For years, I've been pointing out that the irony that so many of the New York City media types who are always pooh-poohing the entire concept of IQ in the press are simultaneously paying lots of money to have tested the IQs of their four-year-olds (four-year-olds!). Almost every prestigious private elementary school in NYC requires that applicants for kindergarten take the Wechsler IQ test, and the public gifted and talented schools use the more achievement test-like Otis-Lennon. It's a pretty hilarious irony.
Now, Jennifer Senior has a long article in New York, The Junior Meritocracy, questioning the wisdom of handing out lifetime prizes at age four. Surely, she asks, wouldn't it be better to, say, test at age seven, when IQ testing is more accurate?
I'm familiar with a public high school program only open to kids with stratospheric IQs of 145 or higher. Within the school there tend to be two groups of kids: those who scored >=145 on an IQ test in 8th grade, who are really smart; and those who got into this program's feeder programs in third grade. The kids who are in this high school because they scored >=145+ in second grade tend to be smart, but often not outlandishly smart, simply because of the lower accuracy in testing at earlier ages and a tendency toward regression toward the mean over time. Testing 4-year-olds just exacerbates all this.
My guess is that testing at age 4, despite its high degree of arbitrariness, is popular with New York City parents because it lets them decide whether they will stay in Manhattan / Brooklyn or move to a suburb where the open enrollment schools have good students on average. If your kid gets into an exclusive public program or into a famous private school, then we'll stay in the city. Otherwise, Fort Lee, here we come!
The summer before he starts school is a pretty easy time to move a kid. After that, he'll have school friends, and he'll be old enough to complain more.
Now, Jennifer Senior has a long article in New York, The Junior Meritocracy, questioning the wisdom of handing out lifetime prizes at age four. Surely, she asks, wouldn't it be better to, say, test at age seven, when IQ testing is more accurate?
I'm familiar with a public high school program only open to kids with stratospheric IQs of 145 or higher. Within the school there tend to be two groups of kids: those who scored >=145 on an IQ test in 8th grade, who are really smart; and those who got into this program's feeder programs in third grade. The kids who are in this high school because they scored >=145+ in second grade tend to be smart, but often not outlandishly smart, simply because of the lower accuracy in testing at earlier ages and a tendency toward regression toward the mean over time. Testing 4-year-olds just exacerbates all this.
My guess is that testing at age 4, despite its high degree of arbitrariness, is popular with New York City parents because it lets them decide whether they will stay in Manhattan / Brooklyn or move to a suburb where the open enrollment schools have good students on average. If your kid gets into an exclusive public program or into a famous private school, then we'll stay in the city. Otherwise, Fort Lee, here we come!
The summer before he starts school is a pretty easy time to move a kid. After that, he'll have school friends, and he'll be old enough to complain more.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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112 comments:
At what age is IQ testing most accurate?
"...the public gifted and talented schools use the more achievement test-like Otis-Lennon."
To get into the public schools I attended in Michigan in the 1960s, you only had to pass the Lennon-Ono test.
"Otherwise, Fort Lee, here we come!"
Fort Lee might not be those parents' first destination, for two reasons. Real estate prices in Fort Lee rival those in parts of Manhattan. Also, the town is full of Koreans and Japanese who send their kids to after school study and test prep factories.
Makes me feel sorry for the kids, being pushed, prodded and tested by their anxious parents. Seems like a good formula for producing neurotic adults. The point of all this is what? Bragging rights, my child is smarter than yours? To go out and make the family a fortune? Too much pressure too soon and they'll end up being as well adjusted as Michael Jackson was.
I'm familiar with a public high school program only open to kids with stratospheric IQs of 145 or higher.
Seems hard to believe. That's one in a thousand kids. More exclusive IQwise than Harvard or Yale law. A public school program more exclusive than the best JD programs seems unlikely.
Fort Lee might not be those parents' first destination
Right. The affluent suburbs on LI's North Shore or, even more likely, any one of a number of Westchester suburbs are the destinations of choice for most New Yorkers moving in search of good public schools. They have good, fast train connections to the city, and they're quite pleasant places to live besides.
See this NY Times story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/nyregion/18bigcity.html
What the f are the odds that someone named "Seiler" is regularly posting on one Mr Sailer's blog? Did you find this place through a geneaology search? Feel some sort of cousin connection with the host, do you?
I'm sure on some other planet these are common surnames. But not on this one. I call bs on your phony name.
IQ 145?
Another 15 points higher and you're in Paul Krugman territory.
Yunno, smart enough to understand that it's absolutely necessary for the country to borrow its way out of massive debt.
Given the errors in testing young children, wouldn't it be better to test both the parents instead?
What are the odds that I would co-author an article with somebody named Dr. Stephen Seiler?
Track & Battlefield
Everybody knows that the "gender gap" between men and women runners in the Olympics is narrowing. Everybody is wrong.
by Steve Sailer and Dr. Stephen Seiler
Published in National Review, 12/31/97
http://www.isteve.com/gendrgap.htm
A slightly different point Steve, but prior to the 1970s, the British state education system was selective at the 'High School' level, the means of selection being a glorified IQ test at age 11.This system as highly successful at finding and nuturing hidden scolastic talent amongst Britain's working class.
However the Labour Party destroyed the system, replacing it with 'mixed-ability' schooling (no setting or sreaming based on IQ was permitted), due to political reasons.Labour wrecked the education of untold numbers of the poor and bright.
from Neisser et al (1996):
Stability. Intelligence test scores are fairly stable during development. When Jones and Bayley (1941) tested a sample of children annually throughout childhood and adolescence, for example, scores obtained at age 18 were correlated r=.77 with scores that had been obtained at age 6, r=.89 with scores from age 12. When scores were averaged across several successive tests to remove short-term fluctuations, the correlations were even higher. The mean for ages 17 and 18 was correlated r=.86 with the mean for ages 5, 6 and 7, r=.96 with the mean for ages 11, 12 and 13. (For comparable findings in a more recent study, see Moffitt, Caspi, Harkness, & Silva, 1993.) Nevertheless, IQ scores do change over time. In the same study (Jones & Bayley, 1941), the average change between age 12 and age 17 was 7.1 IQ points; some individuals changed as much as 18 points.
