Crémieux Profile picture
May 21, 2023 10 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Changes to the Bar exam so far don't seem to have made a dent in the race differences in performance on it.

How large are these differences? In the latest year, 2022, the Black-White gap in California Bar pass rates was 0.97 SDs.

And this matters because we expect a threshold Image
to practice (the Bar exam) to reduce subsequent performance gaps.

But how much should those gaps be reduced?

Let's simulate to find out!

@_twolfram recently provided an estimate for British lawyers' IQs of 110.31: sciencedirect.com/science/articl….

Let's go ahead and assume
there's a threshold that's 0.67 SDs (10 points) above the higher-performing of two groups with equal variances who are separated by 0.97 d.

With simulated group sizes of one million persons each, the mean differences decline, and the SDs do too. The new gap is 0.412 d. Image
But we know that the 0.97 d gap is an underestimate due to range restriction.

Using MBE scores, it looks like the unrestricted gap should be more like 1.22 d. That leaves us with a 0.537 d gap above the threshold.

Do we have subsequent performance measures?

Yes! We have three:
- Complaints made against attorneys
- Probations
- Disbarments

For men, the gaps, in order, are 0.576, 0.513, and 0.564 d. For women, the gaps are 0.576, 0.286, and 0.286 d.

Men fit expectations and women apparently needed less discipline. Source: https://board.calba...
These gaps probably replicate nationally.

For example, here are Texas pass rates from 2004 - a 0.961 d Black-White first-pass gap. The 2006 update to these figures raised the gap to 0.969 d. Source: https://ble.texas.g...Image
Those figures are basically in line with LSAC's national study of Bar exam pass rates. Image
And those are basically in line with New York's gaps. Image
And this should probably be expected, since tests measure the same things. Image
Since all of the people included in these statistics went to ABA-accredited schools, they all had the opportunity to learn what was required to perform well on these tests.

But just like the Step examinations for medical doctors, the gaps on the tests and in real life remain.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Crémieux

Crémieux Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @cremieuxrecueil

Oct 14
Where did that human capital go?

After the Counter-Reformation began, Protestant Germany started producing more elites than Catholic Germany.

Protestant cities also attracted more of these elite individuals, but primarily to the places with the most progressive governments🧵Image
Q: What am I talking about?

A: Kirchenordnung, or Church Orders, otherwise known as Protestant Church Ordinances, a sort of governmental compact that started cropping up after the Reformation, in Protestant cities. Image
Q: Why these things?

A: Protestants wanted to establish political institutions in their domains that replaced those previously provided by the Catholics, or which otherwise departed from how things were done. Image
Read 12 tweets
Oct 7
What predicts a successful educational intervention?

Unfortunately, the answer is not 'methodological propriety'; in fact, it's the opposite🧵

First up: home-made measures, a lack of randomization, and a study being published instead of unpublished predict larger effects. Image
It is *far* easier to cook the books with an in-house measure, and it's far harder for other researchers to evaluate what's going on because they definitionally cannot be familiar with it.

Additionally, smaller studies tend to have larger effects—a hallmark of publication bias! Image
Education, like many fields, clearly has a bias towards significant results.

Notice the extreme excess of results with p-values that are 'just significant'.

The pattern we see above should make you suspect if you realize this is happening. Image
Read 10 tweets
Oct 6
Across five different large samples, the same pattern emerged:

Trans people tended to have multiple times higher rates of autism. Image
In addition to higher autism rates, when looking at non-autistic trans versus non-trans people, the trans people were consistently shifted towards showing more autistic traits. Image
In two of the available datasets, the autism result replicated across other psychiatric traits.

That is, trans people were also at an elevated risk of ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, OCD, and schizophrenia, before and after making various adjustments. Image
Read 6 tweets
Oct 6
Across 68,000 meta-analyses including over 700,000 effect size estimates, correcting for publication bias tended to:

- Markedly reduce effect sizes
- Markedly reduce the probability that there is an effect at all

Economics hardest hit: Image
Even this is perhaps too generous.

Recall that correcting for publication bias often produces effects that are still larger than the effects attained in subsequent large-scale replication studies.Image
A great example of this comes from priming studies.

Remember money priming, where simply seeing or handling money made people more selfish and better at business?

Those studies were stricken by publication bias, but preregistered studies totally failed to find a thing. Image
Read 6 tweets
Oct 5
Neat new article from @Scientific_Bird.

It argues that one of the reasons there was an East Asian growth miracle but not a South Asian one is human capital.

For centuries, South Asia has lagged on average human capital, whereas East Asia has done very well in all our records. Image
It's unsurprising when these things continue today.

We already know based on three separate instrumental variables strategies using quite old datapoints that human capital is causal for growth. That includes these numeracy measures from the distant past.

Image
This makes a lot of sense, too.

Where foreign visitors centuries ago thought China was remarkably equal and literate (both true!), they noticed that India had an elite upper crust accompanied by intense squalor.

Image
Read 4 tweets
Oct 4
The results are in and 58.3% of the almost 7,500 responses said...

Men tend to get more steps in a day!

Sources say...

Yes. Wherever we have large-scale, representatively sampled data, men tend to get a few more steps in compared to women. Image
Step counts tend to vary by area.

For example, New York—thanks to New York City—has the highest average step count.

Colorado—due in part to its selected active, athletic population—also manages a high step count.

You'll also notice that moderate temps mean more steps. Image
What's up with these location effects? Are they causal?

As it turns out, the answer is partially in the affirmative.

That is, some places actually encourage people to walk more!

How do we know? Simple.
Read 13 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(