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My IQ

blog.tanyakhovanova.com

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Re: My IQ

#281

Post by kenko »

gnosis wrote: post #155
telemachos wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Einstein was an assistant patent examiner. Wittgenstein was a gardener at a monastery and then a primary school teacher. I take your point, but Einstein and Wittgentsein are not good examples. You list jobs they held, but those jobs don't reasonably express the success either man had in his lifetime. Einstein was also a member of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies from 1933 to 1955 (when he died)[1]. Wittge…

My point was the OP appeared to be judging by the jobs an individual held at one point in time. Judged by the same criteria, Einstein, Wittgenstein, and Kafka would have fared no better. The fact that Einstein and Wittgenstein held more prestigious positions at other points in their lives would not have spared them from an attitude like the OP demonstrated at the time they held the more menial jobs, and judging only…

"Who knows what heights of glory this particular Target employee will climb to in the future?"

Quite possibly none. Intelligence doesn't equal success, ever.

We all have plenty of examples of people who, though very smart, fared poorly in the world and then later, in their own lives or afterwards, fared much better and even became famous---because those people became famous.

Re: My IQ

#282

Post by gurkendoktor »

mgkimsal wrote: post #210
gurkendoktor wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have taken three and I have never applied for Mensa. Once in school when our biology class was curious about the topic; once online because somebody challenged me to it; once because it was in the TV magazine and I was bored, and I wanted to know if one really gets better at it. (I think I did)

I suspect you wouldn't have gotten demonstrably/statistically much better with repeated takings. Maybe if it was the same test multiple times, but even then I'm not sure. A few years ago I had 3 IQ tests administered to me over several weeks. There wasn't any major difference between any of the scoring/ranking, despite the fact that I was taking multiple. I never got much 'better'.

I think it depends on many factors: Will I be told which answers were wrong and what would have been the right ones? I had similar problems with ambiguous questions as the OP and this might help me to understand what the test writers understand as "canonical" or "simplest" answer. Also, I am rather excited when I take a new type of test, so I guess my biggest jump would have been from the 1st to the 2nd test.

Re: My IQ

#283

Post by crotalo »

I don't understand why mensa is not a support group for the gifted, rather than a society. That would make so much more sense.

Re: My IQ

#284

Post by Evbn »

btilly wrote: post #270
hackinthebochs wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps Feynman was a poor example. I was going by his claim that his own IQ was 125 (or something to that effect). I suspect that there is more to that number and that we shouldn't take it at face value. I see no reason why he wouldn't score much higher.

You are so wedded to your theory that you are unable to accept facts at face value. Presented with evidence that Feynman's IQ was not exceptional, you conclude that he was not a genius. Presented with evidence that he was a genius, you conclude that there must be an external reason that he did not do better on the IQ test, and the test result can be thrown out. The conclusion that you seem to think impossible is that…

In Feynman's case it seems quite plausible that the 125 is not an accurate report of a rigorous testing environment.

He is certainly the type of fellow who would intentionally misreport his score for personal/philosophical/fun reasons, or not care enough to remember the number correctly decades later.

Re: My IQ

#285

Post by Evbn »

lifeformed wrote: post #255
FaceKicker wrote: post #141

> But the biggest problem was that the idea of crossing the odd object out seems very strange to me in general. What is the odd object out in this list? > Cow, hen, pig, sheep. > The standard answer is supposed to be hen, as it is the only bird. But that is not the only possible correct answer. For example, pig is the only one whose meat is not kosher. And, look, sheep has five letters while the rest have three. Thes…

My first thought to that question was: "All but the hen have 4 legs, the hen only has 2". I'd have gotten the right answer, but only serendipitously.

If you count the average number of legs on a bird, you will find that your result was not so serendipitous.