Is it possible to measure the intelligence of young infants in a similar way? Conventional tests of "infant intelligence" do not predict later test scores very well, but certain experimental measures of infant attention and memory that were originally developed for other purposes have turned out to be more successful. In the most common procedure, a particular visual pattern is shown to a baby over and over again. The experimenter records how long the infant subject looks at the pattern on each trial; these looks get shorter and shorter as the baby becomes "habituated" to it. The time required to reach a certain level of habituation, or the extent to which the baby now "prefers" (looks longer at) a new pattern, are regarded as measures of some aspect of his or her information-processing capability.
These habituation-based measures, obtained from babies at ages ranging from three months to a year, are significantly correlated with the intelligence test scores of the same children when they get to be 2 or 4 or 6 years old (for reviews see Bornstein, 1989; Columbo, 1993; McCall & Garriger, 1993). A few studies have found such correlations even at ages 8 or 11 (Rose & Feldman, 1995). A recent meta analysis, based on 31 different samples, estimates the average magnitude of the correlations at about r=.36 (McCall & Ganriger, 1993). (The largest rs often appear in samples that include 'at risk' infants.) It is possible that these habituation scores (and other similar measures of infant cognition) do indeed reflect real cognitive differences, perhaps in 'speed of information processing" (Colombo, 1993). It is also possible, however, that—to a presently unknown extent—they reflect early differences in temperament or inhibition.
It is important to understand what remains stable and what changes in the development of intelligence. A child whose IQ score remains the same from age 6 to age 18 does not exhibit the same performance throughout that period. On the contrary, steady gains in general knowledge vocabulary, reasoning ability, etc. will be apparent. What does not change is his or her score in comparison to that of other individuals of the same age. A six-year old with an IQ of 100 is at the mean of six-year-olds; an 18-year-old with that score is at the mean of 18-year-olds.
It is hilarious how folks who self-identify as 'liberal' or 'progressive', would embrace school segregation, when it comes to their children.
How long will it be before there's a "Brown vs. Board of Education" for stupid children?
"the British state education system was selective at the 'High School' level, the means of selection being a glorified IQ test at age 11." Yes, and there was streaming before that age: when I started Primary School at age 5, the intake was divided in two, arbitrarily; after a term of teaching us, the teachers re-arranged us into a fast stream and a slow stream. Mark you, it was pretty pointless - the fast stream finished the syllabus a year early and spent the last year of Primary School bored silly, just repeating work it had done already. Still, it may have been better than having been bored every year, in a class progressing at the pace of the slowest.
IQ testing is indeed inaccurate at young ages. There was an IQ score on my record in elementary school (though they never told me I was taking an IQ test, I was tested various times by school psychologists) which was 35 points lower than I scored on a later test as an adult (my teachers all ignored the test result as an obvious anomaly, since I was always unquestionably the smartest kid in my school until I got to MIT, where I was well above average but nothing remarkable).
In my opinion, intelligence becomes more multidimensional above about IQ 150; below that you will generally get agreement about who is smarter, but above that subscores are less correlated (this is an impression from experience, not based on study of large IQ-test databases, and I am open to correction by psychometricians who know more about the subject).
Another way of putting this: my prediction is that someone with a 140 IQ will typically outperform a 130 on a greater fraction of subtests than a 170 will outperform a 160.
So then these people will be called upon to govern or manage (or give loans to) people with IQs below 100. The like of which they have not had much interaction with.
I didn't get to the NYT article soon enough. I wanted to tell them that it was their duty to stay in the NYC Public Schools and strive to equalize white, Haitian and Mexican test scores, if necessary by getting rid of AP classes for everything (as Berzerkely is doing) to insure that all races are equally smart and equally stupid under No Child Left Behind.
Point out to them that no school knows how to educate NAMs, how to bring them up to white, Asian and Jewish levels of performance and therefore every race is going to have to take a hit by being dumbed down a la Berkeley.
Since Jews and Asians have been immune (so far) we are going to need to force more of them, percentagewise, to stay in Public Schools and be instupidated.
It really isn't fair to expect white Gentiles to take the entire instupidation hit all by themselves.
In this day and age, anyone who isn't homeschooling is guilty of child abuse.
And really grotesque, sadistic child abuse at that.
The point of all this is what?
To get your child into a very good school, preferably without spending $35,000 per annum. It's not a mystery.
"At what age is IQ testing most accurate?"
I'm not sure at what age they are most accurate, but the older you are, the more genetic your IQ becomes, and by later maturity, IQ correlates about 0.9 (the square root of herritability) with genetic IQ (By genetic I don't mean your IQ is the same as your parents; rather your IQ would be the same as your identical twin reared apart).
The interesting question is why does IQ become more genetic with age. The standard answer is that the older you get, the more power you have to shape your environment to match your genotype (i.e. people with high genetic IQ's end up in stimulating jobs which raise their IQ's to their genetic potential)while children have their environments shaped by adults, thus their IQ's don't always match their genetic potential.
However this explanation assumes the social cultural environment & stimulation can influence intelligence. While education & mental stimulation has been shown to prop up IQ scores (at least on measures of crystallized knowledge), they are perhaps impotent when it comes to proping up g or IQ scores on fluid tests.
Thus there is probably a physiological explanation for why IQ becomes more genetic with age. Height becomes more genetic with age too and the explanation for that must be biological I would think.
Makes me feel sorry for the kids, being pushed, prodded and tested by their anxious parents. Seems like a good formula for producing neurotic adults. The point of all this is what? Bragging rights, my child is smarter than yours? To go out and make the family a fortune? Too much pressure too soon and they'll end up being as well adjusted as Michael Jackson was.
It's to brag about how good their genes are. Status ultimately reduces to genetic quality. I have a future, you guys are losers
Still, what's good for the parent may not be good for the kid. I'm sure we all know this
I could have used that high school. But no doubt my cognitive abilities are not as great as they should be by now
Makes me feel sorry for the kids, being pushed, prodded and tested by their anxious parents. Seems like a good formula for producing neurotic adults.
