Height and basketball success are examples of two variables that are known to possessively correlate, but what exactly is the correlation in the general adult U.S. male population? Recently a list was created of the 30 greatest white American basketball players of all time (the top 25, plus 5 honorable mentions). From this list of 30, I identified the 23 who are living, and obtained their listed heights and weights from Wikipedia:
| rank | name | listed height (in cm) | listed weight (in lbs) |
| 1. | larry bird | 206 | 220 |
| 2. | jerry west | 193 | 175 |
| 3. | bob pettit | 206 | 205 |
| 4. | john havlickek | 196 | 203 |
| 5. | john stockton | 185 | 175 |
| 6. | bob cousy | 185 | 175 |
| 7. | rick barry | 201 | 205 |
| 8. | dolph schayes | 201 | 195 |
| 9. | jerry lucas | 203 | 230 |
| 10. | kevin mchale | 208 | 210 |
| 11. | david cowens | 206 | 230 |
| 12. | bill cunningham | 201 | 210 |
| 13. | bill walton | 211 | 210 |
| 14. | chris mullin | 198 | 200 |
| 15. | tom hensohn | 201 | 218 |
| 16. | mark price | 183 | 170 |
| 17. | bill laimbeer | 211 | 245 |
| 18. | tom chambers | 208 | 230 |
| 19. | cliff hagan | 193 | 210 |
| 20. | paul westpal | 193 | 195 |
| 21. | dan issel | 206 | 235 |
| 22. | jack sickma | 211 | 230 |
| 23. | kevin love | 208 | 251 |
As of 2015, there are about 72 million non-Hispanic white males, age 25 or older, in America, according to U.S. census projections. That means the median man on the above list (rank 12) is about one in six million when it comes to basketball performance. That equates to a normalized basketball Z score of +5.13.
The average listed height of the 23 greatest living white American basketball players is 200.61 cm (standard deviation = 8.37). That’s equivalent to about 6’7″ but it could be misleading because blogger Steve Sailer (perhaps the best journalist in America) notes that heights can be listed with or without shoes on. The average listed weight is 209 lbs (standard deviation = 22.09).
By contrast, the average non-Hispanic white American (age 20 or older) has a height of 177.2 cm (standard deviation = 6.44). That means, the average man on the above list has a height Z score of +3.57.
Now recall what we learned from my previous post: assuming a bivariate normal distribution, the correlation between two variables expressed as Z scores is equal to the slope of the regression line when the variables are plotted in a scatter plot.
So if we plotted height Z scores of every white man in America (age 25 or older) on the Y axis and their normalized basketball Z scores on the X axis, then the regression line would have to have a slope of 0.7 to correctly predict that white men with a median normalized basketball Z score of 5.13, have an average height Z score of 3.57:
Regression slope = 3.57/5.13 = 0.7 = correlation of 0.7
A correlation of 0.7 is very similar to the correlation between IQ and academic success in the general U.S. population. Thus NBA players are to height as Nobel prize winning academics are to IQ. Just as NBA players average heights that are three to four standard deviations above the mean, some evidence suggests Nobel level academics average IQs that are three to four standard deviations above the mean (IQ 145 to IQ 160).
And just as there some NBA players who are extremely short, we should not be surprised to find some Nobel level academics are less than brilliant, or even stupid. Yet it seems that every single time an eminent academic claims to have an IQ below 150, let alone below 90, people assume either the test was wrong or that person must have been joking. And yet statistically, we should expect such cases to exist.
