Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think the richer countries are richer?
Geography, accidents of history and positive feedback loops?
A higher IQ population will be better able to adapt and take advantage of other factors.
Average IQ in Europe by country (map)
41–50 of 62 posts
Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)
#42I wonder why people focus so much on IQ instead of better metrics.
In this article, "The play deficit":
http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/children-today-are-suffe...
there are these very interesting sentences:
"Other research, by the psychologist Mark Runco and colleagues at the Torrance Creativity Center at the University of Georgia, shows that scores on the TTCT are the best childhood predictors we have of future real-world achievements. They are better predictors than IQ, high-school grades, or peer judgments of who will achieve the most."
TTCT is "Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking".
People should really be much more interested in metrics like TTCT, rather than IQ tests, SAT tests or other not very relevant metrics.
Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)
#43There'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?
It's unlikely that 1) there are significant differences in intelligence between different continents 2) that IQ, which is significantly influenced by education, would be lower in Europe where education is rather decent (probably at least in the better half, if you were to sort the world by quality of education).
Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)
#44I'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.
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.
> No, not necessarily the richer - I can spot a direct correlation between the quality of the education system and the IQ reported here.
The first sentence of the linked post, well before the actual maps, is "Please note: Quality of education greatly influences IQ scores, i.e. a lower average IQ is more indicative of lower access to wide-scale quality education rather than innate intelligence (as demonstrated, for example, here). Also, testing conditions influence results; wealthier countries are more likely to be able to afford better testing conditions for participants."
Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)
#45The blog post author did a terrible job of research on IQ by encountering the writings of Richard Lynn (funded by the Pioneer Fund, and later an administrator of the Pioneer Fund) and not finding the writings of James R. Flynn,[1] the acknowledged expert on IQ trends over time, after whom the Flynn effect[2] is named. Flynn's TED talk[3] is the place to start for understanding what is really going on in IQ score trend and in national average IQ differences to date.
By contrast, Lynn is decried as a sloppy scholar,[4] and is not taken seriously by the mainstream of human intelligence researchers.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Intelligence-Flynn-ebook/dp/B0...
http://www.amazon.com/Are-Getting-Smarter-James-Flynn-ebook/...
http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Human-Progress-Story-Hidd...
[2]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/james-r-f...
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/sep/23/james-flyn...
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/what-is-intellig...
[3] http://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_h...
[4] http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/wichertsRavenAfr2010rej.pdf
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1994/dec/01/the-tai...
Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The whole article is about how the 2007 map was biased and how the 2012 map attempts to correct this bias. So you can't compare them the way you do it.
Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)
#47Earlier 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...
Its a long-known, well-demonstrated effect on an individual level. A more likely causal mechanism than the kind of broad social effect in the reverse direction that you suggest is that access to quality education also affects experience with, patience with, and attitudes toward the kind of assessments used to measure IQ, thus influencing results.
(There's other wealth-related -- and, on a country-level, social-support-network related effects, too, as early childhood nutrition and other social-environment factors have an effect on IQ that, again, has been demonstrated on an individual level.)
Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)
#48Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The whole article is about how the 2007 map was biased and how the 2012 map attempts to correct this bias. So you can't compare them the way you do it.
The only thing in the article about the relation to the older map is "Since the maps above [the 2012 maps] are based on more recent data, the map shown here [the 2007 map] should be considered outdated."
There's not one word in the linked piece about bias in the older map, so saying that's what the whole article is about is, well, odd.
Re: Average IQ in Europe by country (map)
#50How 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.
Interesting perhaps I took one but didnt realize it. How accurate can an IQ test for elementary schoolers be for an adult population?
Maybe the test I took were not called IQ tests but were very similar. Most test I took were similar to what the SAT was, but I never got back an "IQ" score. Usually they gave us back a percentile score against the whole pool, but never an IQ number or range.