Iq And Mensa

[Alpine]

Hello world, I'm back after a short hiatus due to studies. As the topic says, I'm criticizing the current methods used for declaring a person smart or smartest as well as MENSA. MENSA the famous organization for the "smart people" uses a certain criteria for enrolling people into their community. But the thing that confuses me the most is, why is it that always maths and science is used for majority of part to test someone's IQ so that they can be declared smart?

 

I'm a 15 years old lad, I don't have any intention of joining MENSA or being called smart, but in all the schools I have been to till now, the difference between me and the toppers of the class was that while they were good in studies, I was way better than them in Languages, music,art,dance and so on beside being above average in studies.So, what I am trying to say is, even though they know everything about some topic, they are a huge blockhead in others.

That's why I consider the current IQ tests and declaration of the worlds smartest person to be irrelevant, because, I'm not saying they are not smart, they are really good in all the calculations but they might not be as smart in the ways of life.Why doesn't the IQ test comprise of General Awareness, and other subjects as well to give an actual overall view of a person's intelligence?

 

P.S: I'm not crying, I just don't think it's right that people who are genius artists or musicians are not called genius.

 

What do you all say?

[Alpine]

Also, I wasn't sure where to post this thread, so I posted it here and Psychology comes closest to these things.

[Tormod]

Math and science are the things most used for IQ simply because IQ has nothing to do with how smart you are, it only measures how well you perform within the strict rules of an IQ test, which means it has no real-world application.

 

We had some pretty heated discussions on IQ here in the past, and there are several camps, just like in all other things: pro, con, kinda-cool-with-it, haters, lovers. But since I am a musician by education and a science communicator as a sideline hobbyist, I think I can safely tell you to now worry. Whatever kids are being measured by in school will not reflect what they meet when they leave school. I too were always better in music and languages (or humanities as some like to call them), and can't make heads or tails of equations with more than one unknown. :rolleyes: ;)

 

IQ is rubbish. Be yourself, be creative, have fun with it, and don't try to impress your greatness upon the world (because they will not care). You are talented and you care about it. Stick to it.

[Ken]

IQ tests, derived from Binet's original work in France, were developed as a tool to predict academic success. A standardization group, divided into age cohorts, was given a series of informational questions. The results were ordered in the form of "difficulty" and the average number passed at each age level was used to determine a "mental age".

 

Terman translated the Binet tests into English, developed a simple index to compare chronological age with "measured" mental age and called it the Intelligence Quotient, the familiar IQ=MA/CA x 100. The Stanford-Binet test is name given to Terman's version. It is an individually administered test.

 

Later, Yerkes (?) applied the basic approach to mass, paper and pencil, testing for the U.S. Army - the Army Alpha and Army Beta tests, again used for predicting learning success.

 

These tests are hopelessly confounded by educational and cultural experiences and should only be used as gross measures of cognitive skills for the purposes of academic success prediction.

[Alpine]

Thank you both for you :)

But, through this thread what I wanted to say is not that IQ test are wrong or that I'm superior to anyone else in anyway it's just that so often in schools people use these techniques to determine who is better rather than looking at their overall development.

Yes, you might say that, that's not true.Well, it's not for developed countries, but for countries like India (that's where I am from) these things are often misused to determine the smartest one.So, basically what I want to know is even while declaring who is the most smartest/intelligent person on Earth, why do people often see their performance in maths and science?

[HydrogenBond]

Science and math are often based on reduction to a common denominator. Gravity was reduced by Newton to simple equations from many previous theories. The liberal arts are a little different, since these often allow more room for subjectivity and are more about expansion than reduction. For example, the goal of music is not a reduction to one style or even to one song that defines music. The goal is in its endless diversity. Science and math tries to go the other way. Rather than endless theories, each being its own unique song, science and math tries to reduce to one song, we all can agree upon. Literature is an expansion of styles, with the goal new ways of doing the same thing and not a reduction to one book or one style.

 

The IQ test is about reduction to a definitive answer, so it will favor reduction math and science. It does not measure subjective expansion into new songs. One may test people with the music scales, but music genius occurs either by an exact copy of a complex song into reduction, or into new expansion that creates a new genre.