NBA player Muggsy Bogues (right) has a listed height of 160 cm (5’3″)
Pumpkin Person 
is this peepee?
http://www.vice.com/video/this-is-what-life-is-like-for-a-black-trans-man
everything fits:
1. ottowa
2. media-ite
3. female trans-sexual
4. non-white
You’re the LGTB one:
1) you gush over how good looking Paul Newman was
2) you are admired by misdreavus & admire him
3) you question the sexuality of others (classic projection)
4) you have no girlfriend despite self-reported good looks
typical prole lesbo-trans-sexual-canadian retort.
only closet homos can’t admit that some of their own gender are good looking. paul newman and the young brando were very very good looking. so was the gay montgomery clift. so was james dean. so is denzel washington.
i can admit it. so could burt reynolds, btw.
because we’re honest, not because we want to suck their cocks.
girlfriends are a sin.
those women i would have made my wife were always already taken.
if i am a sexual “deviant” in any respect, it is that my libido is and has always been quite tame compared to that of other men. sex is never worth the trouble. maybe this is why the very smart, both male and female, have so few chillens compared to the middle.
in fact, this is a chance for you, peepee, to grow in your socio-cognitive intelligence.
have you ever asked yourself why a woman would be attracted to a man or why one man and not another?
getting behind the curtain, getting into the minds of other people, also requires you answer these taboo questions, taboo in a still very “homophobic” society.
just saying, “’cause they’re girls” is NOT an intelligent response to the question.
if you make the effort, what you’ll learn is that women are much more like men than they are supposed to be.
bruce i’d drop peepee for any of the other HBD bloggers in a trice…
if they let me comment.
but they don’t. they’ve all banned me.
even when i’m very polite.
this shows that they’re all stalinists and morons with a lot to hide from…
their only commenter who is in the bgi study.
the HBDer is like the guy who says, “honey is honey the world around…”
well it turns out that that’s wrong.
when the bees get their nectar from certain rhododendrons their honey is intoxicating and hallucinogenic.
and in-toxic-ating is the right word. eat too much and it makes sick.
sorry,
should’ve been…
ottawa.
Thank you for writing this. I am so sick of WNs/MRAs/PUAs/redpillers spewing utter bs just because it fits their narrative. Yes, there is a small percentage of Blacks who are smarter than you. Yes, there is a small percentage of women who have the aptitude to be scientists.
I believe that racial and gender differences exist, but I think that it’s for the best that most people (especially middling and low IQ people) don’t hear about it. Because if you try to explain to an IQ 85 White man about Black/White bellcurve differences, he will think that his IQ is automatically 100 just because he is White and male.
Remember, the left half of the bellcurve are incapable of understanding the concept of bellcurves. If you tell them stuff about racial and gender differences, they will wrongly assume that all Blacks are dumber than they and that no White women are capable of understanding basic calculus.
use your intelligence dear heart, your social intelligence.
the “fundamental theorem” of human societies is:
they vary enormously,
but their members in-vari-ably take them as
GIVEN.
and this is especially true of the “successes” of these societies.
every society promotes those who have the most affinity for them ceteris paribus.
peepee has a common and naive and “homophobic” understanding of sexual orientation.
the fag or the lezzie isn’t just a man or woman who can see that members of his or her own gender are “beautiful”.
because, contra andy dick, sex isn’t about beauty, or beauty is never enough.
and this is why,
for the honest,
homosexuality is a sin, or at least homosexual acts are sinful and why homosexual “orientation” is as un-Cynical as it gets. only the chimos are more perverted.
but peepee’s mind isn’t her own.
it’s been socialized, oprah-fied, colonized.
Most psychologists seem to think you’re a raging homosexual with schizophrenic tendencies.
I know you don’t want to hear that but don’t blame the messenger
only a schizophrenic would think he spoke to “most psychologists”.
peepee is a typical HBDer.
she’s a sexual devian, specifically she’s a woman who thinks she’s a man, who…
LIES
then
LIES
then
LIES
then
LIES SOME MORE
then
LIES.
When two out of two psychologists both independently come to that conclusion, without me planting the idea, it’s likely not an isolated diagnosis
but peepee will claim that thousands of psychologists have sent her secret e-mails she can’t quote.
peepee,
if you know anything about psychologists you’d know that they’re much crazier and more perverted than any of the people they label.
even your lies are lies.
2 out of 2?
who are they peepee?
even if your fictional psychologists existed they’re just diagnosing themselves.
an “isolated diagnosis”?
wtf?
2 out of 2?
who are they peepee?
