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My IQ

blog.tanyakhovanova.com

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Re: My IQ

#241

Post by emmett »

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…

The ability to answer those kinds of ambiguous questions is extremely culturally linked. The whole idea about IQ tests is that they're supposed to be universal and culturally independent. The Cow/hen/pig/sheep question is clearly not culturally independent - what's important about those animals is a cultural question.

Re: My IQ

#242

Post by joelhaus »

The English language is terribly ambiguous... even for native speakers. Unfortunately, test creators frequently do not appreciate this fact (a crowd sourced question review service for teachers and exam creators might be an interesting solution). One of my favorite examples is the number of alternate scenarios that this sentence could be describing:

  the boy saw a mouse running in his pajamas
Counter-point: Throughout school, I often pondered whether the ambiguity in test questions was actually intentional. In the real world, you are often given problems to solve that are poorly defined, so perhaps this is good preparation? However, when working on real world problems, you can clearly state any assumptions you've made to arrive at your solution and this is not easily applied to answering questions on a bubble sheet test with very limited context.

Re: My IQ

#243

Post by beambot »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #222
btilly wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that "high IQ" and "genuinely intelligent" are the same thing, you are sadly mistaken. Granted, IQ is correlated with intelligence. But there are lots of undeniably intelligent people who do not have remarkable IQs (eg Richard Feynman would not qualify for MENSA). Conversely your average MENSA chapter is full of people with undeniably high IQs and little sign of remarkable intelligence. (Disclaimer. Base…

The problem with these arguments is that we waffle on the definition of intelligence. Feynman was admittedly no genius. There's no reason to claim he was obviously highly intelligent (and therefore IQ is meaningless). He had many gifts, a .1% intellect wasn't one of them. This doesn't take away from his accomplishments nor the impact he's had on society. There's no reason to redefine intelligence just to make sure it…

Feynman is a Putnam Fellow (ie. top-5 placement in the annual Putnam exam for undergrad math majors). That unequivocally qualifies him as "genius".

Re: My IQ

#244

Post by visarg »

DanBC wrote: post #11

I'm keen to know what the research is about cleverness and overthinking and multiple choice questions. One of the most intelligent people I know IRL has trouble with the UK driving licence theory questions because she very rapidly provides 6 correct answers, and then has to try to detangle her correct answers from the choices. I suspect that she'd do better if she tried when she was drunk (not the practical!!) becaus…

When I was learning for the theoretical part of the test for my driving license, there were questions like:

You are approaching an intersection form a secondary road and you see the "Stop" sign. Do you: 1. reduce speed 2. stop 3. go ahead without reducing speed 4. yield to the traffic on the main road

The "correct" answer was 2.

But I argued, in order to stop, don't you have to reduce speed?

Well, the policemen understand that "reducing speed" means just slowing down without stopping, not slowing down. You see, they have hidden domain knowledge that is not present in the question, making its meaning ambiguous. The theoretical questions were all like this.

Re: My IQ

#245

Post by nnq »

True creativity as well as true intelligence should INCLUDE THE ABILITY TO INTUITIVELY OR RATIONALLY "UNDERSTAND" WHAT IS THE SIMPLEST SOLUTION - meaning the simplest possible pattern that can be considered to consist of 3 or 6 or 9 shapes, one of which you have to choose in a standard figures based IQ test... "simple" might actually mean "being able to unambiguously explain it in the smallest number of words" for someone with a background in literature and philosophy and something similar for someone used more to the mathematical language... but in 90% of the cases there is an unambiguous "simplest" pattern that can be seen in the figures IQ test (not 100% because it's a statistical measure anyway, but still).

After all, don't we usually think of "smart" people as the ones that can take complicated things and make them simple or explain them in simpler terms (think Feynman, Einstein...).

...now about "cow, hen, pig, sheep" ...this is obviously a biased example by choosing 3 words of 3 letters and one of 5 and can be replaced with something that does not overlap the number of letters pattern on top of the number of legs or animal group one...

