Where he probably got his ass handed to him. My roommate had one of the highest Underwriters exams scores ever recorded in his big state. I went home with him over Christmas and we visited one of his high school teachers, who was in awe of his intelligence. He was smarter than me, but didn’t do as well because he had it too easy in high school.
And while he always had a good job, he never did anything particularly earth shattering during his career.
As a kid I quite often was either the smartest or next to smartest in a room. Gifted class was large at one school and I’m sure there were some terribly smart kids in there. Where I’ve found humility is online gaming. Raiding in World of Warcraft has been an eye opener in how far gaps can be in intellectual performance. I know that’s just a subset of a huge amount of possible intellectual/dexterity activities but it was surprising to me.
That’s because people explained it in too complicated a fashion.
A gerund is a NOUN created by adding “ing” to a verb. That’s it. You convert a verb to a noun, almost always by adding “ing.”
“I am going to swim twenty laps today” - “Swim” is a verb.
“One of my hobbies is swimming.” - “Swimming” is a noun.
It’s that simple. Regrettably, many explanations get too deeply technical.
There are now universities that cater to people who can pass exams and write papers with minimal handholding. Western Governors’ University in Utah is probably the most famous one, but there are others now. They are self-paced, so in theory you can finish a whole degree in a month if you are a complete knowitall and have no life. The downside is that these schools offer relatively little in terms of actual education, so good luck if you get stuck on something.
Good point. There has been a lot of rhetoric from the education world about how the thing that the American Worker ™ needs most of all to be successful is basic literacy and math skills, backed up with anecdotes about how some janitor realized that his third grade reading level was keeping him back, went and got his GED, and now makes a good salary managing a dozen teams of janitors across a whole region and spends his vacations traveling the world and reminding children to stay in school. They make a strong implication that academic skills will get you there, but conveniently fail to mention everything else. I spent some time looking into this and whether one could actually get a good job with little more than high test scores in reading, math, and maybe one or two other things, and found out that nearly nobody hires that way, and those that do only use it for mimimum-wage type jobs, not the kind of jobs that a high scorer would typically want. The “I learned to read and became successful” type people are people who were street-wise hustlers to begin with, not nerds who sat around and spammed companies with their test scores hoping to get hired.
I’ve got a Ph.D on my card. I have this not because I’m the only one in the office who has a Ph.D (there’s one other guy). I do it because it is a great way of letting the scientist who gets my card that I’m “one of them”, even though my job title has “coordinator” in it. I’m not an administrator. I’m not a clerk. I’m not (just) a paper-pusher. I’m a scientist. My coworkers know that I’m a scientist, but not necessarily the folks I have to engage with outside of my agency. Besides, the P.E’s I work with have their alphabets showcased on their cards.
I used to have an African American boss. On my first day, I noticed that he had put “Ph.D” on my name plate. I was ashamed and put a sticker over it. I didn’t want to be “that” girl. My boss saw and told me (in not so many words) to cut the modest humble shit. He didn’t have to lay it out for me–by his reaction, I could figure out why he felt including the alphabets was so important.
I don’t work with a bunch of Ph.D’s, but I’m not stupid enough to think this means I’m the smartest one. To be sure, I work with a couple of people who seem to only have islands of intelligence. But I also work with some real smarty-pants. Some of them only have bachelor’s degrees. They are a pleasure to work with because I l am able to learn so much from them.
Granted, I’m not gifted. I don’t know what my IQ is, but I don’t think I’m anyone’s idea of a genius.
The Society of Actuaries sends me annual forms to vote for President and various other positions. I don’t pay enough attention to the various actuarial goings-on to have an informed opinion about these various candidates, so I usually don’t bother voting. But there have been times when I’ve just voted for the people with the fewest letters after their names. I figure the guys with all the letters are taking this too seriously.
I haven’t run into that case before, but it makes sense. The people I was referring to had clearly technical job titles.
At one school I went to faculty used Doctor instead of Professor because there were a significant number of faculty members without PhDs, so Doctor gave more status.
I don’t know what other fields do. I do know that in Germany business cards have all sorts of titles on them.
I don’t really think I understand this.
“Deep competitive streak” isn’t the same as “hustling your ass.” If you make the world’s best cookies and work hard to sell them, that doesn’t necessarily mean you are doing so out of a sense of trying to defeat rival cookie makers (and indeed, you your cookies are better, you are probably increasing the size of the cookie market; it’s not zero sum.)
In any event, society does not “favor” talent or a competitive streak. Society favors getting something out of you that is of value; whether your contribution is due to talent, hard work, luck, or a combination of those things is not of interest to the person placing value on your contribution. What they want is a tasty cookie. They don’t really give a shit what your talents are, and whether you came up with the recipe on the first try or the thousandth.
I haven’t seen a lot of correlation between intelligence and being elected to positions in professional societies myself.
I take issue with the dismissive claim “IQ measures being good at IQ tests”, as if that’s just a completely arbitrary thing.
I mean, obviously at some level there’s some truth to that. But the trick is that IQ tests are hopefully similar enough to varieties of the challenges that one encounters in the real world which can be overcome via what we vaguely refer to as “intelligence” that it becomes a useful measure of, well, something.
For instance, I think there’s a quiet strong correlation between IQ and an aptitude for computer programming. That doesn’t mean that anyone with a high IQ will always be a great programmer, or the converse, but I’m quite certain that people hired as programmers at Google and Facebook and the like have average IQs that are quite impressively high. Anyone who has worked as a professional programmer knows that there are just some people who write code faster, and who can understand and design algorithms, faster than other people. That’s certainly not ALL that there is to being a good professional computer programmer, but it’s a very important part of what makes up a really hot shot programmer.
IQ accounts for 25% of the variability in school performance. As a real-world correlation goes, that is huge. So it’s not measuring everything, but it’s not measuring nothing.
The opposite. Did well and got graduate degree there also.
He was not a slacker in any way. Back in those HS days those days, always involved with Science Fairs, soccer, and strangely enough the school theatrical performances.
Forget the definition – what’s the “passing score?” 
Only in “Real Genius” I’m afraid.
Depends on the test, scale or organization, which is one of the issues with all those bits of media where someone’s IQ is given: they never mention the test, or the scale used.
Is 32 a high temperature or a low one? If it’s Celsius it’s summer, if Farenheit it’s the freezing point and if Kelvin I hope you’re not touching whatever happens to be at it.
Those who have good social skills don’t draw negative attention. But the stereotype is the zero sum of “if someone is intelligent, they’ll be socially incapable.”
The IQ “scale” is baked into the score - by definition.
From Wiki
So one’s IQ just shows where he or she stands in the distribution defined by IQ test results, nothing more.
According to my kid’s school, Gifted and Talented is for IQs ranging from 130 to 145 and Highly Gifted is for IQs above 145. The programs essentially run from Kindergarten through 7th grade. Presumably for 8th grade and above, they would take AP or honors classes or whatever.
As your own quote says and paraphrasing “historically, the standard deviation wasn’t always normalized to 15”. IQs from tests normalized to 15 are using the same scale, but without that information, the value is incomplete.