism involved in the class, the fact that no blacks remain is a result of the class brutally weeding out 2/3rds of the students and that the initial number of blacks was very low. You can quibble over numbers, but the basic idea remains that large percentage cuts in an unbalanced population can make it tend more toward homogeneity.
- ectoplasm 11y ago
  That's a good numerical analysis. However, you also have to account for the fact that, on average, black children in the US get a poorer education. There are studies and statistics and on and on. Is it controversial to think that somebody might be less smart because they got a worse education? And then is it so surprising that when they get into Stanford due to affirmative action, they can't handle the course load? The whole system is a mess.
- flippinburgers 11y ago
  It looks like people are downvoting this which is hilarious because it is accurate. If you assume proportionality this will happen.
- flippinburgers 11y ago
  It looks like people are downvoting this which is hilarious because it is accurate. If you assume proportionality this will happen.
tbrownaw 11y ago
The implication is that minorities are not as smart. Or that they have some other reason to have not learned as much (say, worse primary schools? differing cultural values?). It is very well known that affirmative action tends to take the form of lowering standards for the groups being favored. If this is in fact true, running into a non-biased filter would tend to undo some of its effects. As noted towards the end of the post you're calling offensive (We also need to remember that many universities have quotas for minorities and give extra points on the SAT for just checking a box.). If this is not true... a weed-out class would not be observed to change the class demographics.
- jameshart 11y ago
  So the question then is, if an institution has a policy of affirmative action as part of an effort to address structural imbalances in access to opportunities prior to college, don't they then owe it to those students to not then use 'weed-out' classes to weed them out before they have a chance to catch up?
tzs 11y ago
There are reasons besides differences in smartness and racism that can lead to some people not making it past a difficult weed out class, especially one in a STEM field. For instance, students from wealthier backgrounds are more likely to have had serious prior exposure to computer science before coming to Stanford, such as through high school computer science classes with well equipped computer labs. Students from much poorer backgrounds might not have had these pre-college opportunities. This can make their first CS class harder for them--especially when it is a weed out class at a top CS school. So you might have four kinds of students. 1. Those who had significant CS experience before Stanford, and came to Stanford with the intent of majoring in CS. 2. Those who had significant CS experience before Stanford, but came intending to major in something else, but are taking the intro CS course to see what CS is like. 3. Those without a significant pre-Stanford CS background, but came intending to major in CS. 4. Those without a significant pre-Stasnford CS background, and came intending to major in something else, but are taking the intro CS course to see what it is like. Those in group #1 will have the best chance of not getting weeded out. Those in #2 will also have a good chance, because of their background. #3 is more iffy. Their school background lacks CS, but they intended to be CS majors, so many of them will have self-studied CS to make up for their poor formal education. #4...these people are going to have a seriously hard time. They are much less likely than the #3 people to have done anything to make up for their high school's inadequacies in CS. I'd expect the distribution of minorities among these four groups to skew towards #3 and #4, and so I'd expect them to get hit more by the weed out class. This is not because they are not as smart--they are just not as well prepared coming in due to inequalities in pre-college education. TL;DR: the pipeline problem doesn't start at college.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

by zorpner 11y ago

waterlesscloud 11y ago

Say you have a class that starts out with 30 students. 18 white, 10 asian, 2 black. Say the course is very hard and it cuts 2/3rds of the total students. If the cuts were proportional by race, we now have 6 white, 4 asian, and 0 blacks. There was no racism involved in the class, the fact that no blacks remain is a result of the class brutally weeding out 2/3rds of the students and that the initial number of blacks was very low. You can quibble over numbers, but the basic idea remains that large percentage cuts in an unbalanced population can make it tend more toward homogeneity.

ectoplasm 11y ago
That's a good numerical analysis. However, you also have to account for the fact that, on average, black children in the US get a poorer education. There are studies and statistics and on and on. Is it controversial to think that somebody might be less smart because they got a worse education? And then is it so surprising that when they get into Stanford due to affirmative action, they can't handle the course load? The whole system is a mess.
flippinburgers 11y ago
It looks like people are downvoting this which is hilarious because it is accurate. If you assume proportionality this will happen.
flippinburgers 11y ago
It looks like people are downvoting this which is hilarious because it is accurate. If you assume proportionality this will happen.

tbrownaw 11y ago

The implication is that minorities are not as smart. Or that they have some other reason to have not learned as much (say, worse primary schools? differing cultural values?). It is very well known that affirmative action tends to take the form of lowering standards for the groups being favored. If this is in fact true, running into a non-biased filter would tend to undo some of its effects. As noted towards the end of the post you're calling offensive (We also need to remember that many universities have quotas for minorities and give extra points on the SAT for just checking a box.). If this is not true... a weed-out class would not be observed to change the class demographics.

jameshart 11y ago
So the question then is, if an institution has a policy of affirmative action as part of an effort to address structural imbalances in access to opportunities prior to college, don't they then owe it to those students to not then use 'weed-out' classes to weed them out before they have a chance to catch up?

tzs 11y ago

There are reasons besides differences in smartness and racism that can lead to some people not making it past a difficult weed out class, especially one in a STEM field. For instance, students from wealthier backgrounds are more likely to have had serious prior exposure to computer science before coming to Stanford, such as through high school computer science classes with well equipped computer labs. Students from much poorer backgrounds might not have had these pre-college opportunities. This can make their first CS class harder for them--especially when it is a weed out class at a top CS school. So you might have four kinds of students. 1. Those who had significant CS experience before Stanford, and came to Stanford with the intent of majoring in CS. 2. Those who had significant CS experience before Stanford, but came intending to major in something else, but are taking the intro CS course to see what CS is like. 3. Those without a significant pre-Stanford CS background, but came intending to major in CS. 4. Those without a significant pre-Stasnford CS background, and came intending to major in something else, but are taking the intro CS course to see what it is like. Those in group #1 will have the best chance of not getting weeded out. Those in #2 will also have a good chance, because of their background. #3 is more iffy. Their school background lacks CS, but they intended to be CS majors, so many of them will have self-studied CS to make up for their poor formal education. #4...these people are going to have a seriously hard time. They are much less likely than the #3 people to have done anything to make up for their high school's inadequacies in CS. I'd expect the distribution of minorities among these four groups to skew towards #3 and #4, and so I'd expect them to get hit more by the weed out class. This is not because they are not as smart--they are just not as well prepared coming in due to inequalities in pre-college education. TL;DR: the pipeline problem doesn't start at college.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]