I have always said that IQ was rubbish, and this is the proof. Imagine receiving a CV that listed 28 A-levels. And since halfway through Freshers' Week, has anyone ever asked about your A-levels?
There is no such thing as IQ. I have never taken an IQ test in my life. I question whether anyone who sets any store by them is sufficiently intelligent to be allowed out alone, if at all.
The whole thing depends on “mental age”, whatever that may be. The IQ of children in numerous countries has “improved” dramatically over the years when IQ tests have been set, and therefore taught to, in schools. Indeed, that never fails to happen.
The publications of Mensa are a particularly rich seam of amusement. “More people than you might think are above average”? I’m guessing about half of them. “One person in 20 is in the top five per cent”? You don’t say! And so on.
But never try and tell the “I have a high IQ” lot any of this. Yet you would not have to, and indeed you never could, do anything to get a high IQ, even if such a thing really existed. Having it would be no cause for congratulation, still less for self-congratulation or for the creation of an international society for mutual congratulation.
Spot on but this will annoy people.
ReplyDeleteAs it should.
ReplyDeleteI don’t see how that article proves any such thing-rather the opposite. Is it a coincidence that as the article says her 14-year-old sister is also a national maths champion and her nine year old brother a Grade 4 pianist and both her parents are also exceptional? These things tend to be genetic. As leading Harvard scientist David Reich recently noted in the New York Times; “A recent study, led by the geneticist Danielle Posthuma, studied more than 70,000 people and found genetic variations in more than 20 genes that were predictive of performance on intelligence tests.””
ReplyDeleteGrade 4 piano is an accomplishment.
DeleteThere is no such thing as IQ. Everyone knows that.
I'm not sure what you're querying-are you actually suggesting that intelligence is not unevenly distributed across populations and doesn't have a genetic component, or merely that IQ tests are an unreliable means of measuring it? There is abundant evidence that genetic variations across populations can in fact predict performance in IQ tests (that's why this girl's siblings and parents also have exceptional accomplishments). Landmark recent scientific studies have now identified 52 genes linked to high intelligence (see below).
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/science/52-genes-human-intelligence.html