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I understand that they're using a specific definition of gifted in the article (mental age > 1 + physical age), but the tone still bothers me. If a child is gif

I understand that they're using a specific definition of gifted in the article (mental age > 1 + physical age), but the tone still bothers me. If a child is gifted, and does not succeed, does that not mean they are not gifted? Or, to phrase it as a solvable problem, doesn't this mean our metrics for determining success at an early age are flawed? We've known for a long time that IQ does not guarantee success at any level in life, so I'm not sure why it is a surprise when high-IQ children do not come out on top. Even worse, they don't explain how they calculate mental age, and why this should translate to success throughout the school years. The thesis here ("Initially promising children often underperform") might be correct, but there is nothing in the methodology that supports this point. It seems too fluffy and full of assumptions to take seriously.

cj 16y ago
"If a child is gifted, and does not succeed, does that not mean they are not gifted? " It depends on your definition of success. Most people would not define success in life by their GPA. This article is telling us that high-iq children are not academically successful (as measured by their school grades). Even worse, they don't explain how they calculate mental age "Mental age" can be synonymous with IQ. I assume thats how the author of the article was using the phrase. Some variations of IQ tests present IQ as a ratio of mental age over chronological age, especially useful for testing children who are expected to be underdeveloped compared to an adult.
- trjordan 16y ago
  Then there seems to be something missing here. I agree -- academics is only one area of success. But if gifted does not correlate with academic success, what kind of success are they talking about? Marking certain kids as gifted is a useless exercise unless that information actually translates into some kind -- any kind -- of success. If there is no predictive power to the test, then, at best, the test is useless.
lubos 16y ago
education system is designed for average children, if you're too smart or too dumb, you'll fail. I suspect with smart children, they usually don't want to memorize boring bits, in first years they are used to understand everything necessary during the class and generally didn't have to spend any time preparing for the school at home. as time passes, school becomes more difficult and students are required just to memorize rather than actually understand. this is why many smart children are taken by surprise at some point, they are not used to memorize knowledge just to pass the tests and many times they would simply refuse to do this and therefore fail. it makes sense perfectly. look at some smart and successful people on the planet, you will see the same pattern: in real world - success, academically failures.
ringm 16y ago
So-called "academic success" is based on a series of formal tests and rituals, just like IQ is. These tests could be useless as a metric of your knowledge, skills or abilities, just like you're arguing IQ is. Unfortunately, when the name of a performance indicator has the word "success" in it, you stop questioning the validity of such indicator, and you start using it as an absolute benchmark instead. This happens even though the trivial answer to "why do you go to school or college" is usually "for knowledge and skills", not "for academic success".
- flomo 16y ago
  "Academic success" is required to enter many highly paid occupations: law, medicine, finance, etc. So I would disagree it is a useless indicator, it is directly related to one's future income.
  - ringm 16y ago
    I never said it is useless as an indicator of future income. I said it might be useless as an indicator of one's knowledge and skills, and knowledge and skills are what education is supposed to be about. If you measure success by one's income, which is a good and clearly defined though still arbitrary indicator, I see no reason whatsoever to expect it would depend on IQ. People with high IQ are often less competitive and often question the need to maximize their income, which is obviously detrimental to such income.
tokenadult 16y ago
The thesis here ("Initially promising children often underperform") might be correct, but there is nothing in the methodology that supports this point. What troubles me about the submitted article (which I submitted after seeing it recommended by a local friend on a statewide email list in my state) is that the lead paragraph includes the statement "According to a 2003 study, a mere 40 percent of gifted children will complete an undergraduate degree or pursue graduate studies. The rest drop out." I see contact information for the University of Montreal press officer (for follow-up on this press release), but I don't see any citation to anyone's study, and it is not at all clear who constituted the 2003 study population. Perhaps that was a very unrepresentative group of gifted students and this result will never be replicated. I'm not at all sure what is going on here based on the reported statement. This drives me back to Peter Norvig's advice on reading research reports http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html and suggests much better research is needed on this issue.
- corruption 16y ago
  How does the lack of a citation in a laymans article suggest much better research is needed on this issue? You are arguing that "Perhaps that was a very unrepresentative group of gifted students and this result will never be replicated". Well perhaps not. Given people doing research are not as stupid as random people on the internet think they are, and that experimental results are a better source of knowledge than blind statements on forums, I would put very low priors on your assertion.
  - tokenadult 16y ago
    I went all the way back to your first post on HN the last time you flamed on this issue, and I get where you are coming from. But I don't think you get where I'm coming from. I simply think that everyone engaged in science, from the lofty Nobel Prize winner to the first-year graduate student grunt worker, has to be prepared to follow correct methodology, each day and every day. It happens, among all subjects that are researched, that I am most familiar with the research on psychology of human abilities and education reform (especially the intersection of those subjects, education of gifted children). Most of what passes for "research" in those subjects is appallingly bad from a methodological point of view. I've seen very influential publications with recommendations on gifted education that consist entirely of "fudge"--made-up citations that can't be verified if you look at the cited journals, and "studies" with no description of how the data were observed at all. When a press release writes "According to a 2003 study," I immediately look for a citation of the study. Scientific studies that get published all have citations. Serious scholars cite that which is published. My alarm bells went off when I didn't see any citation to any study to back up that extremely implausible point. If you want to talk about priors, my statement is that it is EXTREMELY implausible that "a mere 40 percent of gifted children will complete an undergraduate degree" by any reasonable definition of "gifted." There are severe economic limitations on college access for some learners (cited by me in another post in this thread). But my claim is that well over half of "gifted" learners in the United States in my generation or subsequent generations eventually complete a college degree, and that the "study" mentioned but not cited in the press release is bogus. After edit: Whenever I think about the hard work that scientists do, I'm reminded of Richard Feynman's commencement speech "Cargo Cult Science" http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/02/CargoCult.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/02/CargoCult.pdf http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm in which the important statement occurs: "But this long history of learning how not to fool ourselves--of having utter scientific integrity--is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis. "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that." Have you ever written to Peter Norvig, Google's director of research, with your comments on his article? http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html Perhaps he could reflect your point of view the next time he revises that article, if you think there is something there in need of correction. On my part, I post the article a lot because my late father (a chemistry major who extensively studied the philosophy of science) alerted me to the issue of replicating research findings when I was quite young. Odd findings may be the next great discovery. They may also be flawed, mistaken observations.
xiaoma 16y ago
>If a child is gifted, and does not succeed, does that not mean they are not gifted? If an athlete is muscular and does not succeed, does that mean they are not muscular? Adjectives are useful for talking and thinking about things, but it's a mistake to try to reduce every attribute of an individual into a metric for "success" or failure in some area. Being intelligent no more guarantees success, whatever that means, than being beautiful or tall or diligent. Those are still useful descriptive characteristics, though.