Re: My IQ

#246

Post by gurkendoktor »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #220
gurkendoktor wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a failing of our society that genuinely high IQ people are not out there working to improve the lot of mankind. Or maybe it's a failing of those high IQ people? The genius who proudly saves the codebase at Zynga every single day is completely useless compared to any single nurse working her shift right now. Even the doctor at the top of the hospital does not necessarily have a stellar IQ. What other way is the…

>Should we feel bad for smart people because society tricks them into financial services rather than less-paid cancer research? No, we should feel ashamed that we've created a society where the brightest are funneled into financial services. We should feel utterly devastated that we let genius wallow in menial jobs. It is a failing of the system at every level that these people fall through the cracks and end up doin…

> It is a failing of the system at every level that these people fall through the cracks and end up doing nothing with their gifts.

Are we speaking of different groups of people? I agree that young geniuses should be treasured and given all the freedom they need to grow. But as adults, if they take on a job in HFT and stay there, it is not falling through the cracks anymore. They're irresponsible by choice, not because a faceless society forces them to (well, in most cases).

I agree about the double-helix discovery, but does anyone really need to do an IQ test to find out whether they'll be a scientist? I don't want to say "the proof is in the pudding", because there is lot of chance in science, but "the proof is in the job" comes close IMHO :)

Re: My IQ

#247

Post by gurkendoktor »

FaceKicker wrote: post #224
gurkendoktor wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would guess that your ability to correctly answer an "ambiguous" question like that measures your ability to effectively communicate with other humans So it measures how good you are at not thinking outside of the box? ;)

Exactly. But I would say that "thinking inside of the box" is actually an incredibly important skill in practical situations. Probably 99+% of any functioning adult's thinking is "inside-the-box" (I realize that this is sort of a nebulous/meaningless statement, sorry). Things that we don't even think about, like looking both ways before crossing the street or watching our step as we get off the bus are all examples o…

I agree. I am just not sure what task this is particularly useful for- from experience, it is really, really good for "feeling what an exam is probably about and acing it without studying much" :)

Re: My IQ

#248

Post by wzdd »

3pt14159 wrote: post #64
jhuckestein wrote: post #51

My dad made me take one when I was a kid and I did really well, but even then I thought it was stupid. The first issue is addressed in this blog post. The questions just aren't good enough. This is nobody's fault really, because it is very difficult to come up with a set of hard questions that measure your intellect and don't require lots of domain specific knowledge. It's either within a certain domain. If everyone…

Studies show high correlation between iq and a host of personal outcomes (divorce, income, etc). Many iq tests actually measure multiple types of intelligences then combine them.

I picked your first example and googled it. The first result is a study demonstrating a positive correlation between divorce likelihood and IQ for people born in the 1940s in the Netherlands, a negative correlation between divorce likelihood and IQ for people born in the 1950s in the Netherlands, and a positive correlation again for people born in the USA in the 60s. The authors conclude that social factors (the difficulty of divorce and the negative social consequences) are important for this correlation.

It doesn't change that there's a correlation, but anybody using divorce rates as an argument for the effectiveness of IQ tests would have to be quite subtle.

(Link: http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/English/echtscheidingint...)

Re: My IQ

#249

Post by DeepDuh »

emmett wrote: post #241
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…

The ability to answer those kinds of ambiguous questions is extremely culturally linked. The whole idea about IQ tests is that they're supposed to be universal and culturally independent. The Cow/hen/pig/sheep question is clearly not culturally independent - what's important about those animals is a cultural question.

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 - however I wouldn't say that about all test examples.

Re: My IQ

#250

Post by Tooluka »

I've seen this task once in one IQ test: "Continue the row of numbers - 2, 4, 8, 16, 19, ..."

The answer was - 21... "You know, first we multiply by 2 and then we start to add 3" :) . Perfect "creative thinking" test.

The IQ tests, even if they are valid are still inherently broken, just forget about them and carry on.

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