Re: My IQ

#286

Post by Evbn »

nickzoic wrote: post #149
nacker wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The context that has to be taken into account includes the social context, ie. 'I am sitting in a room taking a test, I cannot request clarification of the question, the person who wrote this test may be far less intelligent than me, etc'. By making an effort to choose the possible answer that I perceive as the most boring and conformist, rather than one I might find brilliant, funny, novel, and suggestive of fu…

My 6yo daughter was upset because she couldn't understand the first clue in one of those kids' word puzzle books. "My first letter is in TOAST but not in ROAST". Sometimes, dear daughter, you're just smarter than the guy who wrote the book.

When I was young, I was furious at "Skip the first letter, keep every other letter, and what does it spell?" Data was something like "ghfeklmlto", and my answer was "hfeklmlto", of course.

Re: My IQ

#287

Post by Evbn »

gjm11 wrote: post #134
tikhonj wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the approach of coming up with a hypothesis and testing it is called "frequentist inference", in opposition to "Bayesian inference". However, I'm not terribly well versed in the subject and was hoping somebody could give a clear explanation of the difference between the two.

"Bayesian" and "frequentist" are descriptions of interpretations of probability more than of methods of inference . Briefly and inexactly: A frequentist says that a probability is the answer to a question of the form "if we repeat this situation many times, what fraction of the time will this happen?"; a Bayesian says that many other things, such as (idealized) subjective degrees of belief, behave like probabilities…

In short:

Bayesian inference gives you a subjective imprecise answer to a question you need to answer.

Classical testing gives you an objective precise answer to a different question from the one you need to answer.

Re: My IQ

#288

Post by btilly »

Evbn wrote: post #284
btilly wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are so wedded to your theory that you are unable to accept facts at face value. Presented with evidence that Feynman's IQ was not exceptional, you conclude that he was not a genius. Presented with evidence that he was a genius, you conclude that there must be an external reason that he did not do better on the IQ test, and the test result can be thrown out. The conclusion that you seem to think impossible is that…

In Feynman's case it seems quite plausible that the 125 is not an accurate report of a rigorous testing environment. He is certainly the type of fellow who would intentionally misreport his score for personal/philosophical/fun reasons, or not care enough to remember the number correctly decades later.

Why do people keep trying to argue that an IQ of 125 is not reasonable for someone like Feynman?

The 125 figure might or might not be exactly correct, but it is reasonable given other data we have about him. For instance, according to James Gleick's biography, Feynman was the only person to ever get a perfect score on the math and physics graduate entrance exams to Princeton. At the same time he scored below average on the verbal and history tests. (Note that the "average" at Princeton would be well above average in the general population.)

Feynman was an amazing genius. I have the deepest respect for him. That fact notwithstanding, his genius apparently did not evenly extend to all types of intellectual abilities. If so, it is unsurprising that he would merely score very highly on an IQ test.

Re: My IQ

#289

Post by scotty79 »

Entry test for MENSA I had about 5 years ago didn't have any words or shapes of any real-world objects. There was only one kind of questions. You had to pick image that would fit in the right bottom corner of (usually) 3x3 image grid. It was all about picking apart those objects and noticing how their elements change as you move from row to row and from column to column. Me being programmer given me some advantage I think because I perceived some transitions as bitwise operations and frame by frame animations.

Re: My IQ

#290

Post by DeepDuh »

emmett wrote: post #271
DeepDuh wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this question is a good example of being culturally linked. Rather it asks for knowledge about the world you live in. What characteristic of an animal do you think is most important? - that it's koscher? (very cultural) - the number of characters in its name? - whether it is born out of an egg or womb (e.g. mammal or not)? If you seriously can't figure this out I have to doubt your intelligence - howeve…

Do you really believe that which characteristic is important about an animal is not a cultural question? If it seems "obvious" that's because your culture is invisible from the inside. http://www.zompist.com/amercult.html

Sorry, but this is BS. First of all I'm European and my wife is Japanese. Asked her - same answer.

Second of all - just try some mind trick where you go outside yourself and try to observe something objectively, say as an 'Alien' who visits Earth for the first time. Which of the listed characteristics of a hen vs. a cow is important to you?

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