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In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

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Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#261

Post by nostrademons »

gwern wrote: post #251
nostrademons wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google [iq fat tails] and there're a bunch of articles on it (and one comment I wrote here about 4 years ago). The original data source for most of the articles is Terman's 1921 study of high-IQ people; they've plotted out the observed frequency of Terman's data against a normal distribution and found that it deviated markedly after about 3-4 SD. Some additional Googling seems to have found some other independent stu…

> other papers I've read indicate that IQ correlates with life outcomes until an IQ of about 140, and then appears completely uncorrelated. Cites? The papers I've read, from the Terman study and the SMPY kids, don't show that.

The citation I was thinking of was from Daniel Goleman's Working with Emotional Intelligence, where one of the findings presented was that a moderately high IQ (usually in the 120-130 range) is often a prerequisite for entering a demanding profession like doctor, lawyer, or computer programmer, but continued success in the field depends more upon emotional skills like confidence, perseverance, resilience, social skills, and leadership.

With a bit of Googling, I've found some other support for this, including the Terman study:

http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/grady/emptypromise.html

"Our conclusion is that for subjects brought up under present-day educational regimes, excess in IQ above 140 or 150 adds little to one's achievement in the early adult years." - Louis Terman, 39th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education Part I, pp. 83-84

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#262

Post by Alex3917 »

nostrademons wrote: post #258
Alex3917 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IQ is not normally distributed. IQ is actually normally distributed by definition. Actual intelligence, if such a thing exists, may not be. The reason for Terman's finding is that there aren't any IQ tests that are valid for people with extremely high IQ.

Then you get into "What's the definition of IQ?" You could argue that IQ is a theoretical construct that's defined to average 100 with a standard deviation of 15 - but then, if you can't measure it with any tests, and when you do try to measure it the tests come up with different numbers, what's the point? In my physics courses, my professors were always very careful to stress that "If the theory says one thing and t…

I agree with what you're saying, my point is just that all of the current IQ tests (including the ones Terman used) were not designed to be measures. That is, someone with an IQ of 200 isn't twice as smart as someone with an IQ of 100, which is what the term 'measurement' implies. (C.f. the book Measurement In Psychology, which was recommended by tokenadult a while ago.) Rather, they are designed to compare people relative to one another. In other words, regardless of whether or not there is some underlying thing called IQ, no one (to the best of my knowledge) has ever tried to measure it.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#263

Post by nostrademons »

Retric wrote: post #259
nostrademons wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ has fat tails: the extreme ends of the distribution are much more common than a bell curve would predict.

IQ by definition fits the bell curve. A given normalized IQ test is only good for a given rang and time period and when incorrectly interpreted outside of that range will produce excesive people with high IQ's. Also a test that's accurate +/- 10 IQ points is going to bump more people from 150 to 160 than drop people from 160 to 150 simply because there are more people at 150 than 160. Not to mention the tendency for…

Alex3917 brought up the same point in the other sub-thread where I raised this, and my response was basically "What's the point then?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5915459

Yes, you can define a concept as a normal distribution centered at 100 with a standard deviation of 15. But if you claim that this concept can be measured with IQ tests, and then the observed distribution of IQ scores doesn't match the predicted curve - it's the curve that's wrong, not the tests.

The studies that the "fat tail" results were from all used the Stanford Binet L-M test, which has a ceiling of around 230.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#264

Post by unboring »

raldi wrote: post #130

I've never seen any citation that Google ever used these kinds of question. Especially the idiotic one about pushing a car to a hotel. I think it was just an urban legend and a good piece of linkbait. There must be thousands of people on HN who interviewed at Google over the years. Did anyone ever get a question like this?

I think these are used more for PM interviews. I interviewed there once and was asked to design an evacuation plan for Manhattan (not San Francisco). I've also heard from employees there that such questions were preferred for PMs rather than engineers.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#265

Post by ArekDymalski »

nostrademons wrote: post #220
Retric wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking for people with high IQ's with the right background is basically a waste of time. There are plenty of ways to define IQ's but 160 is around 1 in 30,000 and there are only something like ~200 graduating highschool each year. If 5 percent of them study programming you looking a say 10 new genius programmers every year. And plenty of them avoid SV for reasons as simple as the limited dating pool. The simple trut…

IQ has fat tails: the extreme ends of the distribution are much more common than a bell curve would predict.

