Q&A: Are Math Ability and Language Ability Inversely Related?

Cross-posted from here.

Last I checked, math and language ability are positively correlated with each other as a result of each being positively correlated with general intelligence.

Just like basketball and soccer ability are positively correlated with each other as a result of each being positively correlated with general athletic ability.

Of course, if you look at competitive basketball team and a competitive soccer team, the basketball players are going to be better at basketball than soccer and the soccer players are going to be better at soccer than basketball.

But this doesn’t mean that there’s an inverse relationship between basketball and soccer ability.