One of them is a man who works at a support group i attend who I asked to read your comments for entertainment value (not telling him it was my blog)
The other was just an anonymous reader who claims to be a psychologist & went into this huge elaborate theory about you…and your childhood etc
really?
why were you attending a “support group”?
support for what?
for trans-sexuals? for non-white lesbos?
and this “commenter” sent you e-mails rather than comments?
your “socio-cognitive” IQ is quite low peepee.
oops.
should’ve been:
this “anonymous reader” has sent you secret e-mails which you can’t quote?
i love cock even less than you peepee
except i have a cock and you don’t.
you should love cock.
15,000 people a month read this blog & you don’t think i get emails? Talk about a low socio-cognitive IQ
yes.
1. you get no e-mails.
2. no more than 100 people a week read your pathetic blog. but you’re too socially retarded to see that the figures provided you…
are LIES.
read this and learn:
my “support group” doesn’t send me e-mails. would be really really weird if it did.
my support group:
The numbers are not lies. You’re just too psychotic to tell fact from fiction. You’re so out of touch with reality it’s boring.
the numbers ARE lies peepee.
evryone who’s not retarded knows that blog traffic as reported by blog hosts is >90% fluff.
where it come from idk, but it doesn;t come from PEOPLE reading your blog posts.
what’s the opposite of psychotic?
how does one prove he isn’t psychotic?
anyway…
i’m not psychotic, delusional, homosexual, trans-sexual, or a Republican.
peepee on the other hand loves the teeny weeny yet has a teeny weeny. she’s likely taking hormones to make her teeny weeny into a dick.
not…
gonna…
happen.
Yeah, Facebook & google are multi-billion dollar companies because all the Internet traffic is fake
Wow, that was one heck of a con they played on the advertisers
You must be a fucking moron
And I get my stats from third party sources. Not the blog host, you moron!!
The only reason you’re in the BGI study is they don’t use official IQ tests
If they did you wouldn’t qualify because your wechsler scores were poor
And because morons like you are in the study, no genes for IQ have been found
You give new meaning to the term junk DNA
yes peepee…
facebook and google…
ARE…
CONS!
fucking socially retarded fucktard.
my wechsler scores were “poor”?
HARDLY.
99th percentile on the Wechsler pour moi.
and you’ve got no clue about junk peepee.
otherwise you’d be putting your money in junk bonds rather than Facebook or Google.
so called “junk” bonds aren’t really junk if one is careful.
but Facebook is junk and Twitter is about to go bankrupt.
hey! i’m fair.
the inventor of “original issue junk” Michael Milken did actually make the world a better place..while at the same time being a greedy douche…and jew.
buy junk peepee.
sell junk peepee.
same word two senses.
You scored 99%ile in the verbal section of the WISC …youur performance IQ was lower
You’re the genetic garbage of society
The BGI study would make more progress if they tossed your DNA in the trash can where it belongs
but if “they” trashed me and all lower, they’d have to trash you too.
and you’d be way ahead of me in the line.
No. My innate mathematical aptitude is two standard deviations above you & Misdreavous
Unlike you, I probably really do have genes for intelligence & that’s why 15,000 people a month hang on my every word & that’s why I live in one of the worlds most high class cities & not the gutter like you
And stop talking about the stock market…you’re dirt poor
yeah peepee i’m a “sport”…
except i’m not…
let’s see…
dad harvard….
grand-dad princenton…
grand-ma columbia…
aunt harvard…
uncle yale…
and on my mom’s side…
grand-dad an ex-con but bookmaker and invigilated arithmetic prodigy.
he figured his bill faster than the cashier with the cash register.
who did the invigilating?…
mom’s cousin…
he’s in who’s who for fluid dynamics despite coming from a poor alabama family and being half maltese. he was offered a professorship at stanford but told them to fuck off, because, you see, he’s a democrat, and stanford, like all elite US unis, is just a class reproduction machine in Bourdieu’s sense.
dad’s side has like 10 people on wikipedia.
mom’s side only 1.
quel dommage!
when was i talkin’ ’bout the stock market?
if dirt poor is several hundred thousands over you peepee,
then yes. i’m “dirt poor”.
peepee belongs to the mass of sheeple…the flock…
for them it really is “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”…
but for me, the black sheep, the wolf,…
the human…
it’s doing almost nothing to doing almost nothing in eleven generations.
my surname is eleven generations old peepee.
soros has commented on how his father was a layabout of a sort, doing only as much as was required to make ends meet…and resenting having to work…
and what in God’s name is “schizophrenic tendencies”.
who doesn’t have “schizophrenic tendencies”?
fucking retarded.
