h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Intelligence Tests - A582257
Author: xyroth (rash enough to tackle intelligence@A584525) - U149792

the fourth entry in this batch.

You should define Intelligence Quotient. It is "Mental Age" divided by physical age. If a 5 year old appears to have the mental age of a 7 year old, then she has an IQ of 7/5 = 1.40. This is multiplied by 100 to make it easier to read, so it is 140.

The average IQ is 100 and as many people will be below 100 as above it.

You might like to mention in your discussion of calibration that in the early IQ tests, women scored worse than men. It was assumed by the researchers that this was because the tests were culturally biased against women, so they adjusted the questions until women scored equally with men. Whether women are as intelligent as men can not therefore be discovered by using these tests.

I made a deliberate choice not to mention that the early tests over-corrected for male-female bias, as to my knowledge, this has now been fixed, and is covered by the cultural bias problem that is mentioned.

While it might be an idea to mention the definition of I.Q., your definition is insufficient.

this is because it only works for those under 18, with I.Q.'s between about 80 and 120, and with a western world view.

as to determining the relative intelligences of different social groups, the big question there is why do you want to know?

a lot of people in that field assume that they are better in some way, and bias their tests until they give the right answers.

but that is a whole extra entry about intelligence and prejudice.

My point about men and women was not that one group is more intelligent, but that it is totally impossible to use the tests to decide this, since they are based on the assumption that the two groups are of equal intelligence. It was a practical demonstration of the point about cultural bias you were making and is easy to relate to.

I think that since IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient, it is worth explaining what it stands for, even though it is clearly inadequate as a measure of Intelligence.

I thought I had covered that in the section about test bias.

however I will have a think about where it can be added.

both the iq definition, and the inability to diferentiate between populations might go better in the stuff about general intelligence.

what do you think?

You can remove the first header because it alraedy appears in the title banner.

well spotted, I didn't notice that.

see? brevity is possible for me

Friar