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My IQ

blog.tanyakhovanova.com

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Re: My IQ

#171

Post by nodemaker »

jeffdavis wrote: post #17
paisawalla wrote: post #2

Great insight. Regarding Mensa itself, or any claims to intellectual superiority: one of the big lessons of my life has been that being intelligent has no intrinsic value. If you are unable to manifest your intelligence in a way that can substantially (disproportionate to your effort) improve your life or the lives of others, then your mind doesn't matter. It has no impact in the world, and I am not the first person…

I'll add that being able to work well with others is usually what determines whether you can manifest your intelligence in a useful way. Working well with others takes many forms: being able to inspire and lead are obvious ones; but also the ability to take constructive criticism from others and learn from their perspectives -- which can be hard to do when you perceive the other person to be less intelligent (and per…

Absolutely. Lots of really intelligent people seem to fall into the trap of being too individualist and selfish. (Ayn Rand!)

While some of them eventually shine really bright, most fail to achieve anything significant.

Re: My IQ

#172

Post by mturmon »

ColinWright wrote: post #10

> But it bugs me that I might not have been > creative enough to fail their test. I know Tanya, and she most certainly is creative enough to fail their tests. It's clear she was trying to conform, and did a job that was good enough for its purpose. But she is certainly creative enough to fail, and way more intelligent (for pretty much any meaning of the term) than the test will have indicated.

It's for sure that those tests are not good for measuring the top end. The post calls in to question that any test could do so, but its clear that in any event, that test is not it.

Re: My IQ

#173

Post by jalanco »

textminer wrote: post #163
jalanco wrote: post #142

I was raised in an abusive middle class household. My parents were not well educated. When I took the ACT test in 1975, neither my parents nor I even knew what the hell it was. I made a 23. I went to a unremarkable Tier 4 college because my friend was going there. I paid for it working as an "auger boy" on a gravel drilling rig for a concrete company for five years. I failed college algebra twice. I was put on academ…

This is a wonderful story. I think it highlights how important it is to have parents support you (mine would buy me books and take me to the library and entertain long, rambling thoughts in the car) and to have teachers and professors support you.

Thanks for your kind comment. I've thought of Mr. Treese often during my life. Here's an anecdote about him that's always cracked me up: One time he called on a student who wasn't, as usual, paying attention, asked him a math question, and the student gave a rude reply, "Your guess is as good as mine."

Mr. Treese fixed his eyes on him, gave him that crooked grin of his and said, "No that's incorrect. My guess would be much better than yours."

Re: My IQ

#174

Post by kenster07 »

IQ is worthless in a vacuum -- much like a computer. Though they have magnitudes greater computational power than the smartest human, without humans, they have no purpose.

Re: My IQ

#175

Post by siglesias »

telemachos wrote: post #170
gnosis wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were listed in the same paragraph because they were examples of people who are widely considered to be "geniuses", but who either held menial jobs at one point in their life, or who weren't "successful" (in the common sense of the term) at one point in their life (in Van Gogh's and Kafka's case it was at all during their life, in Einstein's and Wittgenstein's case, during significant portions of their lives, tho…

Please look again at your original post. This whole business about "at one point in their life" simply isn't there. You didn't say those words. Just the opposite: in one of the later paragraphs, you talk about people "who lived and died in dire poverty". You seem to be moving the goalposts of the argument. Either that or your first post was very unclear. > in Einstein's and Wittgenstein's case, during significant por…

You guys are both right. The point really is that prior to hitting a career grand slam (a Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies") one can find oneself in a menial job where one is looked upon as an unfulfilled genius. There's nothing to say that this Target employee isn't writing the next great American novel in his spare time.

In summary, the "menial" job in and of itself should not be seen as a failing for the genius.

Re: My IQ

#176

Post by scott_s »

nickzoic wrote: post #146
hackinthebochs wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find interesting the backlash against those who may have any interest in knowing their IQ, or god-forbid even feel good about it. What your anecdotes tell me is not that IQ itself is meaningless, but that success has a large factor of luck involved. It's a failing of our society that genuinely high IQ people are not out there working to improve the lot of mankind. This growing trend of derision for those who acknow…

Success contains a large factor of luck for sure, but I'd say also a large factor of something not measured by IQ tests. Charisma? "Emotional Intelligence"? Mental flexibility? Gumption? Who knows.

