Question, because I'm certain somebody knows: is that story of 100 IQ - 60 = 180 - 140 in terms of relative intelligence true? Or is that just metaphorical and not actually representative of "people doing such-and-such are on different planes of existence"?
Question, because I'm certain somebody knows: is that story of 100 IQ - 60 = 180 - 140 in terms of relative intelligence true?
Not really. "180 IQ" is taken to mean two different things. Precociousness is the first; a 6-year-old with the cognitive performance of an 11-year-old has a "183 IQ". It's not terribly meaningful, though, because this says nothing about his adulthood performance, which will probably be closer to the average (usually 135-150). The second is extreme cognitive ability in adults or near-adults, on an "absolute" rather than age-graded scale, which we can't measure using an IQ test.
In general, IQ tests become less meaningful (correlating less strongly to what we consider "intelligence") after 125, and are unreliable after about 150. Many distinguished professors, even in math and the sciences, score in the 120s to 130s when tested. It's not that these people are "only" 98th percentile; the test simply isn't great at measuring the high range.
Also, for case in point about the diminishing utility and relevance of IQ: consider a relationship between a person with an IQ of 125 and one at 100. Someone at 100 is unlikely to finish college, and 125 is the average IQ of Ivy League students. Their relationship would be unlikely to last due to the extreme disparity of intelligence, as well as the different schools and jobs they would be likely to have. On the other hand, if the disparity were 150/125, they'd probably be considered to be well-matched; they'd have gone to similar schools and have similar educational/job experiences; although the disparity would be present, it wouldn't be such that the 150 would end up completely dominating the 125.
Comments
Wow! Pretty excellent research.
Question, because I'm certain somebody knows: is that story of 100 IQ - 60 = 180 - 140 in terms of relative intelligence true? Or is that just metaphorical and not actually representative of "people doing such-and-such are on different planes of existence"?
is that story of 100 IQ - 60 = 180 - 140 in terms of relative intelligence true?
Short answer: no.
Longer answer: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=407083
----
Also: as katz mentioned above, IQs of historical figures are complete nonsense. I can't believe it actually got so many upvotes here on HN.
Question, because I'm certain somebody knows: is that story of 100 IQ - 60 = 180 - 140 in terms of relative intelligence true?
Not really. "180 IQ" is taken to mean two different things. Precociousness is the first; a 6-year-old with the cognitive performance of an 11-year-old has a "183 IQ". It's not terribly meaningful, though, because this says nothing about his adulthood performance, which will probably be closer to the average (usually 135-150). The second is extreme cognitive ability in adults or near-adults, on an "absolute" rather than age-graded scale, which we can't measure using an IQ test.
In general, IQ tests become less meaningful (correlating less strongly to what we consider "intelligence") after 125, and are unreliable after about 150. Many distinguished professors, even in math and the sciences, score in the 120s to 130s when tested. It's not that these people are "only" 98th percentile; the test simply isn't great at measuring the high range.
Also, for case in point about the diminishing utility and relevance of IQ: consider a relationship between a person with an IQ of 125 and one at 100. Someone at 100 is unlikely to finish college, and 125 is the average IQ of Ivy League students. Their relationship would be unlikely to last due to the extreme disparity of intelligence, as well as the different schools and jobs they would be likely to have. On the other hand, if the disparity were 150/125, they'd probably be considered to be well-matched; they'd have gone to similar schools and have similar educational/job experiences; although the disparity would be present, it wouldn't be such that the 150 would end up completely dominating the 125.