RE: Ask a public-health/nutrition student
December 6, 2015 at 8:36 am
(This post was last modified: December 6, 2015 at 8:40 am by bennyboy.)
Yeah, I think in general the idea of IQ is at least parly busted. It is meant to represent a general intelligence, which means if you study one or two intellectual tasks, you should be able to assume that ALL intellectual tasts will correlate reasonably well-- which they do, but not enough to establish a useful measure of the mental greatness of an individual.
I think a double statistical measure, while unpopular and dickish, could at least say a little more: a combination of mean scores but also of variance among very many tasks, with low variance meaning a person is generally of that level, and a high variance pointing to savantism. Also important could be the top scores one gets or the lowest ones. If there was a skill involving catching or throwing objects, for example, I'd do poorly. If there was one involving quickly navigating mazes, I would destroy it, because I'm Rainman crazy genius at mazes.
I think a double statistical measure, while unpopular and dickish, could at least say a little more: a combination of mean scores but also of variance among very many tasks, with low variance meaning a person is generally of that level, and a high variance pointing to savantism. Also important could be the top scores one gets or the lowest ones. If there was a skill involving catching or throwing objects, for example, I'd do poorly. If there was one involving quickly navigating mazes, I would destroy it, because I'm Rainman crazy genius at mazes.
