Does IQ really indicate how smart you are?

[lost prophet]

Originally posted by VulcanRider: quote: Originally posted by lost prophet: lol see if anyone can get this question that was in the test....i got this one wrong. a man is comeing down a mountain, he had almost reached the bottom when he slipped and fell to the top again. how is this possible? he did not have jet packs. he was trying to get to the bottom. no exterior forces were used.

SCUBA diver climbing down an underwater mountain. Slipped & didn't have enough weight strapped on to keep from rising? [/QUOTE]Wow you got it. I spent ages thinking about it and still got it wrong. By exterior force they mean stuff like, he landed on a bird anf lfew to the top, he was abducted by aliens who put him on the top and stuff like that.

[Cerek]

Originally posted by Q'alooaith: So let me see if I understand what your saying.. If you've got a high, or above average IQ and get good grades you must therfor have poor social skills.. I find that offensive, the sort of trash that people spew after they've finished an IQ test and got less than the guy next door... There are far more examples of less than steller intelligences being rather rude and obnoxious.. I used to rate between 114-150 IQ points, dunno how I'd rate nowadays.. One of my mates IQ is around the 90 mark, and he's a rude thoughtless SOB.. You get nasty smart people, you get nasty dumb people, learn it, live with it.

No, Q'alooaith, you apparantly do not understand what I'm saying. I did NOT say that those with above average IQ must have poor social skills. I said I have a personal friend with a genius-level IQ that has a significant lack of social skills and that I had seen this correlation more than once. His lack of social skills has nothing to do with being rude or nasty towards people. He isn't. He simply does not have good interactive social skills. He does tend to seem a bit arrogant to others at times because he is knowledgeable in many different areas (he used to read old college textbooks when he was still in elementary school) and he often believes HIS knowledge is superior to anybody else's, but he is not deliberately arrogant. It's just the way he presents himself and some of the statements he makes. Pritchke gave a similar example based on personal experience, though the fellow in his example does sound like the arrogance may be deliberate.

This reinforces what I read in the MSN article I mentioned. People with high IQ's sometimes have a harder time "thinking outside the box" for two reasons (from my own observations).
1) According to the article, they don't always know how to apply rules or theories to problems that aren't "textbook" examples.
2) They have a tendency to believe their solution IS the best (and only really correct) solution to the problem or dilemma. So they aren't always willing to consider alternative solutions.

I have not said this is true for ALL people with exceptionally high IQ's. I didn't even say it happens in most cases. All I said was that I've seen this correlation more than once.

[Cerek]

Originally posted by lost prophet: quote: Originally posted by VulcanRider: SCUBA diver climbing down an underwater mountain. Slipped & didn't have enough weight strapped on to keep from rising?

Wow you got it. I spent ages thinking about it and still got it wrong. By exterior force they mean stuff like, he landed on a bird anf lfew to the top, he was abducted by aliens who put him on the top and stuff like that.[/QUOTE]Good Job, VulcanRider. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

[VulcanRider]

Originally posted by lost prophet: quote: Originally posted by VulcanRider: quote: Originally posted by lost prophet: lol see if anyone can get this question that was in the test....i got this one wrong. a man is comeing down a mountain, he had almost reached the bottom when he slipped and fell to the top again. how is this possible? he did not have jet packs. he was trying to get to the bottom. no exterior forces were used.

SCUBA diver climbing down an underwater mountain. Slipped & didn't have enough weight strapped on to keep from rising? [/QUOTE]Wow you got it. I spent ages thinking about it and still got it wrong. By exterior force they mean stuff like, he landed on a bird anf lfew to the top, he was abducted by aliens who put him on the top and stuff like that. [/QUOTE]Thanks. I tried to imagine how he could start at the top & work downward against a natural tendency to be pushed back up. It was either that or explaining how the mountain itself could be turned upside down. This was easier...

[Sir Goulum]

Well, I apparantly have an IQ of 125 or so... isn't that kinda smart for a person not even out of high school and can't even get honors? [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Aelia Jusa]

Originally posted by Sir Goulum: Well, I apparantly have an IQ of 125 or so... isn't that kinda smart for a person not even out of high school and can't even get honors? [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Whether you're out of high school is irrelevant. Theoretically, your IQ shouldn't change as you get older (although depending on the test, it might; in a good test, it shouldn't if your actual objective IQ doesn't change). Your IQ is calculated by comparing the score you get with scores typical of your age and whether it is higher or lower than that. It is not a quotient, i.e. mental age / actual age, anymore, as I think Bungleau posted earlier; the term Intelligence Quotient is a hangover from when IQ tests were first created in France to place the children who were of varying ages and education in the proper classes, but quotient is now a misnomer. Tests are normed on all age groups (mostly; some are not appropriate for adults over 75, although administering a full IQ test with an older adult isn't really appropriate anyway) and then individuals' scores are compared to the norms for their age. I'm not sure what 'honors refers to, but having a high IQ doesn't necessarily mean you're going to do well in school. While it is a good predictor of school success, there is not a perfect correlation, and other factors, like motivation, school environment, home environment, teaching style, and so on, will affect your school achievement.

