

Intelligent soldiers most likely to die in battle (WW2 case study) - Tichy
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16297

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gaika
Statistics :( Just add another variable - officer or soldier - and the
conclusion can be reversed. Clearly no causation here: higher percentage of
officers died, and officers were smarter.

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oconnor0

      Officers and non-commissioned officers made up for about 7% and 20% of war deaths respectively.

So officers made up 27% of deaths there, not a higher percentage.

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gaika
But there were at least 10 times more soldiers than officers. That means
officer's death risk was at least 3 times higher than soldier's. They also
mention that average IQ of a soldier that died was 95.

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karzeem
As someone who doesn't know much about military strategy, I find it surprising
that officers are more likely to die in combat (or were in WWII, at least).
Isn't it enlisted guys who ride at the tip of a dangerous advance?

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DenisM
Officers are the most targeted, that why the officer's uniform recently looks
very much like soldier's - to make them harder to snipe.

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sdurkin
"Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive. What they hide
is vital."

~~~
chadgeidel
I always preferred this one: "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses
lampposts -- for support rather than for illumination." -- Andrew Lang

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jsmcgd
"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" - Benjamin Disraeli

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mattmaroon
In a sample size of <500, assuming a standard deviation of 15 for the IQ test
(since that's the most common) 3 points wouldn't seem to mean anything. Even a
well-versed psychologist wouldn't be able to reliably tell apart people with a
difference if .2 standard deviations.

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Tichy
I am not so used to statistics anymore (in fact probably never was). I just
wonder if there isn't a difference between comparing the IQ of two people (5
points difference maybe not significant) and comparing the average IQs of two
"large" groups of people - since the average was 95, it means that there were
also some with an IQ of 80 and some with an IQ of 120 or whatever. Meaning a
difference of 5 point in the averages might be more significant than a
difference of 5 points between two people?

As I said, I am not used to these calculations anymore, and it is too late at
night now to do the research... Maybe tomorrow... Or maybe you can answer that
question (guessing that years of playing poker make you quite experienced in
such things...).

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mattmaroon
You are correct. I'm not sure exactly, but I suspect that it would be entirely
within the realm of reasonable possibility for two equal groups of 250 to end
up 5 points apart with an SD of 15. You could find out pretty easily with a
script and a Gaussian RNG function if you were so inclined. My curiosity on
this one is just slightly overpowered by my laziness though.

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Tichy
Well I admit the 5 points don't so dramatic after all ;-)

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mattmaroon
Ha, yeah, and the study cited 3, which I'm guessing to be significantly less
meaningful than 5 even.

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utnick
sample size: 490 people

iq difference between living and dead: 3 iq points

statistically significant?

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Tichy
Do the maths? There are established algorithms for calculating statistic
significance.

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aaronblohowiak
But at the end of the day, where the line was drawn between significant and
not was arbitrary and has no special meaning. The standardization around p
values helps us to compare studies, sure, but it is not magical.

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Tichy
It is true that "significance" can be arbitrarily defined, but I think if you
can calculate the confidence, it is not arbitrary. If you have the number that
with x% probability something is the case, you have learned something.

I suspect that 490 is quite a big sample actually, but I am too lazy to do the
maths (and I am missing background information - of course if it was just one
battle, it is a different thing than looking at the whole of WW2, and so on).

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utnick
490 might be an ok sample, I don't know I've never taken a statistics class

I mainly thought that 3 iq points is not a big difference in intelligence,
pretty much a wash.

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Tichy
Even the 3 IQ points I am not sure about - it might on depend where on the
curve the difference appears. 30 points is a very big difference apparently
(IQ 100 makes you smart enough for high school, and IQ 130 makes you smart
enough for the Mensa club of highly intelligent people, or something like
that). The 3 is not "3% difference in intelligence". I am not familiar enough
with the whole IQ thing to be able to judge if the difference is significant,
though.

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sh1mmer
Article summary:

We found an interesting statistic. We don't have any conclusions to draw at
this point.

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ConradHex
Isn't it possible that the trauma of living through war actually lowers your
IQ a bit? It's not a huge difference here, a few IQ points.

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Tichy
The tests were taken before the war, though (if I read correctly).

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Allocator2008
Lately I have wondered about the "arms race" as Susan Blackmore calls it,
between the gene and the meme. The genes want us to have small, efficient
brains, capable of survival but not much else, whereas the meme wants us to
have big brains because the bigger the brain, the more memes can get into it.
This study, if confirmed, would seem to provide an interesting example of how
bigger brains do not necessarily correspond to greater survival advantage.
When viewed from the gene/meme perspective, this makes sense. The mortality
associated with bigger brains is good for the gene, albeit bad for the meme,
but not all that bad, because memes are not dependent on their host's
surviving to make offspring. In short, memes don't care so much about our
survival, only genes do. Genes, in turn, don't care so much about big brains,
only memes do. Accordingly, that a bigger brain seems not to afford survival
advantage in warfare is no surprise. When the war is finished, there will be
plenty of smaller brain people out there left to continue to copy the gene.
And as for the meme, as long as they were written down/persisted somewhere,
they will get copied along too.