cj 16y ago

"If a child is gifted, and does not succeed, does that not mean they are not gifted? " It depends on your definition of success. Most people would not define success in life by their GPA. This article is telling us that high-iq children are not academically successful (as measured by their school grades). Even worse, they don't explain how they calculate mental age "Mental age" can be synonymous with IQ. I assume thats how the author of the article was using the phrase. Some variations of IQ tests present IQ as a ratio of mental age over chronological age, especially useful for testing children who are expected to be underdeveloped compared to an adult.

trjordan 16y ago
Then there seems to be something missing here. I agree -- academics is only one area of success. But if gifted does not correlate with academic success, what kind of success are they talking about? Marking certain kids as gifted is a useless exercise unless that information actually translates into some kind -- any kind -- of success. If there is no predictive power to the test, then, at best, the test is useless.

lubos 16y ago

education system is designed for average children, if you're too smart or too dumb, you'll fail. I suspect with smart children, they usually don't want to memorize boring bits, in first years they are used to understand everything necessary during the class and generally didn't have to spend any time preparing for the school at home. as time passes, school becomes more difficult and students are required just to memorize rather than actually understand. this is why many smart children are taken by surprise at some point, they are not used to memorize knowledge just to pass the tests and many times they would simply refuse to do this and therefore fail. it makes sense perfectly. look at some smart and successful people on the planet, you will see the same pattern: in real world - success, academically failures.

ringm 16y ago

So-called "academic success" is based on a series of formal tests and rituals, just like IQ is. These tests could be useless as a metric of your knowledge, skills or abilities, just like you're arguing IQ is. Unfortunately, when the name of a performance indicator has the word "success" in it, you stop questioning the validity of such indicator, and you start using it as an absolute benchmark instead. This happens even though the trivial answer to "why do you go to school or college" is usually "for knowledge and skills", not "for academic success".

