Intelligence Quotient

A statistic invented in 1904 by Alfred Binet to identify students in need of extra teaching. [http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Binet]

A variety of other intelligence tests and analyses are collected at http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/.

IQ is used to rank order people, typically as part of a selection process related to investment in their intellect. The investment is often job training but it could just as easily be formal education or club membership benefits. IQ testers promise to save investors money by weeding out poor investments and sharing in the savings. The idea makes about as much sense as a beauty-quotient for selecting wives.

(Flaws include rank ordering multidimensional quantities and holding individuals to statistical measures.)

See also ProgrammingLanguageLevels.

Obviously, already the idea of representing something as complex as the HumanMind? by just one number does not make sense at all. Nobody had the idea of having a sports-quotient and rank people on it until now. But it would probably not make less sense.

Actually, there is a sports-quotient. Ability in certain sports neatly segregates income

An efficient market is probably the best mechanism we've come up with to date to rank order complex things. (Soviet economists have reported that the real problem with central planning was that they lacked believable information as to what products were worth.) Who is to say Alex Rodriguez isn't worth 250 million? Still, it makes us wonder what dimension of his ability can we imitate.

http://www.ams.org/new-in-math/cover/mi1.html -- multiple dimensions to the mathematical mind.

Do you think the income in sports is a good sports quotient? This would mean, that a world class golfer is a much better sportsman than a world class swimmer!

I do not know if there is a cross-sport correlation, but within a sport, it does apply - look at the salary range in pro baseball.

But even within one sport, the salary range is a good measure of performance only at the top end. There is a very quick drop-off to zero. For example, I have a friend who can easily thrash me at tennis every time, but we would both rate at zero on a salary-based measure.

It isn't even such a good measure at the top end of team pro sports... The highest-paid player in a league is rarely 'the best' - usually a combination of 'one of the best', had a good agent, and recently negotiated contract. Somewhat sport-dependent of course.

Drug testing and lie-detector testing are also presumed to protect an employer's investments. They too are full of social implications but stand on firmer ground in that we know what a drug or a lie is. Incidentally, theft is the number one source of failure for small business in America. I test my kids often with this one question: if you take something that isn't yours, but you need it, and you won't get caught, and it won't even be missed, is it still stealing?

You mean like taking the air that I breathe? No, that's not stealing.

A more appropriate example might be office supplies.

The idea makes about as much sense as a beauty-quotient for selecting wives.

I would be horrified at the suggestion that I use such a metric to select my wife. Fortunately, she's a "10", so there's no problem. ;->

I test my kids often with this one question...

That's a neat question. If you could guarantee that the thing won't be missed (impossible), you could make the case that it has no owner, and then "stealing" has no meaning. Getting caught or not (in the future) is obviously irrelevant, especially because of the present tense of the question. If you're intoxicated and behind the wheel, you're DWI, even if you don't kill anyone. Same thing. That's my take. So what's the real answer?

(BTW, doesn't this sort of mushy stuff belong on Why2k?)

Test yourself at http://www.bbc.co.uk/testthenation/iq/ (ShockWave) and let us know if you score over 125.

I put in the above link, but doubt the quality of the test (because (for me) only the jigsaw piece questions have significant difficulty).

I found the jigsaw ones harder too. I didn't use the time available on those, either. If I did a test like this again, I'd score higher due to familiarity with the types of question

A probably better test is at http://www.intelligencetest.com/

I disagree - there's too much assumed general knowledge in that one.

I agree that some general knowledge is needed.

Lots, actually. I scored 156 on that one.

Yes. I doubt the calibration on this one. I've seen a lot of the questions before in puzzle books etc. It's a collection of stuff from other sources, I think, rather than a newly constructed and validated test.

At gatherings and meetings of one sort or another, I occasionally do a little rant on the quality of education. I'll often lead in with a question worded something like: "Did you know that the average IQ in this country is below 100?"

Every so often somebody catches it, but mostly I get the open-mouthed gasps of consternation that our average IQ is so low.

Why that's funny is left as an exercise for the reader. -- GarryHamilton

See also DefinitionOfIntelligence, EmotionalIntelligence, SocialIntelligence

EditText of this page (last edited June 22, 2005) or FindPage with title or text search