Just remember that the distribution of the test results depends on the tool itself as well as testing conditions. So I would say that such anomalies are rather the problem with the measurement than characteristic of the population.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#266

Post by Helianthus »

Alex3917 wrote: post #262
nostrademons wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you get into "What's the definition of IQ?" You could argue that IQ is a theoretical construct that's defined to average 100 with a standard deviation of 15 - but then, if you can't measure it with any tests, and when you do try to measure it the tests come up with different numbers, what's the point? In my physics courses, my professors were always very careful to stress that "If the theory says one thing and t…

I agree with what you're saying, my point is just that all of the current IQ tests (including the ones Terman used) were not designed to be measures. That is, someone with an IQ of 200 isn't twice as smart as someone with an IQ of 100, which is what the term 'measurement' implies. (C.f. the book Measurement In Psychology, which was recommended by tokenadult a while ago.) Rather, they are designed to compare people re…

Valid discussion all around! Let's all go get some beers.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#267

Post by Helianthus »

plorkyeran wrote: post #179
eliben wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're right then it's a sad situation. I hate it when terms start morphing into unrelated interpretations by means of public drift.

In this case at least the meaning it's drifting towards still actually means something rather than just a meaningless buzzword.

Just wait until Big Data is referred to similarly to Big Oil...

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#268

Post by rhizome »

sliverstorm wrote: post #225
rhizome wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of hiring a super-amazingly competent genius engineer if he's going to sit in a corner and think he's wrong all the time? Think of it this way: someone who is concerned with not doing the wrong thing is going to be more sure that what they do come up with is the right thing, that they aren't reinventing the wheel badly.

Yes, but someone who is paralyzed by fear of doing the wrong thing is never going to invent the wheel, forget about whether or not it has actually been invented yet.

It seems a little extreme to jump to "paralyzed by fear." I mean, the person got the job in the first place.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#269

Post by gwern »

nostrademons wrote: post #261
gwern wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> other papers I've read indicate that IQ correlates with life outcomes until an IQ of about 140, and then appears completely uncorrelated. Cites? The papers I've read, from the Terman study and the SMPY kids, don't show that.

The citation I was thinking of was from Daniel Goleman's Working with Emotional Intelligence , where one of the findings presented was that a moderately high IQ (usually in the 120-130 range) is often a prerequisite for entering a demanding profession like doctor, lawyer, or computer programmer, but continued success in the field depends more upon emotional skills like confidence, perseverance, resilience, social ski…

> ut continued success in the field depends more upon emotional skills like confidence, perseverance, resilience, social skills, and leadership.

Eh. That simply sounds like the correlation weakens a bit, but is far from the claims people make like 'IQ is irrelevant'.

> "Our conclusion is that for subjects brought up under present-day educational regimes, excess in IQ above 140 or 150 adds little to one's achievement in the early adult years." - Louis Terman, 39th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education Part I, pp. 83-84

Terman may have thought so, but with the full dataset this is clearly not so. Check out http://www.iza.org/conference_files/CoNoCoSk2011/gensowski_m... 'The Effects of Education, Personality, and IQ on Earnings of High-Ability Men', Gensowski et al 2011; IQ never stops mattering, even if personality factors start to matter more.

(Always funny how people can look at a study which goes something like 'X correlates .4 and Y correlates .3, but in the top 1% by X, the correlations are .3 and .4 respectively' and go 'X doesn't matter!' Says something about what they want to believe about X, I think.)

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#270

Post by jbapple »

donohoe wrote: post #242
jbapple wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should have made it clear in this comment that you work for Quartz.

I take it for granted so I forget - but I think its spelt out very very clearly in my profile so I don't have to put an * every time I comment.

What percentage of readers of your comment do you think click through to your profile?

Of the comments you read, what percentage do you view the profile of the author of?

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