Reading Jorge’s comments puts me ill at ease. I usually skip over them.
Pumpkin has to be the most patient person in the world to tolerate him for so long
except i’m in the bgi study…
and you’re NOT!
you’re just the typical stalinist…
a moron made un-well by the truth…
must kill it.
Hey Pumpkin , evaluate the IQ of these two women :
Very rich, rapper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tati_Quebra-Barraco
And this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilma_Rousseff
Do everything you can , please.
Thanks.
Pumpkin please estimate the IQ of God.
Does he have a big brain ?
Jorge Videla,
Do you have concrete exemple to support norm of reaction ?
And why Japanese who emigrate in chile and started from the bottom are now at the top ?
fujimori was president of peru, but japs and chinks haven’t done much better in peru than europeans.
japanese chileans are at the top?
really?
give me a link, please.
and in america the country rather than the continent…s…
chinks and japs are conspicuous for their academic achievement and economic under-achievement…in the sense that…
jews are 36% of the forbes 400. chinks and japs are…are there any…one or two?
There are some East Asians on the Forbes 400:
https://pumpkinperson.com/2015/06/05/race-iq-the-forbes-400/
Keep in mind that many East Asian Americans are first generation immigrants. Jews did not make the Forbes list until they had several generations in America
not…
gonna…
happen…
peepee.
it’s not gonna happen in the US, just like it hasn’t happened in Peru.
because the chinks and japs are somehow incapable?
no!
a million times no!
but because american society is simply not a fertile ground for japs and chinks.
it’s a fertile ground for jews.
but jews are like kudzu.
one of hong kong’s richest is a jew, and not even an ashkenazi jew, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kadoorie.
but even kudzu is stunted in some environments.
Like always, the real reason is much different than what you think, Videla.
http://www.unz.com/jman/demography-is-destiny/
IKEA,
There is almost no Japanese in Chile . There are many in Peru and Brazil. Ignorant.
as always carl you post links to totally irrelevant trivia.
and jesus, joseph, and mary carl…
i agree with the first paragraph of your irrelevant link.
i’m a nazi, not a nutsy.
carl needs a hug.
unless he’s a jew.
he’s part of the vast hordes of HBDers who are still bending over for jew cock.
he’s yet to break the surface and breathe. he’s still under water, holding his breath.
when you finally emerge and breathe, you will know that he was right…
peepee should suck mel’s dick rather than oprah’s clit.
mel is good.
oprah is evil.
Sorry it was peru, indeed.
JV, Lion would disagree with you, that Meriprolestan is a fertile ground for Jews. He thinks not. It suits White Gentiles more, those in the upper crust. But I think being a Jew in New York City, is heaven.
Have you seen this, Jorge?
when 36% of the 400 richest americans are jews or half jews and jews are grossly over-represented at the ivies given their test performance…
lion is paranoid…
he thinks there’s some super secret wasp conspiracy against the jews.
contemporary america-stan is a much more hospitable place for jews than it is for any other ethnic group including wasps.
that vid is as usual totally irrelevant carl.
are you really incapable of understanding the concept of “norms of reaction”?
carl,
1. all social sicence is bullshit, because societies change and have changed enormously in the last 200 years.
2. the “educational attainment phenotype” is something quite recent to the human experience. until 200 years ago few attained in formal education at all.
3. the investigator himself says how important environment is and how non-cognitive attributes are more important in educational attainment than are the purely cognitive.
i can think of many of these traits myself for educational attainment in the US.
1. docility or obedience.
2. pushiness.
3. striverishness.
4. sociopathy.
