Folks have been bashing this mentorship program because of Google’s recent track record of what some might call “anti-blackness” but it doesn’t seem like most folks read the materials. I did and I have concerns. 🧵👇🏾
Look at this. They say they will “desk reject”, as in not even READ your application, if it’s not max 2 pages, 8.5” by 11”, Times New Roman font, 1” margins, single spaced, in PDF format. This is more stringent than a grad school application and probably quite a few term papers.
What else will they desk reject for? Including your contact information. That’s right. They will not even consider your application if it has your name in it.
They ask that you be in college already, have a gpa above 2.5 and consult “faculty, advisors, writing centers...to review your statement before submission”...Their ideal candidate sounds like someone who’s doing great and has lots of support. WHY would this person need Google?
Maybe the Google folks didn’t mean it this way but as written they’re saying, and I can’t stress this enough, that they will not even consider you for the mentorship program if you don’t articulate how your “lived experiences” will provide value to them.
Overall, the language strikes me as being about what google wants than what the candidates need.
As a underrepresented minority in STEM, what I’m usually looking for in programs like this is: flexibility, acceptance and a sense that I’m valued and prioritized. If I don’t get that vibe then it comes across as just another system that’s not built for me.
I hope this thread is helpful to the team at google and folks who’re interested in doing something similar at their institutions.
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One of the things I hate most about the cult of IQ is it leads to lot of magical thinking about how the brain works. There’s absolutely nothing shameful about relearning things you use to know.
Research shows forgetting is a normal part of human cognition.
The way to combat the natural tendency to forget is to relearn or retrieve the memory at regular intervals which is known as “spaced repetition”.
Relearning takes the strength of the memory back to 100% and the rate of forgetting is slower the next time.
Infographics of this dataset have been kicking around on the internet for years. It is an insult to real scientists everywhere. For every 10 likes, I will post a new ridiculous fact about how fake and ridiculous this "data" is.
They report data on 185 countries but *104* of those numbers (more than half!) are based on *zero* data collected from people from that country. ZERO.
Rather than acknowledge this lack of data, they decided to guessimate based on surrounding countries.
The IQ estimate for Equatorial Guinea was based on kids in a home for developmentally disabled kids living in Spain. Not even their home country. Spain.
People are getting thousands of likes for spreading this misinformation about sex differences. Let me explain why this interpretation of the data is wrong. 🧵
If you think 100% accuracy is too good to be true, trust your instincts.
The version of the model shown in the plot was basically fed the sex of the participants. That’s why it’s achieving 100% accuracy.
When the model was tested on a subset of people from the same dataset that it had *not* seen previously, the accuracy fell to 90%.
I keep seeing this Huberman clip all over my timeline so let’s use it as teachable moment to learn some statistics.
The basic mistake is not taking the people who are already pregnant out of the pool of people who could be pregnant the next month. Of the starting 100, fewer and fewer will remain each month.
It’s a little tedious to keep track of what number of people aren’t yet pregnant on each round, and then take 20% of that, and then add up all the pregnant people in each round.