I don't remember much about the way I saw things when I was four but I do remember childhood anxiety from when I was just a little older.
I never remember even the slightest concern over taking a standardized test. But I dreaded recess or after school when the guys would choose up sides for baseball or football. The prospect of being the last one chosen was a fate to horrible to contemplate. In choosing up sides you got to be judged by your peers about an issue that was important to you and if you were chosen last it was a very public humiliation.
Childhood can be tough and being a teen is worse. My young life always seemed to be filled with problems and challenges but I never worried about taking mental ability tests.
Kids simply don't care about the Wechsler. Your score may be important to you when you are ten years older, but four year olds have trouble focusing on consequences more than an hour in the future.
Fort Lee isn't really a prime destination for these people. If they are going to New Jersey with their kids, they will likely end up in the Newark suburbs like Montclair(the epicenter of transplanted Upper West Siders), Glen Ridge, South Orange, Maplewood, the Caldwells, Livingston, West Orange, Milburn(which includes the ultra-exclusive Short Hills and has the highest average SAT scores of any public high school in the state) or other leafy suburban towns in Union, Bergen or Morris counties. Fort Lee is kind of urban, with lots of high rises.
Wealthy suburbs on the East Coast are older and less dense than they are in the LA area. Houses are pre-WWII(if not pre-WWI)have big back yards and lots of tall oak and maple trees. Suburbs served by commuter rail service tend to be more prestigious and attract a different kind of person than the further out, newer, more car dependent McMansion exurbs. The sort of person coming from NYC would definitely favor the former.
One thing that is happening in NYC is that orthodox Jews are tending to stay in the city while secular/reform Jews leave for New Jersey and Long Island. The white people who still live in NYC at this point are increasing orthodox Jews, gays, Eastern European immigrants and transplants from other areas of the country.
You hit close to home with this one. I remember - vaguely - being tested in NYC when I was about 4 or 5, in order to get into some school or other. I was very nervous & didn't know what the tester wanted, and sure enough, I didn't make the cut!
After 3-4 years we moved to NJ in search of better schools and we ended up in Fort Lee so my parents had a fairly easy commute. Back then, Fort Lee was far more bucolic & filled with Irish, Greek, and Italian immigrants.
The high school was pretty awful, with lots of deadbeats & a thriving drug trade. Every morning I ventured in there amidst the cigarette & pot smoke to reach my locker. As female nerd #1 this was not a pleasant thing. ;-)
I moved to Baltimore to go to college in 1978, and the last I saw of Fort Lee was circa 1988 or so. Before my parents moved south in 1989 to join me, they said that real estate prices were going through the roof & a new crop of Japanese, Korean, and Indian immigrants had moved in & made Fort Lee High a magnet school. In approximately 20 years, a dramatic change.
"How long will it be before there's a "Brown vs. Board of Education" for stupid children?"
Gump v. Board of Education?
145 for a high school? i doubt that. about 1 in 200 western europeans scores 145 on an IQ test. not 1 in a 1000 like some other poster said, but not common, and not enough teenagers for a 1500 student high school, even in new york city.
What is the result of all this? Does it produce adults who are more capable to invent and create the technologies, engineering works, diplomacies and arts that are far superior to what was accomplished by all those other dumb asses who just went to public school and then a state college?
If those people are running the world today, I would claim that they have waisted their money then and are waisting our money now. If they are not running the world, I would be curious as to what they are doing.
But I think the real discriminator is not IQ, but of the parent's willingness to pay the fees to get them tested and prepare for the tests, instead of letting them watch TV. Just a coincedence that the "smart" kids all come from families that are rich enough to afford the tuition?
Also consider that many of these Manhattan parents are older and on their second marriage, and often retired with lots of Wall St. money. So they are in many cases full-time parents who are as dedicated to raising their kids as they were to their careers. The problem is, kids may be like plants . . . too much water will kill them.
This is another blog-post about Malcolm Galdwell (by proxy)
The fact is IQ fundamentalist---
dot dot dot...
You are so jealous of Malcolm.
So jealous.
"145 for a high school? i doubt that. about 1 in 200 western europeans scores 145 on an IQ test. not 1 in a 1000 like some other poster said,"
145 is 3 SD above the mean so only one in 700 will score this high or higher. Of course it depends on the IQ scale your using, as some use the American population as the reference population; others use just the white population. If the American population is your reference population (as is the case on the Wechsler) then one in 500 whites score 145+
This SuperGifted program I'm familiar with is not a full sized high school, it's magnet program within a full sized high school. And it's the only one at the high school level in a very large city. And, as I said, many of the kids who got on the SuperGifted tract at age 8 by scoring over 145 back then probably wouldn't score that high today, so the current average IQ of the students who got on the SuperGifted track back in third grade is lower than the average of those who scored 145+ in eighth grade. And no doubt quite a few students who just barely made 145 or so wouldn't score that high on a retest.
But, in terms of average number of AP tests passed and the like, the outputs are roughly in line with the announced inputs.
AGAIN: Any man and woman who are capable of producing offspring of IQ 145+ won't have ANY problem WHATSOEVER in teaching their children K-12 material in the comfort of their own homes.
Heck, they could probably teach their children all the way through a graduate school curriculum.
A school filled with little geniuses. What a house of horrors that must be.
One thing that is happening in NYC is that orthodox Jews are tending to stay in the city while secular/reform Jews leave for New Jersey and Long Island.
Orthodox Jews are geographically limited in their residential choices because they have to be within walking distance of their synagogues. There are a few areas in the NYC suburbs that so qualify, such as the Five Towns area of Long Island and the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Kiryas Joel in Orange County, but for the most part the Orthodox are limited to certain neighborhoods within the city limits.
Peter
Today's scripture lesson comes from the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes 5, verse 12:
"The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep."
"At what age is IQ testing most accurate?"
Upon acheiving adulthood.
Children's IQs are calculated in relation to the average for their age group. A four year old boy with an IQ of 200 isn't as smart as a grown man with an IQ of 200, they are as smart as an eight year old with an IQ of 100.
