Tuesday, August 21, 2012

GRE Scores And Majors

The Buzz Blog has a very interesting breakdown and analysis of GRE scores correlated to the intended majors. Physics majors tend to do quite well in such test, especially in quantitative reasoning (not surprising, really).

What I find more fascinating is which majors did poorly in these categories. Political science majors did only half as well as physics majors in quantitative reasoning (again, not surprising), but they aren't even listed in the top 7 for the others! Are these the same people who will be part of our political system? Scary!

I've always believed that you don't elect someone simply because that person shares your point of view on certain things. You elect someone who has the ability to THINK things through and know how to see answers to those he/she doesn't know about. If you don't, you end up with morons such as Todd Akin who bastardize science to his benefit. How many times have we seen politicians unable to either look up some simple information, or think things analytically? People in politics WILL encounter unexpected, complex, and difficult issues. You want someone who has the ability to think rationally, not just someone who happens to agree with you on such-and-such. If not, you'll be lied to.

Zz.

3 comments:

None said...

If you don't, you end up with morons such as Todd Akin who bastardize science to his benefit...

Well said, ZZ. This guy is a walking poster-child for ignorance.

Gryte said...

If you look closely, the author stats "(Note: In all of these graphs, I chose seven majors in different areas of study to give a fairly representative picture of the score distributions. These are not the top seven majors.)"

If you look at the actual data, poli-sci majors actually had a 157 average on the verbal, a point above the physicists.

Not to disagree with your overarching message, but give the pol-sci's some credit :)

ZapperZ said...

Thanks for the correction. I should have never tried to post a blog while being bored in a physics colloquium!

Zz.