College Education in Meriprolestan is kid school, or an extension of its high school.
The proof is here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201509/declining-student-resilience-serious-problem-colleges
Right. What do you think about this:
http://pseudoerasmus.com/2015/10/04/ce/
in an ideal world…which is almost everywhere except america, canada, and perhaps scandinavia (more on that later),…
1. “rank” is ultimately determined objectively by test scores.
and…
2. those who score high do not hate those who’ve scored lower or think that exploiting them is a good idea.
but the current social situation is this:
because rank is not determined objectively…
1. some may claim to be “subtle” by observing that in the absence of objective determinations of rank, the objectively better still achieve a lot more than the objectively worse.
that is, they may claim that the determination of rank really is objective. and more, they think this claim is some great insight of theirs. so the very act of making the claim…”chuffs” them.
2. and the same “some” may claim that so far as those who score high are not “preferred” to an equally high rank have “other” faults…like…
a. laziness
b. introversion
c. “mental illness”
“more on that later”…
my understanding is that scandinavia’s education system, very similar across its countries, does NOT
1. depend on cumulative exams,
or…
2. depend on such to near the extent that the systems of almost every other country DO!
and this is a MUCH MORE IMPORTANT point than any who may read this think.
canada and scandinavia also have the least rigid class structures in the developed world.
might this is explained by…
test scores ARE genetic
but grades AREN’T.
…might this be explained by…
and by 1. “rank” is ultimately determined objectively by test scores.
i don’t mean that in the fine sense.
i mean that,
in most of the developed world, and also most of the developing world, high test scores put you in the haute bourgeoisie no matter what else you do to f— it up.
but for social reasons in america et al…
pure talent, high test scorers,
must be “suppressed”.
the american elite is “schizophrenic”.
it explains its elite status by both hard work and talent.
and the american/canadian/perhaps scandinavian way of doing things IS dys-economic.
but the rest-of-the-world’s way of doing things may also be dys-economic…but for more subtle reasons…
namely that the smart, in the sense of test scores, come to believe that those who score lower are human genetic garbage…
as peepee has described moi.
i had a friend in the my 3d grade class. we had this thing of writing as small as we could to piss off the teacher.
he was japanese america. he left my school district soon afterwards.
what happened to him?
he became a civil servant.
the asian american is very pushy in education, but at the same time, very un- ambitious in occupational status.
and, btw,
there was almost zero awareness of race in my american suburb…at least among the kids.
i’m not exaggerating.
it was something i never thought about, and so far as i could discern the thoughts of the other kids, they never thought about it either.
the most popular kid in my school was black…but his dad was a former NFLer…
class trumps race in america. ia lso went to school with the son of a former NBAer.
but!
we all hated jews.
@ IKEA
the three japs i went to school with…
one became a mailman or something like that.
and the other two were brothers…from a fairly well-off family as far as i could tell. the dad was a successful architect.
both were very good athletes.
but one was much more studious than the other.
likely through his dad, the one was hired by a real estate developer and is now rich as far as i know.
the other hasn’t done much of anything, but he still plays soccer.
and yes peepee-tard.
jew-book and jew-gle are 100% pure
CONS!
both to their advertisers and to their shareholders.
jorge, are you married yet? i bet not. but you don’t seem to know why.
I WILL TELL YOU WHY.
it’s because you do things like use that disgusting picture for your icon. it is so revolting that i must leave the page rather than have to look at it.
So there you are, you just do too many dumb revolting things, making women leave the room.
bye now.
Mug will never get married and die childless. what a pathetic life.
If you read the article on the correlation between IQ and academic success you see this “The correlation drops in high school and drops further in university, but that’s probably because as you move up the educational ladder, a lot of low IQ people drop out, so there’s less IQ variation for grades to correlate with. But in elementary school, you have virtually the full range of cognitive ability, so it’s a good place to understand the true relationship.”
If you expect the correlation between height and performance to drop,just like it drops for older students, the analogy fails. If you chose elite NBA players you have to compare them to elite scientists. The problem here is that there is a kind of selection bias, because everyone who took an IQ test shares the results publicly.
