
Thanks, HN Here are the vocab survey results from all your participation - crazygringo
http://testyourvocab.com/blog.php
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nhebb
In the 1990's the scoring system changed for the SAT's [1]. For example, a 700
verbal for someone on their 40's would be roughly equivalent to a 760 score
for someone in their 20's. Did the data used for the graph correct for this?
Otherwise, I would have expected to see an uptick in the vocabulary size
around the early 30's age range.

[1] <http://www.greenes.com/html/convert.htm>

~~~
Shenglong
In January 2005, the SAT tests also got rid of Analogies. On top of that, the
SAT changes every year to a small degree. You may be right, but I'm not sure
if it's worth accounting for changes like this. Even accounting for these
changes, I don't think the presented trend will change significantly.

~~~
nhebb
Really? That's too bad. The analogies used to be a significant factor in the
tests, and I thought they were an important measure of a test taker's ability
to reason. A few years ago I read that most U.S. high schools don't teach
proofs any more in math. It seems like we're dumbing down the critical
thinking requirements for "kids these days".

~~~
kevinchen
lmkg is correct. The SAT is not a test that tests your knowledge; it's a test
that tests how many test prep classes you've taken. It's shaped by money and
politics, and not by how to better assess students' knowledge.

~~~
malnourish
I offer my sole data point with no value-laden broad-application. I never took
a single prep-class, nor read a prep-book, and went to typical public schools
for my education. I scored a 730 on the SAT reading section.

------
pg
I would be interested to know if the flat spot between 12 and 15 persists with
larger sample sizes. That seems the most surprising thing here.

~~~
crazygringo
Yes, the data before 15 is still pretty spotty, not too many preteens
participating -- I would be very surprised if it persisted.

~~~
lliiffee
You could always make another graph that includes confidence intervals!
(Please)

~~~
brianleb
I also would love to see some confidence intervals and p values, just out of
personal interest.

Either way, really glad you did something with the data beyond collecting it!

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mberning
I took the test, and while a cool idea, I still have a problem with the fact
that it doesn't actually test your functional vocabulary, but rather tests
your perception of your own vocabulary.

I do appreciate that doing something more sophisticated would be considerably
harder.

~~~
leahculver
Agreed. I'm a native English speaker, read constantly, and get the
dictionary.com word of the day via their iPhone app. I also scored below
average on this test... so I'm calling "bs" on the data.

I think it would be cool to try out something like the game Balderdash. Have
the participants select the correct use of the word by selecting the
appropriate usage within a sentence?

Also, who actually remembers what they scored on the verbal part of the SAT??

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mtinkerhess
When I took this test I scored slightly under the median for my age group.
Determined to improve, I looked around for a vocabulary-words app for Android.
I didn't see anything quite as simple as I was looking for, so I threw this
together:

[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.millertinkerhess.a...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.millertinkerhess.android.vocablist)

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Vivtek
Oh wow! I didn't realize you were listening here - how did you come up with
the word groups? Are there statistically related "levels" of words (e.g. "if
you know this word you're 92% likely to know this one, too?") In general, what
kind of structure does vocabulary have?

(I immediately had my kids take the test when I discovered it last week - all
in the interest of Science!!)

~~~
crazygringo
That would be a very interesting question. But without testing people's
_entire_ vocabularies (as opposed to our sampling technique), I think it would
be difficult to detect.

~~~
Vivtek
But how did you come up with the sampling words?

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jonnathanson
I would imagine that, of all the "outside the class" activities that correlate
closely with high working vocabularies, reading is a major one. Those who read
for pleasure tend to read more (no surprise), but also more broadly -- thus
covering a wider variety of subjects, and thus encountering many more words
along the way.

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cfontes
I live in Brazil and I'm not sure we have that homogeneous english teaching
system you think, we have several hundreds schools with several teaching
systems... and every school choose their own book to teach and so on.

But It would be nice to know how I am standing against other Brazilians.

Also would be nice to get a comparison between other languages native speakers
like how am I comparing to other Portuguese speaking people (Portugal) ? and
comparing to Germans (they usually speak very good English) ? and so on...

Btw, great project... thanks for sharing.

Took your survey 3 times and got pretty close scores (2.000 works difference
between them) so I think it's pretty good.

If you need any help from a native Portuguese speakers drop me an e-mail or
message...

~~~
crazygringo
Falaí mermão! I taught English in Brazil for a few years, what I'm talking
about is the fact that, for students in outside courses (like Ibeu, Cultura
Inglesa, Fisk, Brasas, Wizard, etc.) course levels are defined in a generally
consistent manner (basic, intermediate, advanced) -- and many of the courses
are nationwide franchises.

And I'm specifically not publishing country-specific data because the per-
country numbers are not that big yet, and it says much more about who happened
to stumble upon this site, as opposed to actual national differences.

Abraços!

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alphaBetaGamma
By computing “learning rate” from the distribution of “vocabulary as a
function of age” you are implicitly making a number of assumptions: the world
is stationary, and your sampling is homogenous across age. A word of caution
could be useful before your conclusions: by looking at the graph one could
also come to the conclusion that the quality of education is decreasing.

Nonetheless, very interesting data. Thanks.

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reemrevnivek
_Note that the data is still a big jagged_

s/big/bit/

I'd be curious to see confidence intervals and p values (or, heck, even just
the number of samples that caused the given data point) for these graphs. "a
bit jagged" and "pretty spotty" aren't very informative.

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Shenglong
Thank _you_. This is one of the most exciting data sets I've seen for a long
time.

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w1ntermute
Previous post is at <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=2772387>

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jokermatt999
Could you set up an RSS feed for your blog? I'm interested in further
developments.

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jongraehl
"Sure, I know what that word means!"