 

As an engineer, you need to use both methods. The science may be definitive, due to the work of others, but the options for problem solving are open ended. This allows competing factories do the same thing, but in unique ways that they need to patent. There is no push to reduce all down to just one way of doing things, that we all have to agree. Marketing is often needs both methods. It needs a new song as a hook, but it also makes use of reduction principles that have been defined for human nature. The IQ test will not determine full intelligence; both reduction and expansion. It was designed for reduction intelligence. An expansion IQ test would be harder to formulate, since how to you judge and then compare the possible endless answers one might get and then quantify that?

[Kriminal99]

Hey.

 

What criteria are you using for deciding that the top students are incompetent in "areas of life" or language etc.

 

People with higher intelligence are usually good at both math and language. The issue is that they can generate more classes and therefore generalize better from what they see. On a verbal exam, having a large vocabulary is good. This measures IQ (like .8 correlation) because with a higher IQ you can recognize the meaning of a word from the context it is used in by relating it to various abstract concepts you can create from the context (events, situations or simpler concepts).

 

With math the same thing applies. If I give you a sequence of numbers, being able to recognize a pattern of change from number to number uses the same ability. IQ deals with this very specific natural ability, rather than being a social status. People who are good at music are good at music. IQ is meant to measure how quickly you can learn, not how much knowledge in any particular area you have amassed, music or otherwise. In general, it is believed that most things people can do require knowledge of abstract concepts to be good at (and the more such abstract concepts you can generate the better).

 

What I know about music is just a side effect of studying psychology etc, I've never really been big into making music myself. From the outside though it seems somewhat similar to the situation with hacking vs computational theorists. Sometimes it less an issue of intelligence and more an issue of doing FAIRLY clever things that other people don't do because they don't involve themselves in that environment. So maybe a person with genius level IQ would be even more of an amazing musician if they dedicated themselves to it, but that's not likely to happen because geniuses often feel obligated to do other things with their abilities. Then again some hackers are far more clever than less capable computational theorists. I think in any case IQ will be a good indicator of who has the more ability.

 

 

On the other hand people with higher intelligence, and/or people conditioned to use their intelligence more analytically, can have problems relating to average/less intelligent people. For instance if you had a 140 iq, then you are smarter than 199/200 people. At a high school with an average mix (not likely but still) there might be 4000 total students. If you can relate to people within 10 iq points (I recall a study that claimed you cannot have a meaningful relationship with someone apart by 10 IQ points due to lack of comprehension of similar issues)that means divide the total population by 33, leaving 120 students (maybe 30 per class).

 

With you and people you can really be friends with representing 1/30th of the school population, your social prospects don't look good. The majority of conversations and social situations are going to be dominated by 29/30ths of the population.

 

Most of this is just going to sound stupid to you and not make any sense. If you are unlike I was and grew up in a well adjusted social environment at home, then you might not completely fail to understand them and look at them as aliens. Instead you dive in head first and try to influence them to understand the same things you do. "Who does that guy think he is?", "Who asked you?", "Who cares?" (Despite the fact that they were just talking about the same thing) are typical responses.

 

So what are your options? Create an elitist clique? Then there is the problem of chaining - the 130 iq people can still relate to 120 iq's etc. You are probably going to end up associating with few people in high school. The idea of such a clique with a floor iq is not such a bad idea since it deals with chaining. Especially when there are more such IQ groups with progressively higher floor scores required.

 

Does this mean you don't have life skills? No - you are being alienated and discriminated against because you have more life skills than everyone else. The whole point of something like mensa is to create a group of people who can do all those things - joke around, hang out, network, start businesses together etc where everyone in it is at the higher IQ level so they can easily relate to one another.

[Qfwfq]

So maybe a person with genius level IQ would be even more of an amazing musician if they dedicated themselves to it, but that's not likely to happen because geniuses often feel obligated to do other things with their abilities.

Like Mozart, Bach, Frescobaldi or many other composers that were just awesome amazing people.

