Hacker News Reader

Comment by argv_empty | Hacker News Reader

Of course. One can definitely cherry-pick a Massachusetts-sized sample from a US-sized country, but it's rather hard to cherry-pick a Massachusetts-sized sample from a Massachusetts-sized country.

View on HN

I don't think you can meaningfully compare a country of 330m to a country of 5m, especially if the 5m country is totally homogenous.

Do you believe you can meaningfully compare Massachusetts to the rest of the US ?

Because even compared to Massachusetts, which is anything but homogeneous, the US at large does miserably.

Also people here tend to overestimate the homogeneity of other countries.

From what people tend to elaborate on what they mean by homogeneity, it seems that it tends to boil down to "has a very large percentage of white people"...

Massachusetts is not as diverse as the US as a whole by about half.

Actually, Massachusetts represents well the median diversity in the US. It is more diverse than about 30 - 35 other states. (Depending on how you count native americans). Less diverse than the immigrant rich states like Florida, California, Texas, New York, Georgia etc.

But actually ... fairly representative of most other states. If anything... Massachusetts should have MORE education problems than places like Nebraska, Washington and Missouri.

What data are you using for that assertion, the US on average has double the minorities as MA.

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

If you look at the section titled "Breakdown by State", the numbers for Massachusetts and New Jersey are far and away larger than the numbers for ... say ... Nebraska and Washington State. Yet Massachusetts and New Jersey are top 5 performers on international tests.

Isn't education a state-issue? There are plenty of states that have a population comparable to 5m.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com