Is This Why I'm Dummm?

[Lucky]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070508/...performance_dc

conceived in May, born in Feb, but in Kansas not Indiana.
Interesting study, when I started reading, figured it would be anecdotal evidence or smaller group studied, but 1.6 million students is signicant. The only thing omitted that I would like to hear about is what a 'significant' difference on math and language test scores is.

[doubLe a tom]

I was born in February, pwned.

[sledghammer]

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The only thing omitted that I would like to hear about is what a 'significant' difference on math and language test scores is.

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With a sample size of 1.6 million, any tiny difference will be statistically significant. Huge datasets like that are pretty easy to manipulate for political ends for that reason.

[Kirstie Alley]

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conceived

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in Kansas

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[ocdscale]

Because people who are conceived in the summer months are born in the spring months.
They are younger than their contemporaries in the school grade. Mental abilities slightly behind, this compounds itself (They grow up thinking they're slightly slow).
Small difference, but significant.

This effect also explains why so many pro soccer players in Europe are born in the same month, because they end up larger than their contemporaries in the same age group, so play better and receive better training, on average.

[doubLe a tom]

I bet so many pro soccer players are born in the same month because there are a lot of them and there are only 12 months.

[Duke]

I think I saw this same study being used to talk about "old for grade" and "young for grade" performance. I think they even mentioned sports performance and soccer.