X-Nico

unusual facts about The Bell Curve


Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery

The AFQT has been used in non-military settings as a proxy measure of intelligence, for example, Herrnstein & Murray's Bell curve report.


Adam Bellow

He has been instrumental in publishing some controversial conservative books (Illiberal Education, The Real Anita Hill, and The Bell Curve).

Hyperdiffusionism in archaeology

Shermer uses The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (author) as an example of pigeonholing; Herrnstein and Murray tried to pigeonhole civilization into racial categories based on intelligence (Shermer 2002, 242-244).

Mankind Quarterly

During the "Bell Curve wars" of the 1990s, the journal received attention when opponents of The Bell Curve publicized the fact that some of the works cited by Bell Curve authors Herrnstein and Murray had first been published in Mankind Quarterly.


see also

Normal law

Normal distribution and the Gaussian law(s) relating to the bell curve