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Average IQ in Europe by country (map)

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Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)

#31

Post by bane »

wil421 wrote: post #11

How can you get an accurate average IQ? I've never taken a formal IQ test in my life. I asked serval people around if they have and no one else has in their adult life.

When I was young, as part of my move into the public school system (from a private school in my first and second grades), I had to take one. Later, I was identified by a gifted program and had to take an entire battery of tests for most of the rest of my schooling, including numerous IQ tests. In those circles, I didn't know anybody who had never taken an IQ test.

Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)

#32

Post by fsloth »

fsloth wrote: post #24

One of the authors of one of the reference materials (Tatu Vanhanen) of Lynn and Vanhanen is fairly suspect in his methodology of applying and analysing of IQ scores. Fact #1: It's not actually obvious what IQ scores measure, what amount of cultural bias the scores have and does it even make sense to compare IQ scores between different populations. Well, it's a number so yes, you can numerically compare it, but - as…

If you look at the home page of the referred book "Intelligence: A Unifying Construct for the Social Sciences" http://www.ulsterinstitute.org/intelligence.html the first referred reviewer is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton who wikipedia links also to racially biased research.

I don't have qualms about trying to understand human condition through measurement - but starting from some very limited, simple hypothesis and applying it to a complex emergent system like the human civilization is scientifically fairly suspect. You will always get correlation between large set of unconnected numbers and the way these guys work is that they collect IQ 'data' and then muddle through the numbers until they reach conclusions for which any 1920's western racial theorist would be proud.

This "research" would be totally in the "Pirates and global warming" category of the Spaghetti Monster creed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#Pirate... - except it's not funny.

Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)

#33

Post by Symmetry »

FranOntanaya wrote: post #18
purringmeow wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not necessarily the richer - I can spot a direct correlation between the quality of the education system and the IQ reported here. Finland, the country with maybe the best schools(not Universities, schools) in Europe is leading.

Yet, the quality of schools could be correlated to teachers and politicians with higher IQ. Chicken and egg...

If you were to compare a similar map from 1970 with the current one the notion of which came first would be much more clear. Before WWII IQ was pretty evenly distributed across the regions of Germany, but during the partition the IQs of children born in East Germany fell way behind those born in West Germany. And now with reunification and economic convergence IQ scores have converged too. Genetics may play a fairly large role in explaining outcomes for individuals, but if it affects measurable differences in outcomes between large groups the effect is small enough to be drowned out by other factors.

Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)

#35

Post by hellrich »

tomp wrote: post #26

There's something wrong here... most (and most populous) countries have IQ below 100, but IQ 100 is defined as being the average of human populations. Unless other continents have significantly more intelligent people than in Europe (seems unlikely), then this chart must be significantly uncalibrated.

Is a single point difference significant?

Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)

#36

Post by CapitalistCartr »

staticelf wrote: post #28
tomp wrote: post #26

There's something wrong here... most (and most populous) countries have IQ below 100, but IQ 100 is defined as being the average of human populations. Unless other continents have significantly more intelligent people than in Europe (seems unlikely), then this chart must be significantly uncalibrated.

Maybe the overall IQ has lowered since we set the standard of 100? :) As the movie "Idiocracy" put it, evolution does not necesserily reward intelligence.

On the contrary, raw IQ rises about 3 points per decade. The Flynn Effect.

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

Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)

#37

Post by czr80 »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #27
higherpurpose wrote: post #3

I've always thought that IQ-tests are biased towards education, too, and not just "raw intelligence". This seems to confirm it. The richer countries tend to have higher average IQ than the poorer ones.

Why do you think the richer countries are richer?

Geography, accidents of history and positive feedback loops?

Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)

#38

Post by dragonwriter »

tomp wrote: post #26

There's something wrong here... most (and most populous) countries have IQ below 100, but IQ 100 is defined as being the average of human populations. Unless other continents have significantly more intelligent people than in Europe (seems unlikely), then this chart must be significantly uncalibrated.

> Unless other continents have significantly more intelligent people than in Europe (seems unlikely)

Why does this seem unlikely?

Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)

#39

Post by dragonwriter »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #36
staticelf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the overall IQ has lowered since we set the standard of 100? :) As the movie "Idiocracy" put it, evolution does not necesserily reward intelligence.

On the contrary, raw IQ rises about 3 points per decade. The Flynn Effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

OTOH, the 2012 map shows generally lower numbers than the 2007 map, which seems to suggest that Europe is running contrary to the general trend.

Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)

#40

Post by dragonwriter »

wil421 wrote: post #11

How can you get an accurate average IQ? I've never taken a formal IQ test in my life. I asked serval people around if they have and no one else has in their adult life.

> How can you get an accurate average IQ?

The linked source has both maps based on only IQ data and maps based on IQ data adjusted with additional data from other assessments that have a demonstrated correlation to IQ results.

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