"A school filled with little geniuses. What a house of horrors that must be."
Indeed. Who will nick their lunch money?
Professor Hale,
Good points! Many new developments in tech come from good but not exceptional engineers who like their work and are intrigued to find technical solutions to problems. They keep trying out things until they find something new. You don't need a stratospheric IQ for that. any thing around 140 is sufficient.
Seems this IQ thing is just another excuse for bragging rights.
well, i don't think i'm that uncommon. i have had my IQ measured at 140 in 3 seperate instances. i applied to and was accepted into mensa using a test from when i was 12, which the psychologist at my public school administered. i remember reading that 140 occured at a rate of about 1 in 150 for western europeans, so i rounded up. but maybe i remember the wrong number. maybe i recall the rate at which people meet the mensa limit. the mensa limit is around 132, so perhaps that was the 1 in 150 number.
i read a paper in which a researcher calculated that the minimum IQ to get into NYU, back when it was a free to attend, was about 130. that's 15 points lower than this NYC high school program. and NYU produced several nobel prize winners during it's free admissions era.
i agree with the guy who said each extra IQ point starts to matter less once it goes over a certain number. but few people agree about what that number is. smarter than me for sure, but probably not higher than 160. once you get up there, personality, as well as certain specific mental capabilities, are a lot more important than another 15 IQ points. experts in some science and engineering fields are extremely facile in one or two mental problem solving tasks, and are far more capable at what they do than somebody even 30 IQ points "smarter". a particular talent for a specific kind of thinking is more important at the edges of some fields than raw g.
Totally O/T, but it looks like Pat Buchanan has been re-instated by google, as now an ex-non-person. He is still apparently not as popular (in the search world) as one Pat Buttram, whom I know nothing about and don't feel like finding out.
Try it, Steve, if you haven't already.
("Iffy Sayler", that's not even CLOSE to a coincidence. Your common sense needs some work.")
I didn't get to the NYT article soon enough. I wanted to tell them that it was their duty to stay in the NYC Public Schools and strive to equalize white, Haitian and Mexican test scores, if necessary by getting rid of AP classes for everything (as Berzerkely is doing) to insure that all races are equally smart and equally stupid under No Child Left Behind.
Point out to them that no school knows how to educate NAMs, how to bring them up to white, Asian and Jewish levels of performance and therefore every race is going to have to take a hit by being dumbed down a la Berkeley.
Since Jews and Asians have been immune (so far) we are going to need to force more of them, percentagewise, to stay in Public Schools and be instupidated.
It really isn't fair to expect white Gentiles to take the entire instupidation hit all by themselves.
When I was in school, I worked parttime in a surgical ward which took in abused children, and almost invariably, my sense was that the abused children were much more intelligent than the parents who had abused them.
I developed a theory then [years and years before I had ever heard of anything like "HBD"] that smart [or "smarter"] kids were at extreme risk of abuse from dumb parents.
The dumb parents just can't seem to deal with the smart [or "smarter"] kids' energy and intellectual curiosity, and they respond by beating the crap out of them.
PS: And knowing what I now know about "HBD", my guess would be that the smart [or "smarter"] kids were probably "Cuckoo's Eggs" dropped by smart [or "smarter"] guys who had one-night-stands with the skanky dumb mothers.
Also - and again, knowing what I now know about "HBD" - I'd guess that the dumb mothers probably had IQs around e.g. 60 or 65, and that the "smarter" kids had IQs around e.g. 80 or 85.
And I'd guess that a kid with an IQ of 90, born to a mother of IQ 60, would be lucky to survive to adulthood - at some point, either she or one of her live-in boyfriends would beat the poor little SOB to death.
Re the "Otis-Lennon" test:I wasnt aware Mr. Redding and John created an IQ test. Does it contain,like,lots of music trivia??
"well, i don't think i'm that uncommon. i have had my IQ measured at 140 in 3 seperate instances...."
Yeah, but Jo...I mean, the whole punctuation thing Dawg.
To "jody:" you're confusing NYU and CUNY. NYU was never free. CUNY used to be.
Yeah, but Jo...I mean, the whole punctuation thing Dawg.
---
You need to work on your spelling though.
http://www.manwomanmyth.com/women/toxic-women/
@ Mel Torme
Re: O/T Pat Buchanan restored to Google.
He's also been restored on YouTube, which is owned by Google. His sister, Angela (Bay), has been restored also.
A few days ago when someone mentioned Pat B was missing from Google, I tried several searches. Patrick, Pat, Angela, Bay, and James were all but missing from Google and YouTube. However, these names were near the top on Yahoo, Bing, Ask & Dogpile. My takeaway: It appears Google censored "Buchanan" as if it were a profane word. Anyone have an expert opinion?
Greg
Here's a pointer... When you authoritatively throw out a number that you later admit to possibly remembering from something that happened to you as a 12 year old, people will see begin to see your name and skip your posts.
While we are comparing penis sizes, I remember (but, early childhood memories have a funny way of being wrong, and mothers have a tendency to blow smoke up their childrens' asses) being told that my IQ score was off the charts. Like there was no difference in scores after a certain point. Always been curious about that, but it might reflect the generally coarse granularity of IQ scores at a young age.
"well, i don't think i'm that uncommon. i have had my IQ measured at 140 in 3 seperate instances...."
Yeah, but Jo...I mean, the whole punctuation thing Dawg.
I guess people revert to non-standard forms of communication for a whole host of pathological reasons. Heck, I get lazy w/ spellin and, punctuation someimes. So, I'm willing to struggle through the non-capitalization, not to mention some of the pseudo-ghetto, faux-bravado crap, but as soon as I find out someone is posting facts whimsically, its "adios, mi amigo. Arrivederci. Auf weidersehen" for me.
In the late 70s, my public junior high had affirmative action for placement in gifted and talented classes (history, language arts, etc).
Standardized test scores, grades & teacher evaluations were averaged on a scale from 1-10. It's been 30 years, but I clearly remember some of the numbers.
These were the scores required. black males: 6.4ish, black girls: high 6.something, white girls: high 7.something, white males: 8.4.
