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From: hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey)
Subject: Re: RACE and IQ
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References: <387k9g$9hl@newsbf01.news.aol.com> <zlsiida.209.2EAE2FAB@fs1.mcc.ac.uk> <jqbCyo59M.85v@netcom.com> <CyxswC.B4M@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 1994 18:37:34 GMT
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cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:

>In article <jqbCyo59M.85v@netcom.com> jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:
>>In article <zlsiida.209.2EAE2FAB@fs1.mcc.ac.uk>,
>>Dave Budd <zlsiida@fs1.mcc.ac.uk> wrote:

>>>Which scale?  On the Cattell scale the minimum for Mensa is, I think, 145, 
>>>and that takes the upper 2% of the population.

>>The Mensa requirement (98th percentile) is satisfied by a score of 132 on
>>CTMM, CTCS, Stanford Binet, or Otis-Lennon; 131 on Otis-Gamma; and 130 on
>>Wechsler.  If the Cattell scale equivalent is 145 then it is rather out of sync.
>>An IQ of 140 is considered genius, and if you have been to any Mensa functions
>>you know that you don't have to be a genius to join.

>Intelligence is necessary but not sufficient for genius. "Genius" has
>no more business on a scale of intelligence than "obstinate".


Speaking about scales, it seems that this whole debate could disappear if
intelligence was measured on a different scale.  Asking the question of
whether, say 50F is half as hot as  100F (degrees Fahrenheit), is a trick
question to someone who doesn't know that temperature should be measured
on an absolute scale for comparisons of this type.


If IQ were measured on an absolute scale, it would then have to be
able to measure the intelligence of humans, cows, monkeys and maybe
even fleas and bacteria.  On this scale the differences among human
IQs would/could be mere noise.  It seems that the present IQ tests
are purposefully concocted to produce Gaussian distributions but
how are they graded to produce what kind of variance? Does anyone
know why they are graded the way they are? Are they graded to produce
the Normal Gaussian?



--
						-- Mark---
....we must realize that the infinite in the sense of an infinite totality, 
where we still find it used in deductive methods, is an illusion. Hilbert,1925