flomo 16y ago
"Academic success" is required to enter many highly paid occupations: law, medicine, finance, etc. So I would disagree it is a useless indicator, it is directly related to one's future income.
- ringm 16y ago
  I never said it is useless as an indicator of future income. I said it might be useless as an indicator of one's knowledge and skills, and knowledge and skills are what education is supposed to be about. If you measure success by one's income, which is a good and clearly defined though still arbitrary indicator, I see no reason whatsoever to expect it would depend on IQ. People with high IQ are often less competitive and often question the need to maximize their income, which is obviously detrimental to such income.

tokenadult 16y ago

The thesis here ("Initially promising children often underperform") might be correct, but there is nothing in the methodology that supports this point. What troubles me about the submitted article (which I submitted after seeing it recommended by a local friend on a statewide email list in my state) is that the lead paragraph includes the statement "According to a 2003 study, a mere 40 percent of gifted children will complete an undergraduate degree or pursue graduate studies. The rest drop out." I see contact information for the University of Montreal press officer (for follow-up on this press release), but I don't see any citation to anyone's study, and it is not at all clear who constituted the 2003 study population. Perhaps that was a very unrepresentative group of gifted students and this result will never be replicated. I'm not at all sure what is going on here based on the reported statement. This drives me back to Peter Norvig's advice on reading research reports http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html and suggests much better research is needed on this issue.

corruption 16y ago
How does the lack of a citation in a laymans article suggest much better research is needed on this issue? You are arguing that "Perhaps that was a very unrepresentative group of gifted students and this result will never be replicated". Well perhaps not. Given people doing research are not as stupid as random people on the internet think they are, and that experimental results are a better source of knowledge than blind statements on forums, I would put very low priors on your assertion.
- tokenadult 16y ago
  I went all the way back to your first post on HN the last time you flamed on this issue, and I get where you are coming from. But I don't think you get where I'm coming from. I simply think that everyone engaged in science, from the lofty Nobel Prize winner to the first-year graduate student grunt worker, has to be prepared to follow correct methodology, each day and every day. It happens, among all subjects that are researched, that I am most familiar with the research on psychology of human abilities and education reform (especially the intersection of those subjects, education of gifted children). Most of what passes for "research" in those subjects is appallingly bad from a methodological point of view. I've seen very influential publications with recommendations on gifted education that consist entirely of "fudge"--made-up citations that can't be verified if you look at the cited journals, and "studies" with no description of how the data were observed at all. When a press release writes "According to a 2003 study," I immediately look for a citation of the study. Scientific studies that get published all have citations. Serious scholars cite that which is published. My alarm bells went off when I didn't see any citation to any study to back up that extremely implausible point. If you want to talk about priors, my statement is that it is EXTREMELY implausible that "a mere 40 percent of gifted children will complete an undergraduate degree" by any reasonable definition of "gifted." There are severe economic limitations on college access for some learners (cited by me in another post in this thread). But my claim is that well over half of "gifted" learners in the United States in my generation or subsequent generations eventually complete a college degree, and that the "study" mentioned but not cited in the press release is bogus. After edit: Whenever I think about the hard work that scientists do, I'm reminded of Richard Feynman's commencement speech "Cargo Cult Science" http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/02/CargoCult.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/02/CargoCult.pdf http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm in which the important statement occurs: "But this long history of learning how not to fool ourselves--of having utter scientific integrity--is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis. "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that." Have you ever written to Peter Norvig, Google's director of research, with your comments on his article? http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html Perhaps he could reflect your point of view the next time he revises that article, if you think there is something there in need of correction. On my part, I post the article a lot because my late father (a chemistry major who extensively studied the philosophy of science) alerted me to the issue of replicating research findings when I was quite young. Odd findings may be the next great discovery. They may also be flawed, mistaken observations.

xiaoma 16y ago

>If a child is gifted, and does not succeed, does that not mean they are not gifted? If an athlete is muscular and does not succeed, does that mean they are not muscular? Adjectives are useful for talking and thinking about things, but it's a mistake to try to reduce every attribute of an individual into a metric for "success" or failure in some area. Being intelligent no more guarantees success, whatever that means, than being beautiful or tall or diligent. Those are still useful descriptive characteristics, though.