Spaugh Jr High, Charlotte, NC
George
"Yeah, but Jo...I mean, the whole punctuation thing Dawg."
oh, you mean, the way i deliberately write in lower case, because both psychologists and computer scientists have shown that it is easier to read typed languages that way?
like kudzu bob, i'd be interested to hear your thoughts on unix and linux design philosophy. do you think linus torvalds got it wrong, having most of linux written in lowercase? what about your thoughts on green on black text, the most legible color scheme for computer reading? any interesting insights on that, Troll, er, i mean, Truth?
"you're confusing NYU and CUNY."
totally possible. there is also SUNY in new york, which i know is not the same as NYU or CUNY.
"people will see begin to see your name and skip your posts."
so skip my posts. go ahead. do like you say you are going to do.
my IQ is 140 for certain. it was measured when i was 8, 12, and 14. it was measured by a clinical psychologist in private practive when i was 8, it was measured by a public school psychologist when i was 12 and again at 14 to evaluate whether i qualified for the high IQ program at my public school.
i do not feel smart. and i know i'm not smart. most of my friends are smarter than me. one of my best friends is a PHD in physics from MIT. another a PHD in chemistry who works in the netherlands. another is a neurosurgeon with his MD from columbia. one guy is an engineer who builds weapons for the US navy. these are the things which your high school friends turn into, when they are smart enough for the high IQ program in high school.
in my school district, i was in the gifted program for kids with an IQ of 140 and up. basically the same thing that steve is talking about here. i was one of the dumbest kids in the program, and i regularly got smashed on the math tests they loved to give us. it did not stop me from being a national merit scholar or from getting a perfect SAT verbal back in the early 90s before the SAT was recentered.
i tell you guys this, because my senior year in high school, our school had the most national merit scholars of any high school in the entire state of pennsylvania: 12. more than state college that year, which usually has the most, their high school being filled with the kids of the penn state professors.
anyway, my town had 35000 people and my high school 1600 students. there simply are not enough kids, even in NYC, for an entire high school worth of IQ 145 teenagers, hence my query.
mensa was boring. i joined that after i graduated from college, to find some new people to hang out with. but everybody at the meetings just wanted to play dumb math and vocabulary games. some of these people were in their 50s and 60s and had nothing interesting to say or discuss. i quit going to mensa meetings after 1 year.
"Fort Lee is kind of urban, with lots of high rises."
If the state border there wasn't in the middle of the Hudson River, Fort Lee would be considered a neighborhood of Manhattan. It looks like one, except cleaner, with more Asians and fewer NAMs. It's more urban than some parts of Manhattan.
A school filled with little geniuses. What a house of horrors that must be.
Many friends of mine have attended a gymnasium (grades 10 to 12 in a boarding school type of arrangement) for the gifted in math. They tell me it was the greatest time of their lives.
>psychologists and computer scientists have shown that it is easier to read typed languages [in lower case]<
Then psychologists and computer scientists are wrong.
Buchanan is back in first place. I never heard of Buttram before, but despite his unfortunate name, apparently his fame came as a member of the cast of Green Acres.
Greg: The original thread on this contained numerous theories, the most plausible offered by one "md."
"My takeaway: It appears Google censored "Buchanan" as if it were a profane word. Anyone have an expert opinion?" from Greg above.
Greg, yeah, it's not that you couldn't find anything on the guy (and his sister Bay). It's just that the "complete function"?, whereby the website will pull most likely text out of a database in real time to "help" you, was not working for Pat Buchanan before.
Secondly, Steve wrote a post that received many commented replies with others' observations and conjecture about this. That was about 2-3 weeks ago, but you can find it, I'm sure.
John Seiler:
Good 'un!
Just a technical point. It is not irony; rather, it is hipocrisy. It could be irony if the "anti-IQ test for everyone-else" views were deliberately promoted for the opposite effect.
I got my IQ tested in elementary school. It was very high supposedly, they accelerated me
(two grades in one year) and that was it for me academically.
From then on, I was slightly above average in school but nothing spectacular and I did feel it socially- always being the youngest and smallest.
As an adult, the IQ tests I have taken clock in from 113 -118.
IMO they made a mistake. My school life would have been much more enjoyable if they left me alone.
Please people, stop the Mensa bashing. I got in a couple decades ago, with an IQ of 138 (upper 1% of the population.) How you feel about it depends on the personalities in the particular group. Some are a lot of fun, especially when you're young. I, too, do not feel super-smart but I do have to say I have often felt very apart from most others and certainly IQ had something to do with that sensation. It does give you an awareness and an ability to make connections quickly that the world at large generally doesn't. High IQ does not guarantee success or manifestation of great intellect, but high "g" (or IQ) must be present if great intellect is to manifest.
That being said, I was in awe of the Mensa membership chairman who first phoned to welcome me in. He was very sociable and interested in religions and history, though he majored in computer science. IQ: 160. He never earned a higher degree, but worked for the city government and got accolades.
Last I heard, she/he had a sex-change operation and lived with another transsexual and a born-woman, in a kind of menage-a-trois. She, once he, is now an expert on ancient mythology and according to a publicly posted resume, never made nearly as much money after s/he became a "woman" as she/he did while a man (married twice btw, before the operation So he did try.)
The higher you go, the heights do get heady.
While 138 is nothing to write home about in the nethersphere, it is likely that you may well be the highest in the class, in any randomly selected, middle-class classroom (white or Asian of course.) That happened with me, but the only subjects my IQ showed up in were reading subjects. I read at college level by the time I was in the 5th or 6th grade (can't recall which.)
I guess people revert to non-standard forms of communication for a whole host of pathological reasons
When I first got on the 'net it was through chat. I got used to the kthxbyes and lack of punctuation. When I first discovered forums, I continued to post that way. I figured it was just the 'net, not an essay. Some might find it ironic that Stormfront cured me of that; moderators won't allow your posts unless you're at least making an effort at proper English. The habit stuck.
Re Pat Buttram & James Kabala:Pat Buttram was the sidekick for Gene Autry!You didnt know that? Singing cowboy?My God!Such ignorance!I suppose the name Dale Evans means nothing to you.(To this day a woman in leather chaps just does something to me...)
