Thursday, September 07, 2006
Short Talk - Post by Paul R.
Anyone who has seen me knows that I am somewhat “vertically challenged” for a male my age. It’s actually a trait that runs in my family so I am not ashamed of it. In fact, after years of countless short jokes, I’ve learned to accept, even embrace my height. But, just when I thought that it was starting to be okay to be short, it seems that tall people have another reason to rejoice. Oh, lucky me.
It is seemingly a well know fact (even though I was unaware of it) that taller people tend to earn more money than their shorter counterparts. But now, recent studies take this concept a step further. Research done by Princeton University’s Anne Case and Christina Paxson (http://www.slate.com/id/2148759) suggest that the reason that taller people make more money is because they are, in fact, smarter than short people. They even go as far to say that, “Even at age 5, a variety of intelligence measures—based on conceptual maturity, visual-motor coordination, and vocabulary—are higher on average for taller kids.”
My initial impulse was to go into a passionate defense for my fellow short people, stating how flawed and bias this study is. But as I started to think about it, a more appropriate question came to me: Why does a study like this even matter in the first place?
At what point did we become so caught up in comparing statistics against one another? When did a bunch of numbers and figures start to define who we are as a person? Why have media reports and studies become so influential to our lifestyles and behaviors? And the studies don’t just stop at height. You have some researchers comparing different traits between Left-, Right-, and Ambidextrous-handed people. Some compare the intellectual, physical, and social attributes of people from different educational backgrounds, social status, ethnical groups, and even music interest. The list ridiculously goes on and on.
Yes, some of these studies do project an accurate average of a group of people, but that is all it is, an average. An average can easily change under a number of variables. An average leaves a lot of room for error. An average doesn’t reflect you and your abilities as an individual. Just because you are 6’5 and you read a study that says taller people are smarter, doesn’t mean you should walk into the classroom the next day and start to quote passages from the Iliad. I’m not saying that these studies are all together pointless. I just don’t understand why we should care so much.
When we start to hide behind the numbers that the researchers and media feed us, we start to lose focus of the big picture. We forget that they are nothing more than a bunch of numbers that were complied some someone that is no more human that us. We forget that we as an individual decide our own outcome. Next, we start to lose our identity and take upon the one that we are feed. Once that happens, we are no longer what makes us unique, and become just another statistic.
Anyone who has seen me knows that I am somewhat “vertically challenged” for a male my age. It’s actually a trait that runs in my family so I am not ashamed of it. In fact, after years of countless short jokes, I’ve learned to accept, even embrace my height. But, just when I thought that it was starting to be okay to be short, it seems that tall people have another reason to rejoice. Oh, lucky me.
It is seemingly a well know fact (even though I was unaware of it) that taller people tend to earn more money than their shorter counterparts. But now, recent studies take this concept a step further. Research done by Princeton University’s Anne Case and Christina Paxson (http://www.slate.com/id/2148759) suggest that the reason that taller people make more money is because they are, in fact, smarter than short people. They even go as far to say that, “Even at age 5, a variety of intelligence measures—based on conceptual maturity, visual-motor coordination, and vocabulary—are higher on average for taller kids.”
My initial impulse was to go into a passionate defense for my fellow short people, stating how flawed and bias this study is. But as I started to think about it, a more appropriate question came to me: Why does a study like this even matter in the first place?
At what point did we become so caught up in comparing statistics against one another? When did a bunch of numbers and figures start to define who we are as a person? Why have media reports and studies become so influential to our lifestyles and behaviors? And the studies don’t just stop at height. You have some researchers comparing different traits between Left-, Right-, and Ambidextrous-handed people. Some compare the intellectual, physical, and social attributes of people from different educational backgrounds, social status, ethnical groups, and even music interest. The list ridiculously goes on and on.
Yes, some of these studies do project an accurate average of a group of people, but that is all it is, an average. An average can easily change under a number of variables. An average leaves a lot of room for error. An average doesn’t reflect you and your abilities as an individual. Just because you are 6’5 and you read a study that says taller people are smarter, doesn’t mean you should walk into the classroom the next day and start to quote passages from the Iliad. I’m not saying that these studies are all together pointless. I just don’t understand why we should care so much.
When we start to hide behind the numbers that the researchers and media feed us, we start to lose focus of the big picture. We forget that they are nothing more than a bunch of numbers that were complied some someone that is no more human that us. We forget that we as an individual decide our own outcome. Next, we start to lose our identity and take upon the one that we are feed. Once that happens, we are no longer what makes us unique, and become just another statistic.
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I think it's important to ask WHY this study would be done instead of just dismissing it as unimportant or invalid. We need to be thinking about the motivations behind such things and what they stand for in our society. How could this information be used (positively or negatively)?
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