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Showing posts with the label IQ

U.S. Holocaust Mueseum's "Deadly medicine, creating the master race" traveling exhibit

Alright. This teaching idea is pretty involved. It is bigger than any one instructor and requires interdepartmental effort as well as support from The Powers that Be at your university. The U.S. Holocaust Museum hosts a number of  traveling exhibits . One in particular, " Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race ", provides a great opportunity for the discussions of research ethics, the protection and treatment of human research subjects, and how science can be used to justify really horrible things. I am extraordinarily fortunate that Gannon University's Department of History (with assistance from our Honors program as well as College of the Humanities, Education, and Social Sciences) has worked hard to get this exhibit to our institution during the Fall 2015 semester. It is housed in our library through the end of October. How I used it in my class: My Honors Psychological Statistics class visited the exhibit prior to a discussion day about research ethics. In...

Hall vs. Florida: IQ, the death penalty, and margin of error (edited 5/27/14)

Here is Think Progress' story about a U.S. Supreme Court case that hinges on statistics. The case centers around death row inmate Freddy Lee Hall. He was sentenced to death in Florida for the murder of Karol Hurst in 1978. This isn't in dispute. What is in dispute is whether or not Hall qualifies as mentally retarded and, thus, should be exempt from the death penalty per Virginia vs. Atkins . So, this is an example relevant to any number of psychology classes (developmental, ethics, psychology and the law, etc.). It is relevant to a statistics class because the main thrust of the argument has to do with the margin of error associated with the IQ test that designated Hall as having an IQ of 71. In order to qualify as mentally retarded in Florida, an individual has to have an IQ of 70 or lower. So, at first blush, Hall is out of luck. Until his lawyers bring up the fact that the margin of error on this test is +/- 5 points. This is a good example of confidence intervals/marg...