Personally I really hate IQ tests, because it is really easy to be good at something, that is intended for one use only. (my score increased by 20, after watching a 5 Minute video on the mindset when solving IQ tests. It is not just about finding the pattern that you see, but about following the rules that were taught to you in practise problems and extrapolating these patterns) . So there is a tendency of people practising for IQ tests and using high scores to justify stupid arguments and beliefs(like racism). I think the comment section here speaks for itself in this case.
it should be ” because everyone who took an IQ test, does not share it publicly.”
On the topic of Muggsy Bogues.
Opening sentence to Wikipedia’s list of shortest players in NBA history [1]:
All of the players listed here have played or play the position of point guard.
So we see that their vertical disadvantage restricted them to a small subset of basketball. Analogously, I would expect that any towering “intellectual” achievements by people with IQs below, say, 140, would be in something less g-loaded than hard science, and even then would require some specific talent in addition to effort or conscientiousness or hard work or grit or whatever you want to call it. 5’3″ Muggsy Bogues could never succeed at dunking.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_National_Basketball_Association_history
To expand on that. 135-140 is probably enough for important contributions to the “soft” sciences, if you’re lucky enough to have the right insight at the right time. 130, even 125 might be enough to write a memorable novel or poem if you have enough aesthetic sense. Even intellectually disabled people occasionally make magnificent sculptures or paintings, if they have the “savant” skill. But the idea of someone with an IQ well below 140 winning a Nobel – for their own efforts, anyway – is ridiculous.
my iq is only 115 maybe 120 but i am fundamentally talented in many intellectual fields and endeavors especially critical thinking and abstract thought. what do you think of that?
I think you’re neither fundamental nor talented
Goddamn thats a great way to undervalue someone dont you think. whereas you are?
– is ridiculous.
only to someone with an IQ well below 140 and severe autism.
I hate when someone gets criticized on here and starts to avoid commenting on the blog like they have some strange neuroses or whatever tbh.
If I have a strange neurosis, it’s most likely the result of someone claiming to be an intellectual despite failing to master grammar.
my grammar is usually excellent and has very complex structure to it. sometimes autocorrect or other mishaps can happen though have you taken that into consideration?
G, what if someone had high “hard science ability” yet was low in other areas? It’s definitely possible to have high nonverbal IQ and middling verbal IQ. Just because language comes easily to you doesn’t mean there aren’t math/physics geniuses who struggle to remember when to use effect vs. affect. If everyone were like you, life would be boring! IQ is meant to capture general ability, not potential in all fields. Creativity, persistence, and special skills are important!
I suspect that “hard science ability” is so g-loaded and draws on so many factors simultaneously that it’s impossible for someone to be high in it while being low in other areas, barring very specific disabilities.
And please stop abusing the word genius to mean high IQ or high talent. It needs to be reserved for the truly exceptional. Maybe one in ten million
Richard Feynman scored 125 on an IQ test. His true “intelligence” was greater, sure, and I’d bet most of these guys have astronomical IQs. But saying one necessarily has to be great at trivial pursuit and reciting strings of numbers in order to solve a tough physics problem is ridic.
Based on what do you consider hard science to be more g-loaded than using language? Factor analysis of WAIS subtests suggests the opposite. We should expect Shakespeare to have a higher IQ than Einstein. It is possible that intellectually capable people gravitate more towards hard sciences than writing (especially nowadays), but being a great writer vs. a mediocre writer may have more to do with g than said has to do with being a great physicist vs. a mediocre physicist. You just have to be smart enough. The threshold is definitely below 140 IQ.
Based on what do you consider hard science to be more g-loaded than using language? Factor analysis of WAIS subtests suggests the opposite. We should expect Shakespeare to have a higher IQ than Einstein.
Historically vocabulary was the most g loaded WAIS subtest but it’s since been dethroned by mathematical subtests like Arithmetic & the new addition Figure Weights. See the second table in this article:
https://pumpkinperson.com/2018/12/25/answering-reader-questions-part-2/