Your failure to recognize that is not my problem, though you’ve done a good job baiting me into acting like it is. sheesh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipsedixitism

The article is there for everyone to read, and compare to my interpretation. If you think i have misinterpreted the data, by all means explain how.

But please, offer something more meaningful than “well he’s the expert and you’re not”.

[Your] data misinterpretation isn’t a methodological error [by Dr. Chang], but it’s still an error [by you].

Yes. That is my point.

1) Data misinterpretation isn’t a methodological error. It’s an error in .. data interpretation. And i have indeed shown that Chang et al. have misinterpreted their data.

2) My admission of error in interpreting Chang’s report clearly isn’t the error you referenced in your last post, since you referred to a “point i pretended not to see” in a post i made prior to my discussion of Chang’s report. So by all means clarify what you meant.

Beyond that, it’s rather amusing to see you attempt to use my own admission of errors against me. I guess that must mean you are a lawyer. :)

Suffice to say that i double-checked the other numbers i posted and they are all good. So you can safely rely on those. And they do pretty clearly indicate that Chang’s conclusions are erroneous.

3) Finally, if you want to believe that, using cognitive development as an example, an increase of from 7.00 to 7.05 on a 3-15 scale justifies Chang’s claim that cross-racial interaction produces an “added educational benefit” for students, i guess this is a free country and you can do that. You’re also free to believe in the Easter Bunny, the Great Pumpkin, etc.

I have never claimed the plans are justifiable. But your account of them is factually wrong.

This is also a reductive account of the plans’ operation. You’re ignoring the oversubscribing issue (which is directly relevant to whether the kind of busing your hypo assumes is in play, and which exists precisely because there are ample populations of a number of ethnicities within reasonable range of a number of high-quality schools).

Those aren’t the essentials of your hypo. Your hypo consists of two lone minorities with race as the sole tie-breaker. Whether you are a bad person is something which cannot be determined solely by observing you are mistating the “essentials” of your hypo.

The first tie-breaker in the Seattle plan is having siblings or close relatives in the school, the second was race. So the essentials of my hypothetical example are indeed accurate, with regard to how the plans operate. The facts of these cases were that students received different treatment based on their race. You think it was justifiable under strict scrutiny, and I disagree. It would be a shame if you thought of me as a bad person for it.

Not according to the report.

I have been rather direct: You have yet to point out any methodological errors in the expert report.

As for your admission, you clearly state: “in re-reading that long post i noticed a couple of errors (and hell there might be more!)“. In other words, your interpretation of Dr. Chang’s report is admittedly erroneous. You further admit you are not a researcher in the relevant field: “people like myself who are not experts in the area of diversity research.”

Lastly, Dr. Chang’s expert report itself — without making the errors in arithmetic you admit to — comes to a conclusion opposite to yours: “Overall, the effects of students’ frequency of cross-racial interaction on
all of the three outcomes tested (Openness to Diversity, Cognitive Development,
& Self-confidence) are significant and uniformly positive.”

So, yes, after having read the expert report, I take the report’s conclusion as scientifically valid.