Do you know of any examples of impressive intellectual achievements that were accomplished by people who had scored below average on their IQ tests, or who had performed poorly on other measures of intelligence?
Who are they and what did they accomplish?
Thanks.
Is painting an “intellectual feat”? Rouseeau was supposedly kinda dim.
Are we counting “Albert Einstein failed math”?
In a recent collection of essays, Tama Janowitz confesses that she once tested as mildly retarded on an I.Q. test.
I hope someone doesn’t trot out Richard Feynman as Exhibit A. Though the 1965 Nobel physicist and researcher in quantum electrodynamics tested at a mere 124 IQ, I seriously doubt the accuracy of that test. Another frequently cited person is inventor Nikola Tesla. I’d question the tests before I’d question the men.
I once read that Thomas Edison had an IQ of 100.
Dubya is able to memorize Karl Rove’s talking points. For him, a monu-mental accomplishment.
I read that too, but it probably has more to do with his hearing problems than his intelligence. Hearing impairment was often diagnosed as retardation.
Why? 124 is very smart. A person with a 124 IQ is smarter than more than 90% of all humans. With a 124 IQ, a love of science, and an open mind, you could certainly become a great scientist, like Feynman.
Don’t be fooled by the hundreds of people you’ll meet who claim amazing IQ scores of 165 and such. Most of them are full of crap. IQs above 120 are unusual. Above 130 is quite rare.
I beg to differ, old bean. An IQ of 124 is not “very smart,” whatever smart is. Certainly not smart enough to explain his mastery of an obscenely complex branch of physics and the respect he garnered among his brilliant colleagues.
The same old problem with ‘intelligence’ and ‘intelligence tests’. :eek:
The main thing that ‘intelligence tests’ measure for an individual is how good they are at doing that test. It makes no prediction about individual abilities. They can make good generalisations about larger groups of people (who to admit to higher education, to do certain work, etc.) but only for the group- there is little individual reliability.
I knew one person whose IQ was in the 50-70 range but was more mathematically and numerically able than I (and I go to degree level with it). He could make numbers dance.
Google for Idiot Savants to give you some idea of the specific abilities of persons of low measured IQ and high achievement in certain areas. And as for Richard Feynman, it is possible for someone with an IQ of 124 to excell in just about any field, if they have particular abilities in that area and if they are dedicated to suceeding in that area.
I have known people with brilliant science and maths minds who were near functionally illiterate when it came to presenting information verbally or in writing, and conversely I have known people with brilliant ‘Liberal Arts’ minds- (history, politics, english etc.) who were scientifically and mathematically sub-normal.
But Feynman was showing evidence of genius at a young age (presumably before he became “dedicated to succeeding”). For example, as a ten-or-so year-old boy, he had the reputation as the “little boy who could fix radios by thinking” (a reputation obtained by considering the nature of the problem, and hence determining in advance what must be the problem, and only then looking inside the radio for a specific mechanical/electrical problem). He also was gifted at math - his biography recounts him doing advanced mathematics while still in grade school.
All in all, IMHO, hardly what one expects from a “very smart” person with an IQ of 124.
As I said above, IQ does not equal ability, nor does ability equal IQ. IQ tests look at specific abilities in problem solving. To score above 130 requires virtually no wrong answers out of , say 100 timed questions. A problem with one particular area of the test will reduce someone to 124 who might have scored 140 plus. For instance, one might be mathematically and scientifically and logically ‘intelligent’, yet have difficulty with word meanings and associations, leading to a good but moderate IQ of 124. Conversely, one could be excellent at all tested areas except math (a very common problem) and so test at a lower level than one’s global abilities suggest.
I repeat, IQ tells you nothing about an individual.
It is perfectly possible that Feynman was a genius in his own field, standing head and shoulders above all others, yet had an IQ of 124.
IQ is not correlated with achievemnet for individuals.
