Sorry, didn’t realize I was being an ass by posting in that other thread. I took it as a legit question and answered. I certainly didn’t mean to offend anyone.
(Is saying vis-a-vis really considered showing off?)
I am about to howl with frustration or get polysyllabic.
No, I have a better idea; I will resort to the extremely annoying technique of a line by line reply. [cue evil snicker]
RichJay opined that it is unlikely that the group of 5,000 frequent posters would have an average I.Q. of 130. In order to estimate how likely it is that a given number of subjects will share a characteristic, you have to know how large the population is.
Ok, I can’t hold back the howl.
***I didn’t say that! *** (Did I?)
I merely wanted to explore the contention that it is statistically highly unlikely.
Not to quibble, I used RJ’s number.
I am beginning to.
breathe breathe breathe breathe
Exhale
Out of nowhere?! I used non-contested numbers in a simple mathematical calculation! This is not rocket surgery; if a/b = c/d, a = bc/d.
I did NOT refer to ‘the average doper’, because that is an invalid concept, used only by economists, politicians, and reporters.*
I was roughly estimating the possibility that the average I.Q. of frequent posters is 130. I explained my reasoning.
As I can not study the subjects directly, I decide to evaluate the number of posters as a percentage of the estimated total selected population.** Rough, I know, but I’m not making policy, I’m hanging out on a Sunday afternoon.
According to my calculations, a very small percentage of the required population would need to chose to regularly post on one of the best general interest message boards.
Have I proven that the average I.Q. of the SDMB is 130? No, and I wasn’t trying to.
**I would enjoy a critique of my approach geared toward technically educated non-statisticians, because I might learn something, but, as far as I know, no one has even checked my math.
So does the idea that, after a coin toss coming up head 12 times in a row, the probability of the 13th toss coming up head is roughly one in two.
I did make assumptions in estimating the size of the pool. Your earlier post suggested I should clarify them.
Well, to evaluate a subset of a given number, one needs the number of the total set.
That is at least an order of magnitude smaller than my population. An order of magnitude is statistically huge.
One percent is not “very small”.
That argument would be valid, given certain premises indicating that Mormons would be a strongly self-selecting group, and that ‘Mormonence’ can be scaled and averaged. I’m not a theologian, but I think that tends to be a +/- characteristic.
*If any resident economists, politicians, or reporters wish to Pit for either that statement, or comparing them to the others, please contact me here.
The group of regular posters at the SDMB is self-selected, so you can’t draw any inferences about them from the characteristics of the general population.
Is there a standard way to evaluate if a self-selected group is a statistically probable percentage of the specific population?
[We are using the population of those with an I.Q. above 130 and available to this board.]
The reason my panties are in a twist about it (and thus the reason that I posted in this thread), is that the tone of that thread reminded me of an attitude I often see in my co-workers. They act like being singled out and fast-tracked to academia somehow made them better people than everyone else. Maybe it does, the same way being born healthy, attractive and wealthy does, but they really seem to think that intelligence is more than just an advantage, like it makes them more human or something. They ascribe their inability to relate to other people to the fact that they’re advanced and “misunderstood,” rather than to the fact that they’re insufferable douchebags, and they seem to think being smarter than someone gives you free license to think of them as a second-class citizen. It drives me crazy.
That thread touched a nerve because it looked like the same kind of deal. Maybe it was just people comparing notes on their childhood experiences, but it didn’t look that way to me. I don’t understand why it’s seen as crass to refer to how wealthy and attractive you are, but telling people exactly how much smarter you are than everyone else (as measured by SATs you can study for or the ever-reliable internet test) isn’t seen as similarly tacky by the people doing it.
I actually did take an IQ test when I was very young. One particularly unenlightened child psychiatrist told my parents that he suspected that I had substantial personality disorders and should be tested immediately. When I said I liked to chew the furniture, I wasn’t kidding. I was 8.
My parents only told me years later that I had been tested for IQ among other things.
Curiously, they never told me what my score was. I suppose they thought I just couldn’t count that high on my fingers.
I just want to say thanks to ultrafilter and Sarahfeena. I’m not sure my question has been answered completely, but I have to admit I had a hard time formulating it, so I imagine it’s not clear (I’ve a problem with clarity), and they definitely covered some of it.
No, by definition. It’s specific to the nature of self-selection.
Here’s the thing; you are the one making the extraordinary claim. The claim that the people on this message board have an IQ that averages two standard deviations above the mean is extraordinary. I think we can all agree that it is absolutely impossible, by any reasonable definition of likelihood, for this to happen by random chance. For it to be true the SDMB would have to systematically select for very high intelligence to a really remarkable degree.
My position is not that I know what the average IQ of the SDMB is, because I don’t. My position is that you have made a genuinely extraordinary claim, once that at face value is very difficult to believe could possibly be true, and I believe the claim was made (as is usually the case with claims of high IQ) because the person making it did not appreciate just how unusual an IQ of 130 is. It’s one of the most commonly misunderstood statistics there is, I’m guessing because of the natural tendency people have for inflating it and believing inflated numbers they get off internet tests and such.