[Alpine]

Kriminal99, actually that made a lot of sense. But the reason why I acutally made this thread is because at that time I was going through a list of most intelligent people on Earth. Surprisingly, Leonardo Da Vinci was no where to be seen in that list. Though it did contain several chess player and all, but Da Vinci not being there was a huge surprise o me. That guy was perhaps the best artist and had an amazing knowledge in various fields. According to Wikipedia, he was polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer.

 

So, it occurred to me that, it was unfair that someone with such a vast knowledge was not in the list of the most intelligent people ever.

[CraigD]

The difference between intelligence and genius

Kriminal99, actually that made a lot of sense. But the reason why I acutally made this thread is because at that time I was going through a list of most intelligent people on Earth. Surprisingly, Leonardo Da Vinci was no where to be seen in that list.

...

So, it occurred to me that, it was unfair that someone with such a vast knowledge was not in the list of the most intelligent people ever.

The reason Leonardo doesn’t appear on the better lists estimating the IQs of long-dead people is that, when the various criteria used to make these estimates are applied objectively to his accomplishments, he doesn’t score high enough.

 

Leonardo was physically and intellectually charismatic, and a superb draftsman and painter. However, he wasn’t really a competent engineer, or an especially good sculptor. His sketched and modeled inventions are famous for their imaginativeness, but less noted for the fact that most of them (eg: a compact helicopter powered by men on a treadmill) didn’t and couldn’t possibly work. Though he had an excellent art and craft education, Leonardo had no formal math of science (natural philosophy) education until late in his life, when he picked up bit and pieces of it from better-educated acquaintances (For about 7 years, Leonardo lived with, and learned much math, from an lackluster but competent mathematician, Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli), and self-educated himself (he’s believed to have taught himself Latin).

 

Leonardo was a good “salesman”, offering his inventive abilities to various wealthy people and noblemen, but even when attempted by competent engineers and craftsmen, few of his inventions worked. Some did, but these tended to be his smaller ones.

 

Leonardo was what we’d these days call a “generalist” an “idea man”, or, of course, a “renaissance man”. He lacked the technical ability to determine if many of his ideas were feasible or not, or the formal mathematical of philosophical skills to create profound fundamental new ideas, but was able to express the ideas emerging in the time he lived in beautiful and imaginative ways - and, technically, draw and paint like few others.

 

This illustrates, I think, an ambiguity of our use of the title “genius”: we use to refer to very imaginative and creative people, people with a extraordinary abilities to make beautiful things, and also to people able to be very formal and methodical. IQ tests of the kind one must score in the 98th or higher percentile to qualify for Mensa membership measure predominantly the kind of intelligence found in people with formal, methodical skills.

[charles brough]

I rmember when I was a merchant seaman playing a game of cards in the Marxist-led union hall waiting to hire on a ship. These three black deck hands played a better hand than I ever could and with little education. Their minds grasped what was needed quickly each time and they, remembered well what needed to be remembered. .

 

It seems to me that speed at grasping what is needed and a superior memory are the two main components making up the amount of intelligence we were born with.

 

But we also need education to best use that intelligence. And if a person has a high I.Q. and an advanced education, he is generally still far from being a genius. It takes a special talent, or an intense drive, or perseverence, or all three.

 

All people who are highly intelligent are not geniuses but all geniuses are highly intelligent.

[joekgamer]

Hello world, I'm back after a short hiatus due to studies. As the topic says, I'm criticizing the current methods used for declaring a person smart or smartest as well as MENSA. MENSA the famous organization for the "smart people" uses a certain criteria for enrolling people into their community. But the thing that confuses me the most is, why is it that always maths and science is used for majority of part to test someone's IQ so that they can be declared smart?

 

I'm a 15 years old lad, I don't have any intention of joining MENSA or being called smart, but in all the schools I have been to till now, the difference between me and the toppers of the class was that while they were good in studies, I was way better than them in Languages, music,art,dance and so on beside being above average in studies.So, what I am trying to say is, even though they know everything about some topic, they are a huge blockhead in others.