I find many of your post tinged with irony--you are obviously by 'race-baiters' and by that, you mean african-americans who write about race.
But, don't you write about race all the time?
In other words, you do exactly what you accuse others of doing.
You are a peddler of white-grievance.1
because both psychologists and computer scientists have shown that it is easier to read typed languages that way?
I've read that capitalization makes for easier reading. Landmarks for the eyes and all that.
Apropos of not much, but I still find it fascinating that we can read pretty much at full speed as long as the first and last letters of words are in the right place - those in between can be garbled all to hell and back with very little loss of legibility. I cn'at rebememr if I lnareed taht hree or swhormeee esle.
One anonymous:
AGAIN: Any man and woman who are capable of producing offspring of IQ 145+ won't have ANY problem WHATSOEVER in teaching their children K-12 material in the comfort of their own homes.
That is often the case with non-religious homeschoolers; many of them (and their kids) actually are from that IQ range or have other special talents that would place their children at risk in a government bully-tard-school.
Also there are more free educational resources being available on the internet, which can be of use to smart kids and parents.
Another anonymous:
Not as horrible as the way you treat people you think are smarter than you. I will keep my genius children protected from other children until they are large enough to beat the other children up.
This was in response to "genius schools", and it is a very good point.
Educrats tend to forget that a high-IQ kid rarely translates into a pack leader that the doggies will follow. The high-IQ kid will likely be bullied into suicide, rather than being an inspirational leader. The pack looks for alpha males with "street cred", not genius, as its leaders.
Another point. The higher the IQ, the less likely a smart child will benefit from conventional schooling, even if the other kids are also smart, and the IQ 200 teachers have ten Ph.D.'s each.
like kudzu bob, i'd be interested to hear your thoughts on unix and linux design philosophy. do you think linus torvalds got it wrong, having most of linux written in lowercase? what about your thoughts on green on black text, the most legible color scheme for computer reading?
I've always heard that green on black (CRTs?) was shown to cause the least strain on your eyes. Whether that's the same as "most legible", I don't know.
What in the hell does the naming/syntax convention have to do w/ the OS design? You might as well wonder what the GCC pre-compiler output is. But, I do know that if everyone else is using a particular coding style (camel-case locals, brackets on new lines, function naming conventions, etc), I generaly have the common courtesy to adopt it.
jody wrote "both psychologists and computer scientists have shown that it is easier to read typed languages that way?"
it was certainly easier for archy the cockroach to type in lower case.
there may be something to this lower-case thing. did e e cummings put you on to it?
Dunno why jody is taking a battering. I enjoy his posts, find them mostly insightful and read every one of them. And being an engineer myself, his lower case style does not bother me in te least. In fact I find it refreshing in the way he uses it. Maybe commenters bashing jody are into law, academics or pushing paper in some AA grind (troof?)
Is Head Start Working for American Students?
January 21, 2010 —
Did you hear about the Head Start evaluation?
Head Start is the iconic federal preschool program intended to enhance the health and school readiness of America’s poor children. Begun as a pilot summer program in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, it is now budgeted at $7.235 billion annually for programs serving approximately 1 million children...
HHS released the Head Start Impact Study Final Report last week. There are several remarkable things about it:
The study demonstrated that children’s attendance in Head Start has no demonstrable impact on their academic, socio-emotional, or health status at the end of first grade. That’s right. If you were a mother who lost the lottery, couldn’t get your child into Head Start, and had to care for her at home, she was no worse off at the end of first grade than she would have been had she gotten into Head Start. That isn’t to say that she was well off. In the critical area of vocabulary, 3-year-olds entered the study at the 29th percentile in terms of national norms and finished first grade at the 24th percentile whether or not they attended Head Start. That is not good.
The study went virtually unnoticed. You can’t find anything about it in the Washington Post or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or any other media outlet that serves the general public. The Post has 11 reporters covering education. Why isn’t a report on the effectiveness of the nation’s largest federally administered education program, one that serves thousands of needy children within the Post’s metro area, deemed worthy of newsprint? Is Head Start so sacrosanct that bad news about it is to be ignored?
The report of the study was inexcusably delayed. Data collection for the first grade follow-up was completed in the spring of 2006. Best practice in federal agencies would have seen a report released 12-18 months later. In fact, a draft report was provided to government officials in 2008 but wheels turned for long periods afterwards as the contractors were pushed to try different analytic techniques in the hope that something positive for Head Start could be found. Residuals of that effort are apparent in the released report, wherein findings are reported as suggestive or moderate that do not meet well accepted standards for statistical significance. The inexcusable delays continue as a report on a follow-up at the end of third grade, on which data collection ended in the spring of 2008, is no where in sight.
The federal government through the Office of Management and
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/0121_head_start_whitehurst.aspx
On the other hand:
Is Head Start Working for American Students?
"HHS released the Head Start Impact Study Final Report last week. There are several remarkable things about it:
"1. The study demonstrated that children’s attendance in Head Start has no demonstrable impact on their academic, socio-emotional, or health status at the end of first grade....
"2. The study went virtually unnoticed. You can’t find anything about it in the Washington Post or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or any other media outlet that serves the general public....
"3. The report of the study was inexcusably delayed...."
On the other hand:
Is Head Start Working for American Students?
"HHS released the Head Start Impact Study Final Report last week. There are several remarkable things about it:
"1. The study demonstrated that children’s attendance in Head Start has no demonstrable impact on their academic, socio-emotional, or health status at the end of first grade....
"2. The study went virtually unnoticed. You can’t find anything about it in the Washington Post or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or any other media outlet that serves the general public....
"3. The report of the study was inexcusably delayed...."
"my IQ is 140 for certain."
"i do not feel smart. and i know i'm not smart."
jody, you are probably the least interesting commenter on this blog. you never write anything insightful and some of your posts are so fact challenged they would make whiskey blush and yet you expect us to believe that you are as smart as bill clinton? lol.
James Kabala said: "I never heard of Buttram before, but despite his unfortunate name, apparently his fame came as a member of the cast of Green Acres."