I have no truck whatsoever with IQ tests, for reasons already mentioned…but at the same time I’m surprised, very surprised, that Feynman wouldn’t have sailed through them with full marks. This is a guy who taught himself to crack safes (and then set himself targets for speed-safe-cracking), who as mentioned taught himself to fix radios as a kid, who infuriated army censorship by creating his own cryptographic systems for sending private letters. Isn’t this exceptional achievement specifically in the problem-solving and lateral thinking that I thought IQ tests supposedly measured?
Once again, I don’t think people either don’t really grasp the fact that IQ is a logarithmic scale and 124 is really very high, or else it’s just that people throw around fictionally high IQs so often that they don’t realize 124 is really high. Either way, there’s clearly a misunderstanding here in terms of what an IQ score of 124 means.
Not that I actually know what Richard Feynman’s IQ score is, but it’s certainly POSSIBLE it was 124.
KarlGauss, I was a child prodigy, really. I was counting before I was a year old, read at 2, was tested at the 99th percentile of everything at 10. Oooh, smart kid.
But if my IQ today is as high as 124, I’ll eat 124 hats. No frickin’ way. I’d bet a lot of money against that ever happening (I guess that would kind of ruin the validity of the test, though.)
I could actually see all the other kids catch up to me over the years, like watching a race in slow motion. The correlation between precociousness and adult intelligence is just not that strong.
I didn’t think IQ was on a logarithmic scale. Is there a cite for that.
I always thought the presumed underlying distribution of IQ was “normal” (the bell shaped curved) and they scaled and shifted the scoring of the tests so that the mean was 100 with a standard deviation of 15. So, someone 2 standard deviations above 100. . .130. . .would be roughly in the top few percent of people taking the test.
That’s just scoring. I don’t want to get into how IQ is correlated with success.
Another vote here for disregarding IQ testing as a measure of intelligence.
Anecdote: my parents owned a diner located on a college campus. So my two brothers and I were always being invited by elementary and secondary education majors to take IQ tests (they had to administer them as part of their training).
As a result, we got to take similar tests many times, over and over, and rolled up artificially high scores – I scored 150 on one test when I was around 10 years old.
While I’ve done OK in school and work since, I have never achieved anything that would indicate that my IQ is anywhere near 150, especially if Feynman’s was only 124.
Here’s a bit of information on IQ spread amongst the population:
· 50% of people have IQ scores between 90 and 110
· 2.5% of people are very superior in intelligence (over 130)
· 2.5% of people are mentally deficient / impaired / retarded (under 70)
· 0.5% of people are near genius or genius (over 140)
You say IQ does not equal ability, yet also say IQ tests look at “specific abilities.” How does ability differ from abilities? Your assertion that IQ tests “tell you nothing about an individual” is not credible. While the construction and interpretation of said tests deservedly generates heated debate, to imply that an IQ of, say, 170 tells you “nothing” about an individual is silly.
Let’s get away from strawmen, shall we? No one is claiming IQ tests are the definitive word, that IQ tests are not flawed, nor that IQ tests possess predictive ability re: career success, happiness or much of anything else. But Feynman’s mathematical and science genius is legendary and clearly not the product of a 124 IQ, nor was he the classic “idiot savant.” Feynman could sail through the mathematics and problem-solving of Mensa’s most difficult tests.
Perhaps you have Marilyn vos Savant in mind? 
The specific abilities I am talking about are things such as number completion tasks, spatial completion tasks, word completion tasks, l;ogical tests etc… All of these tests measure specific abilities tested by IQ tests. These may or may not correlate with actual performance bya person in the real world. If you want to choose which twenty of a hundred people should be offered a scholarship, then IQ might be a good way to do it. However, if you wanted to predict who would get the best grade Point average or other assessment over a course, IQ is not that predictive.
Additionally, very capable people in the real world may not score highly on IQ tests- failure in a small number of items may drop your measured IQ considerably- high IQ results are dependent on close to perfect results- so lack of specific ability in one section of the tests (spatial awareness for instance) would drop your IQ considerably without that lack of ability having any meaning in the real world- it might not be needed in your specialty.
Additionally there are many people who have high IQs but are socially less skilled and this has a major effect on their success rate in academia and wider society.