That's why I consider the current IQ tests and declaration of the worlds smartest person to be irrelevant, because, I'm not saying they are not smart, they are really good in all the calculations but they might not be as smart in the ways of life.Why doesn't the IQ test comprise of General Awareness, and other subjects as well to give an actual overall view of a person's intelligence?

 

P.S: I'm not crying, I just don't think it's right that people who are genius artists or musicians are not called genius.

 

What do you all say?

 

For one, math and science are more easily and widely used than music and art, so math and science may be stressed for that reason. Also, music, art, social skills, dance, etc. are subjective, so they can't really be included in a quantified score. For example, I recall seeing in the Smithsonian art museam an entre room of alternating black and white canvases. These canvases were bought for millions of dollars, and so are (presumably) counted as the work of an 'artistic genius'.

[Maine farmer]

Hey.

 

What criteria are you using for deciding that the top students are incompetent in "areas of life" or language etc.

 

People with higher intelligence are usually good at both math and language. The issue is that they can generate more classes and therefore generalize better from what they see. On a verbal exam, having a large vocabulary is good. This measures IQ (like .8 correlation) because with a higher IQ you can recognize the meaning of a word from the context it is used in by relating it to various abstract concepts you can create from the context (events, situations or simpler concepts).

 

With math the same thing applies. If I give you a sequence of numbers, being able to recognize a pattern of change from number to number uses the same ability. IQ deals with this very specific natural ability, rather than being a social status. People who are good at music are good at music. IQ is meant to measure how quickly you can learn, not how much knowledge in any particular area you have amassed, music or otherwise. In general, it is believed that most things people can do require knowledge of abstract concepts to be good at (and the more such abstract concepts you can generate the better).

 

What I know about music is just a side effect of studying psychology etc, I've never really been big into making music myself. From the outside though it seems somewhat similar to the situation with hacking vs computational theorists. Sometimes it less an issue of intelligence and more an issue of doing FAIRLY clever things that other people don't do because they don't involve themselves in that environment. So maybe a person with genius level IQ would be even more of an amazing musician if they dedicated themselves to it, but that's not likely to happen because geniuses often feel obligated to do other things with their abilities. Then again some hackers are far more clever than less capable computational theorists. I think in any case IQ will be a good indicator of who has the more ability.

 

 

On the other hand people with higher intelligence, and/or people conditioned to use their intelligence more analytically, can have problems relating to average/less intelligent people. For instance if you had a 140 iq, then you are smarter than 199/200 people. At a high school with an average mix (not likely but still) there might be 4000 total students. If you can relate to people within 10 iq points (I recall a study that claimed you cannot have a meaningful relationship with someone apart by 10 IQ points due to lack of comprehension of similar issues)that means divide the total population by 33, leaving 120 students (maybe 30 per class).

 

With you and people you can really be friends with representing 1/30th of the school population, your social prospects don't look good. The majority of conversations and social situations are going to be dominated by 29/30ths of the population.

 

Most of this is just going to sound stupid to you and not make any sense. If you are unlike I was and grew up in a well adjusted social environment at home, then you might not completely fail to understand them and look at them as aliens. Instead you dive in head first and try to influence them to understand the same things you do. "Who does that guy think he is?", "Who asked you?", "Who cares?" (Despite the fact that they were just talking about the same thing) are typical responses.

 

So what are your options? Create an elitist clique? Then there is the problem of chaining - the 130 iq people can still relate to 120 iq's etc. You are probably going to end up associating with few people in high school. The idea of such a clique with a floor iq is not such a bad idea since it deals with chaining. Especially when there are more such IQ groups with progressively higher floor scores required.

 

Does this mean you don't have life skills? No - you are being alienated and discriminated against because you have more life skills than everyone else. The whole point of something like mensa is to create a group of people who can do all those things - joke around, hang out, network, start businesses together etc where everyone in it is at the higher IQ level so they can easily relate to one another.

 

It would be very easy to pass judgement on Kriminal here and call him arrogant, and that would prove his point!

 

I do, however, have a problem with placing a whole lot of weight on one test, or even a whole day of testing. When I was in high school, I initially took the classes my guidence counselors chose for me based on my aptitude test scores, but I felt unchallenged and bored in those classes. When I signed up for the harder classes, the school administration tried to stop me, so I had to fight my way into the classes that would provide me with an education that I wanted, and once there, I had to prove my worthiness.