Grit.

Re: My IQ

#177

Post by biscarch »

stan_rogers wrote: post #164
biscarch wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the question should be rephrased to "Which of these can form precarious driving conditions in cold weather?" because that's what they actually want to know. The problem as I see it is that the test-makers are trying to be overly clever and not ask the question they want the answer to. If I have to "extend" the language to say something it doesn't, the test maker has failed because the test question is the on…

That rephrasing doesn't really work either. All roads can be precarious in cold weather; the point of the question is to determine whether or not you realise that some areas can become dangerous more quickly than others even though the rest of the road system has seemed "safe enough so far". (And the "hidden question" is "did you know that shaded areas can freeze as quickly as a bridge or an overpass?" Most people wh…

* slight nitpick. I changed the basis of the question to encompass the need to reassess driving style in the presence of a change in weather conditions, as opposed to choosing specific instances of danger. That is not a rephrasing as I originally contended. My apologies.

If all roads can be precarious, the answer is all of the above, thus solving the dilema of the test taker understanding the need to be more perceptive in colder weather. We cannot control for all variables that would make a road slick or dangerous, and therefore cannot test them all individually, but must group them together into a situation (ex: road conditions changed). If we accept that driving in and of itself is an active activity, then we should not have to distinguish between specific changes in road conditions for any change in road conditions should be enough for the driver to reevaluate their driving.

This question on the test should then be changed completely to reflect the fact that a change in road conditions necessitates a reevaluation of driving style.

I would further contend that "hidden questions", such as the one described, test one's ability to take multiple choice tests. If I know A and B, I have no need for C and there is no need for me to even look at it. In fact, if there were 40 options, "All of the Above" still has to be the correct answer, even if I have no clue what the other 37 options are.

Teaching is not the intent of a test. Unless, of course, we are assuming that the test taker did not learn anything before taking the test; In which case the intent is not testing them at all but ensuring that they have some basic skills to get by.

However I agree with your intent, the creation of questions for a test is not a trivial pursuit.

Re: My IQ

#178

Post by scott_s »

tokenadult wrote: post #85

AFTER EDIT: Thanks to all who have replied for the interesting comments. I discovered this link while digesting replies I received on three different email lists to a request to name experts on mathematically precocious young people. (That was for work.) Tanya Khovanova, the author of the blog post submitted here, was one name suggested to me as an expert on precocious mathematics learners. When I saw her personal we…

I also find it odd when people equate a high IQ with being a genius. In how I view the concept, one has to be a genius at something. I don't think there is a general "genius" category. In other words, I don't view it as a description of potential, but of unparalleled achieved mastery and accomplishment in something.

Re: My IQ

#179

Post by kkuduk »

gioele wrote: post #124
fleitz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On average they reject 98%. Mensa's cut off is the top 2% of IQs

If I understand it correctly, they claim that you must be in what is thought to be the top 2%, in other words your IQ must be over 130-something. But this does not mean that they reject 98% of the people that take the tests. People interested in taking that test must already be, I suppose, in the top 10% of the IQ distribution (125+?), or so they think. If this is true they they do reject 98% of the applicants but on…

AFAIK, tests are prepared by some third party organizations (psychology departments?), scaled on representative sample of the population and are just bought by Mensa(and changed every couple of years). You should be aware that in different countries test with different SD (15, 16 and 25) are used. I heard from one guy who was responsible for testing in my country that about 25% of people taking the test get accepted

Re: My IQ

#180

Post by scott_s »

RivieraKid wrote: post #71
rmc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science has several rules of thumb, Occams Razor says that the simpliest is usually the more likely, and the assumption that the universe operates according to universal, consistant mathematical rules means that you should favour theories that match every other part of observable reality, the rule of thumb that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is like occam's razor and means, again, choose the simp…

I think that Occam's razor says, that if we have several theories that describe reality with the same accuracy, we should chose the most succint (least redundant).

I don't think of it in terms of redundancy, but of introduced entities. That is, if two theories have equal explanatory power, but one theory requires ten new concepts, but the other one requires one new concept, prefer the latter. This interpretation is, I think, the spirit of what he intended: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occams_razor#Ockham
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