Similarly with job performance, Cerek is right when he says that other factors rather than IQ are relevant to predicting job performance than IQ. And IQ is differentially important for different jobs. Managerial job success is more highly correlated with IQ than assembly line job success, for instance. However, given what we can measure and what variables are influential in all jobs, rather than skills specific to individual jobs, IQ is the best predictor of job performance, which has been demonstrated by a huge number of studies. Again, it is not a perfect correlation, so of course you will get people with high IQs that perform worse than people with lower IQs in particular situations. In fact, I think the correlation is something like .5 or .6, which means there is still 60-70% of the variance in job performance to be explained by other things. And other variables are also important, like Cerek mentioned motivation, extroversion, reaction to authority, initiative, etc., but have lower correlations. Conscientiousness is also highly correlated, and helpfully, IQ and conscientiousness are not correlated so if you can estimate IQ and conscientiousness in potential employees you've got quite a good chance of selecting a good performer.

[Aelia Jusa]

Originally posted by Cerek: So what do you think? Is IQ an accurate indicator of intelligence and future success, or does someone with "Street Smarts" (and a healthy dose of common sense) actually know more about what works in the real world than somebody with a 4-6 year college degree?

You're assuming that someone with 'street smarts' is going to do poorly on an IQ test - this is not at all the case. Good IQ tests like the WAIS don't require more than an elementary school education. For example, there is an arithmetic section, but the actual type of problem you get involves no more than adding or multiplying, and it's how fast and accurately you can do it - your cognitive processing ability and speed, which is not related to education - that matters, not whether you learned university level calculus. Similarly, someone with a college degree might not have a terribly high IQ. If employers are hiring on the logic of IQ is positively related to job performance, this person has a degree, having a degree = high IQ, then they are not actually hiring based on intelligence at all, but level of education.

[pritchke]

Originally posted by Aelia Jusa: For example, there is an arithmetic section, but the actual type of problem you get involves no more than adding or multiplying, and it's how fast and accurately you can do it - your cognitive processing ability and speed, which is not related to education - that matters, not whether you learned university level calculus.

See, there is still a problem with the test right there. The problem is you can actually condition yourself for this test much like you can condition your body for a race except with much better results. I have done so myself using random numbers, adding, subtracting multiplying, dividing. While dividing can be tricky they are normally multiple choice so you only need to figure out the last digit or 2 not the entire number, so figure out what you need than pick the correct number. If you use numbers quite a bit you are probably already somewhat conditioned, I can add and multiply quite decent in my head as my wife is always asking me how much is this and in picking up groceries I do a rough estimate of the final cost in my head so I am not off by no more than a dollar or two. Hey, things like bananas throw me off since you are paying by lb or kg and I don't weigh anything. I could get better if I wished to practice more using random numbers and creating my own test. To condition your self just create a test of say ten problems or so were you add subtract multiply random numbers use say only up to 3 or 4 digits to start (2 if you are really bad with numbers) if you get really good than add digits. You will find that the first few times you may be terrible, after a time you will get better and better and will be ready for the test. It is actually conditioning your mind, you will find that if you stop performing these exercises after a time you may have difficulty adding two digit numbers again. You can condition and prepare yourself for such a test so it isn't as if you can't study, it is just different form of study, the more you practice the faster you get much like Bozos of Bones lock example.

Isn't there a language or word test as well, this type I have not discovered the secret for preparing for it, though the more words you know the better you can do so I suspect people who do alot of crossword puzzles can nail that one.

You can even prepare yourself for the logic answers, in what comes next in the sequence, or what is missing from the sequence. If you can get your hands on some good examples and answers of different sequences. Work then out, see if you were right, if not figure out what the sequence was. Do enough of them you will know all or most of the the tricks in solving the sequences to do well. While it is mostly logic in figuring out the sequence, conditioning yourself to find what the sequence is looking for can be helpful as many of the sequences are not always what they first appear especialy with a string of numbers.

[ 03-21-2005, 03:32 PM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

[Hivetyrant]

If there is one tihngsd that pisses me off about IQ's its those damn "national IQ test" that they put on TV every year, its Bull**** becasue afterwards you get people that know how to tun a picture upside down and pick from a multiple choice answer and suddenely they think they have an IQ of 120!

I took an IQ test when I was younger and I dont rememeber much of it now, but I do remember that they do not base it on mathematical skills, maths is something you learn, not something you automatically know.

Also, another thing is that there are literally hundreds of IQ tests and I nor anyone else can say which one is the right test (well I just did, but you get the point [img]tongue.gif[/img] )

I suppose the uneducated people would have a "Locked IQ" as in, they may have a high IQ its just that they dont use it in the same way that we do....Or something like that [img]tongue.gif[/img]

EDIT:Sorry if I repeated a few things others have said, I just didnt have time to read all the posts

[ 03-21-2005, 03:10 PM: Message edited by: Hivetyrant ]