[phillip1882]

my problem is this: if we don't test for IQ, what do we test for, to determine a person's intellegance?

an artist can paint a pretty picture, or maybe decorate a house, but can they build houses? can they figure out the materials needed? of course just cause someone has a high IQ doesn't nessisarily mean they are good at those things either, but again, what else do you test for? should they have a drawing test as well as IQ? a history test? an english test?

[Maine farmer]

I wouldn't say the current testing isn't useful, but reliance on one test, or several tests given on one day, probably won't give an acurate measure of intelligence, or learning potential. Testing a teenager on a random day, and using the results to plot a future academic path, or worse yet lifetime, seems like sheer folly to me. I remember someone I knew in high school who tested poorly on purpose, and another who just had a bad day.

[Kriminal99]

I wouldn't say the current testing isn't useful, but reliance on one test, or several tests given on one day, probably won't give an acurate measure of intelligence, or learning potential. Testing a teenager on a random day, and using the results to plot a future academic path, or worse yet lifetime, seems like sheer folly to me. I remember someone I knew in high school who tested poorly on purpose, and another who just had a bad day.

 

Those tests have been shown to be less dependent on random factors than it might seem from the perspective of the test taker.. First off it's one of those things where the test is designed to reveal a trend and is not sensitive to things like misreading a single question. The only time it becomes sensitive to stuff like that is if you hit the ceiling on the test...

 

Second the general intelligence factor that the test is designed to measure is not sensitive to things like having a bad day. If you have a bad day, your IQ doesn't drop 20 points and you can no longer see the same pattern in shapes. The problems have an IQ range and if you are in that range, it is supposed to take you a relatively short time to do it. Maybe 30 seconds if you are familiar with the format, maybe a couple minutes if not. If you are below that IQ range, it's designed so you could spend 10x that and still not know for sure what the answer is, so you guess and probably get it wrong. Then the time allowed is such that the time per problem is enough for someone who is in the range to take all the time they need to get acquainted with the format.

 

If you have the brains and you have a bad day.. you just score high while having a bad day. If you have a headache, you score high while dealing with your headache. If you purposely don't fill out the test, or are fuming because your girlfriend just broke up with you and refuse to even look at or think about the questions, then fine, but whose fault is that...

[Maine farmer]

Those tests have been shown to be less dependent on random factors than it might seem from the perspective of the test taker.. First off it's one of those things where the test is designed to reveal a trend and is not sensitive to things like misreading a single question. The only time it becomes sensitive to stuff like that is if you hit the ceiling on the test...

 

Second the general intelligence factor that the test is designed to measure is not sensitive to things like having a bad day. If you have a bad day, your IQ doesn't drop 20 points and you can no longer see the same pattern in shapes. The problems have an IQ range and if you are in that range, it is supposed to take you a relatively short time to do it. Maybe 30 seconds if you are familiar with the format, maybe a couple minutes if not. If you are below that IQ range, it's designed so you could spend 10x that and still not know for sure what the answer is, so you guess and probably get it wrong. Then the time allowed is such that the time per problem is enough for someone who is in the range to take all the time they need to get acquainted with the format.

 

If you have the brains and you have a bad day.. you just score high while having a bad day. If you have a headache, you score high while dealing with your headache. If you purposely don't fill out the test, or are fuming because your girlfriend just broke up with you and refuse to even look at or think about the questions, then fine, but whose fault is that...

 

It is one thing if you are an adult and prepared to deal with life, but it is another for an adolescent and have other's determine how much you should be challenged in your course work. If a teacher uses only an IQ test to judge the ability of a student to learn, it could have lifelong consequenses for that student. I think reliance on an IQ test would be just plain lazy for an educator.

 

As for Mensa, I've never had much interest in trying to join. I'm not so sure it's just for socializing so much as it is for bragging rights. I don't need to know someone's IQ to determine if I like them. I just naturally gravitate to people I find interesting.