Pat Buttram was Gene Autry's sidekick in the 1950s and played Mr. Haney on Green Acres in the 1960s.
I should probably feel abashed that my sole offering to this discussion of high IQ should be a tidbit of TV trivia (only I prefer to think of it as Americana). But I'm not.
"Maybe commenters bashing jody are into law, academics or pushing paper in some AA grind (troof?)"
Why are you singling me out? Aside from Whiskey and the Komment Kontrol Dork, Jody might be the most ridiculed poster here.
BTW you are totally wrong, My first name is as white as can be, my last name is African, but ends in a consonant so people often assume it's German. I have no problem getting interviews, jobs, or consulting assignments, in my career field which is ever changing.
ABTW I'm taking my prerequisites to possibly enter an engineering program in the fall.
"like kudzu bob, i'd be interested to hear your thoughts on unix and linux design philosophy"
That's something I know very little about, I'll research it and get back to you.
"what about your thoughts on green on black text, the most legible color scheme for computer reading?"
Well maybe we should all go to Goodwill, and by 1981 era CPTs?
And l.c.j, you have to understand, most experts in football will tell you that blacks make better players, but you spend your life blathering illogically against it, so what, exactly, does expert opinion have to do with anything?
"The high-IQ kid will likely be bullied into suicide, rather than being an inspirational leader. The pack looks for alpha males with "street cred", not genius, as its leaders."
Stop playing, Whiskey, we know this is you.
"and just cause we all agree with truth of HBD, don't assume that we all have the same agenda. We don't."
There's got to be something just a little annoying about being called out by a "High IQ White" who uses "cause" instead of "because" then goes on to ridicule half of your intellects. I don't know you tell me, but if you guys could only read your own arrogance...
High IQ whites from high IQ families have stopped marrying low IQ whites. We don't want our high IQ children in the same schools as your low IQ children.
Regression to the mean ringing any bells for you pal?
Mr IQ 135 (dont worry I wont contaminate your kids with my subhuman stupidity)
"This thread illustrates very clearly the two broad groups of strong Steve Sailer fans."
Wait, you forgot the third group: bizarre, obsessive immigrant Asian cognitive elitists who don't realize they are too lacking in verbal intelligence to successfully manipulate (or impersonate) whitey.
Blumenthal and Cordelia,
the failure of Headstart has been known for 40 years
The only thing that works is Direct Instruction, which consists of drilling
Truth wrote:
"Yeah, but Jo...I mean, the whole punctuation thing Dawg."
Punctuation? Where are those commas before Jo and Dawg, Truth?
...yet you expect us to believe that you are as smart as bill clinton? lol.
Well, that is lowering the bar again.
" Blacks make better players", but at games invented by whites. Blacks make their mark dancing, singing and tossing balls around for the entertainment of the masses. But that's about it. Do they enhance the quality of life in everyday affairs, when they're up close? No, they detract from it as anyone with actual experience can verify. I guess Head Start hasn't performed the miracle it was supposed to.
What? Head Start doesnt work? Damn! Didnt see that coming! Well I guess the Dear Leader will be striking that out of his new defecit-busting budget any time now... Re Truth & whiskey;Yep as soon as I saw "alpha male" I knew it was him. As for jody,you're "aw shucks ma'am,I aint all that smart,my pal the brain surgeon,he's the smart one" false modesty wont work with this crowd;its called "regression to the mean(spirited)."
>[H]igh IQ whites [...] are, by and large [sic] "citizenists" [...] [L]ow IQ whites['] [...] focus is on white solidarity or white survivalism. High IQ whites see themselves as very different from you [racists]. [...] We don't want our high IQ children in the same schools as your low IQ children.<
If you were truly of superior intelligence, you would know that this is begging the question and merely a form of insult - and that it would be instantly perceived as such here.
"This thread illustrates very clearly the two broad groups of strong Steve Sailer fans..."
Total nonsense.
>the generally coarse granularity of IQ scores at a young age<
My score as a teen was 13 points lower than my score as a child. Sans substance abuse. (A teacher later found out that the admin of the 2nd score was cooking 'em down - by leaving out a part of the test - for reasons we could only speculate on; nevertheless, the first score always seemed too high.)
I don't believe anyone has answered here the question of the first commenter.
I lol at your low scores.
My IQ is OVER 9000!!!
Beat that, punks
Yeah, but Jo...I mean, the whole punctuation thing Dawg.
What's a "thing Dawg"?
One day in 10th grade (1972), in private school in S.F., an announcement came over the PA system - "all students and faculty proceed immediately to the cafeteria" (school's largest room). Emergency of some sort? No, a surprise math test, administered by a rep. from the American mathematical assn. or society. The questions were weighted, and points were subtracted for wrong answers. About a week later, a totem pole was posted on the bulletin board at the top of the entryway staircase, with all takers, even teachers, ranked by name. As I recall, there were about 20 positive scores out of 180 or so takers. I scored 0.75. Wonder what my IQ is.
"Punctuation? Where are those commas before Jo and Dawg, Truth?"
"What's a "thing Dawg"?
Gentelmen; please, you're giving me a stomachache here. It's written to be colloquial.
I figured that this was readily apparent, or maybe you assumed that I thought "dog" was really spelled with a "w"?
"Specifically, high IQ whites just don't want our children associating with low IQ whites."
Awesome! No, guys, really. Let's let this self-congratulatory doofus (and the others like him) go live in the high-IQ (formerly CA) Asia-land.
Let us high-IQ ethnopatriots who LIKE our extended family members (even the ones who struggle in school) have a small piece of North America, where we can be left alone to wallow in our missing-him misery in peace and quiet.
Then, when the inevitable conflict erupts between Hi-IQ Doofus and his (former) Asian bestest-buddies-forever and Doofus watches to his horror as the vast reservoirs of ethnocentricity formerly dormant in those Asian black hearts bubble to the surface, our challenge will be to innovate new weapons systems to keep HIM OUT.
Sounds like fun!
Shan94 said: "...and Cordelia,
the failure of Headstart has been known for 40 years...."