My position that this claim is quite extraordinary leads me, inevitably, to this; it’s the extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof. If you maintain this “Average IQ of 130” claim, the onus is on you to provide evidence that it is true. If you’re just saying “Well, I think it might be,” fine, but that statement’s open to questioning all the same. Absent some evidence that the claim is true, the position a reasonable person should take is that it is very probably false.
Nope. Working out the self-selection mechanism and its effects is a non-statistical problem.
You are welcome! But I was on my Blackberry earlier, and not being a very good thumb-typer, I gave my answer to you short shrift. Let me give a more fleshed-out response now. I know a little bit about this stuff, having studied it in college, but keep in mind that was a few years back now…
First, I think that 145 is way, WAY high of a cutoff for your average gifted program. I can’t imagine that any such program would have enough kids to populate it in a given school district. I would say somewhere around 125-130 (as measured by Stanford-Binet) would be more reasonable. Which begs the question of why you weren’t placed in yours. My guess is that your score on the GRE is not reflective of what you would have scored on an IQ test, especially at the age you took it. As I said, the GRE is an aptitude test, and what that type of test measures is how good you can be expected to perform at a particular endeavor (in the case of the GRE, of course, the endeavor would be graduate school). Someone such as yourself would probably combine a pretty high IQ with your obviously strong aptitude to do well at academics to score very well on the GRE. Since the aptitude part of that equation is not relevant in a regular IQ test (and probably not as well-developed in your grammar school self as it is now), I would guess that the conversion is not quite accurate. I wouldn’t worry too much about your IQ…I would imagine it’s pretty high, but I also think that your GRE score and your success in graduate school speaks for itself.
Thanks again, Sarahfeena! That post helps out a lot, actually.
I originally didn’t want to use my GRE, figuring that my ACT score would be a closer reflection of what I had been tested on. Unfortunately that converter didn’t have the ACT as an option. And what’s with everyone’s ability to remember their college entrance exam scores, but in my case I can’t remember my previous GRE scores? I guess the college entrance exam scores are more important at the life stage they arrive at (for lack of a better phrase). By the time I took my GRE, I didn’t care about the exam, it was just another hoop to jump through for getting to graduate school (doubly so the second freakin’ time I had to take it).
As for my IQ, I think you’re right about not worrying about it. If there’s one thing grad school repeatedly reminds me of, it’s that I’m nowhere near the top of the smarts heap!
That’s probably from the ethylene glycol in the Windex.
No, I mean we went to school (on a Saturday, I think) and took a multiple choice Stanford-Binet test. I don’t know how long it was, but it may have been an hour - “several hours” sounds too long.
Looking back, it can’t have been everyone- that wouldn’t have been feasible. But it definitely wasn’t just me. The point of doing an IQ test at 16 or 17 is beyond me, but somebody wanted to do it for some reason.
I am glad I could help! 
The thing about IQ scores is that they measure general intelligence, logic, etc., but you can still be good at some things and really bad at others. Many people have good language skills and bad math skills or vice versa. And, as you say, there’s always going to be someone smarter!
Jealousy? “Sour-grapes”?
That’s funny.
Um, no.
I was never formally tested for an IQ, and am glad I wasn’t. I did fine on standardized tests for college, obtained for myself a reasonable education, and am now gainfully employed in my chosen profession. I have no jealously of people supposedly obtaining high scores on some half-bogus tests.
But people: in this BBQ Pit thread, “casually” working in a mention of one’s high scores, and claiming this is not bragging? Take another look at yourselves. A long look. Hope it helps.
Also, I don’t recall making any assumptions about motivation. I was making (to me, a rather amusing) observation.
Continue forth with comparing penis sizes … er … I mean IQ scores.
Everybody masturbates! Get used to it!
Please. Saying people are “bragging” IS making assumptions about motivation. You are assuming they are sharing their scores in order to show off. An observation would be to simply state that you’ve noticed people downplaying the importance of IQ scores while not failing to mention their own scores in the same post.
Just my own observation of your posts, mind you.
Since we’re all over the place here… why do online IQ tests get such a bad rap? I know what I scored on the Stanford-Binet, and in the past I took two online IQ tests a couple of years apart, mostly to see how the scores would compare. One gave me a score 4 or 5 points lower than the S-B, the other a point higher. That doesn’t seem much like the “wildly inaccurate” claims often thrown at them.
It was amusing. That shit is funny as hell. You are jealous for laughing when it is clearly funny? What the?
Look, there are some smart folks on this board. Some straight up geniuses, even. I am lucky to be a student at these boards. It’s terrific.
But if people are going to get accused of jealousy when noting some funny shit going down, we have lost our way, people! This is not the kind of ignorance fighting I signed on for.
To quote a former favorite poster of mine, can’t you all see that these I.Q. scores are tearing us apart?
I am hereby duly corrected. The “not failing to mention” part to me comes across as subtle bragging. YMMV.