Sure. But it's nice to see an official report -- one from the Dept of Health and Human Services, no less -- out there; one that can be pointed to in a debate if necessary.
Actually it is not blacks or low IQ folks of any race who detract from the quality of life. Plenty of folks with average or below average IQs are good folks who contribute a lot of value to society. And plenty of high IQ folks on this board contribute little to society despite their excessive opinion of themselves based on their allegedly high intellect.
High IQ societies are surprisingly worthless. Apparently there are much better ways for very smart people to find other very smart people to associate with. I had previously concluded that Mensans were boring and insecure, and when my wife and I joined the Four Sigma society (briefly!) we expected it to be better, but their newsletters were almost entirely about petty politics, splinter groups, and inventing new IQ tests. On the other hand, we had plenty of super-smart friends from our MIT days who never considered joining a high-IQ society. I later investigated the Mega society (which I have no reason to believe I would have qualified for) and it was the most discouraging of all, because none of the supposed super geniuses in it had ever accomplished anything notable in the real world.
Yeah, but Jo...I mean, the whole punctuation thing Dawg.
What's a "thing Dawg"?
That's called being coll-o-qui-al, which I think means stupid.
>Why are you singling me out? Aside from Whiskey and the Komment Kontrol Dork, Jody might be the most ridiculed poster here.<
You forgot to include yourself, Twoof.
Everyone on this blog believes in the truth of HBD. I would bet that the high IQ whites on this blog and the low IQ whites on this blog believe in the same public policies.
The difference is in who we want to associate with. The right of free association means that each of us can spend time with whoever we want.
Bottom line, the low IQ whites here are terrified of their daughter marrying a NAM. But the high IQ whites here are afraid of their daughter marrying in to a low IQ family of any race.
Specifically, high IQ whites just don't want our children associating with low IQ whites.
There aren't any low-IQ people here: Low-IQ people can't even read [much less write, or type].
You need to brush up on your HBD.
[BTW, if your post was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, then kindly allow me to apologize for not getting the joke, whatever it might have been.]
Yeah, Pissed Off Chinaman, it is true that some high-IQ'ers are the pits in terms of personal character. A high horsepower engine without a steering wheel, gas, or tires goes nowhere. But, a high horsepower engine hooked up to the virtues (like honesty, hard work) is damn valuable.
The reason groups like Mensa seem boring or sterile is that IQ-supremacy is boring and sterile. IQ is one element - maybe the most precious element - in a mosaic; and it's expressed in a great variety of forms * ; but a mosaic with only one piece ain't much.
(* Including articulate criticism of IQ.)
"That's called being coll-o-qui-al, which I think means stupid."
And this means you have no sense of humor...ya kno what I'm, sayin...
High IQ societies are surprisingly worthless.
Not the ones with the good drugs and pretty girls!
you mean, the way i deliberately write in lower case, because both psychologists and computer scientists have shown that it is easier to read typed languages that way?
No, the way you write in all lower case because you're too fricken' lazy and undisciplined to do otherwise.
being an engineer myself, his lower case style does not bother me in te least
What the heck does being a engineer have to do with using or not using proper written English?
What the heck does being a engineer have to do with using or not using proper written English?
jody, you are probably the least interesting commenter on this blog. you never write anything insightful and some of your posts are so fact challenged they would make whiskey blush and yet you expect us to believe that you are as smart as bill clinton? lol.
I'm assuming the same Anon wrote these nasty and spiteful remarks.
FYI high-tech guys are used to a heavy workload and not much bloviating as for instance lawyers or media people. So they take the shortcuts in language as well. Many of the acronyms we use nowadays come from tech guys. That jody would take a shortcut on the capitals seems logical and acceptable to me, AS AN ENGINEER.
Anonymous sez:
jody, you are probably the least interesting commenter on this blog. you never write anything insightful and some of your posts are so fact challenged they would make whiskey blush and yet you expect us to believe that you are as smart as bill clinton? lol.
No, the way you write in all lower case because you're too fricken' lazy and undisciplined to do otherwise.
What the heck does being a engineer have to do with using or not using proper written English?
Anon, why don’t you at least have the self-discipline to unload your personal attacks and venom in one post instead of f. up the thread with your useless battering?
I'm assuming the same Anon wrote these nasty and spiteful remarks.
I'm one of the anons and I can tell you they were not written by the same person. I wrote the one objecting to the idea that engineers use all lower-case.
FYI high-tech guys are used to a heavy workload and not much bloviating as for instance lawyers or media people.
I'm a high-tech guy. And I somehow manage to use normal capitalization when writing. If I wrote my project documentation in all lower-case I'd be fired. Part of being "high-tech" is understanding the function of the "Shift" key.
"That's called being coll-o-qui-al, which I think means stupid."
And this means you have no sense of humor...ya kno what I'm, sayin...
WHat's funny is how boring these things quickly become.
FYI high-tech guys... take the shortcuts... That jody would take a shortcut... seems logical and acceptable to me, AS AN ENGINEER.
Mr Engineer, remind me to take a detour around any bridge you had a hand in designing [or building].
On High-IQ Societies:
They function mostly as a collective hurt locker of sorts for high-IQ folks, to cry and whine to each other about the unfairness of it all.
And they are right.
Mensoids are not places to compare acheivements, or compete for status over them. That is what the real world is for, particularly the corporate world. Indeed, the genius that does accomplish greatness rarely has time for anything else.
I am convinced that the high-IQ mental and emotional worlds are so alien to that of common humanity, that they have nothing in common. Alienation only builds up, and needs some sort of pressure valve.
In whom are the high-IQ types supposed to confide? Psychologists? Priests?
Nobody else will understand, and instead of needed sympathy, will elicit responses ranging from ridicule to accusations of high treason.
iq tests at age 4 dont hold up over time, its true they hold up better at 7. the problem with young kids or moody kids is COMPLIANCE. another big problem is that if iq is an aggregate test, a math genius with poor verbal skills or vice versa, can seem average unless an isolated score set is indicated. I can tell you first hand because I've worked with kids I've felt were truly geniuses, that probably about half of them were total Aholes, very difficult personalities, some were utterly asocial so IQ testing not such a snap.
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