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You're assuming rational behavior. Statistically speaking half the population has an IQ under 100¹. There's an online big&tall clothing retailer who have a gre

by dhosek 5y ago

You're assuming rational behavior. Statistically speaking half the population has an IQ under 100¹. There's an online big&tall clothing retailer who have a great site. Exactly what I wanted: I can search by size (my trouser size is often just above regular size stores' inventory and just below b&t stores' inventory), decent enough prices,² good sizing guides, even some variety in colors and styles. I was ready to become a regular customer. On check out I was asked if I wanted to join their mailing list. I clicked no. The next day I got a marketing email. I clicked the unsubscribe button. The next day I got *another* marketing email. I called them up and made it clear that if I got another email they'd lost me as a customer forever and they'd better make damned sure they got me off their mailing list. You can guess what came in the email the next day. I marked them as spam and set up the kill it with fire rule in my gmail³ so that I'd never see another email from them again. I tell this story mostly because it's not an atypical experience. You'd think people would know better than to do things like this, but you'd be thinking wrong. A lot of marketing people see email as a free way to reach prospects and don't seem to understand the negative consequences of irritating customers like this. --- 1. That is assuming that IQ variation truly is a normal distribution. In all the critiques of IQ, whether it's actually normally distributed seems to never come up. 2. Which as anyone reading this who's big and/or tall will know, means far more than you folks near the center of the size bell curve pay for clothes. I'm going to break our code of silence for a moment and say that every time we buy clothes, us b&t people loathe you center of the bell curve–sized people with a passion. 3. Established because Avis doesn't even give an opt-out link in their crap marketing emails.

LegionMammal978 5y ago
Regarding your first footnote, IQ is assumed to be a normal distribution since that is how it is defined: Measure a factor g of general intelligence, then translate its distribution of values onto a Gaussian distribution with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15. Since IQ is a relative measurement against the population, it can be distributed however one likes. That's not to say, though, that absolute intelligence (however one chooses to define it) is necessarily normally distributed.
- dhosek 5y ago
  I guess my biggest question is whether the distribution is symmetrical. I think mathematically¹, that if you do something like sum n values that are uniformly distributed from 1…k, you'll tend towards a bell curve as n ∞, so I have no reason to believe that you wouldn't get something like that with IQ tests, but I have a hard time convincing myself that it's necessarily so. Then again, whatever deviation from a pure normal distribution would probably not be dramatic and the median = 100 line would hold up regardless thanks to the definition of 100. --- 1. I've taught basic stats in the past, but my own stats education is rudimentary since I avoided anything that even vaguely approached applied mathematics in my mathematical education.
  - barrkel 5y ago
    Intelligence distribution may not be symmetrical. I don't think it is, in fact I'm not sure what that would even mean. High intelligence means doing some things faster and low intelligence means not being able to do some things at all. The only way to symmetry or otherwise is via a quantification which converts these things to a scalar measure, and then distribution becomes a tweakable property of the quantification when tested against a population. And that's why IQ (not intelligence, they are not synonyms) is normally distributed. It is a tuned quantification, designed to be normally distributed. If it doesn't turn out that way, there is some divergence between the population it was tuned for and the sample you're measuring.
theonemind 5y ago
I used to get some credit card offer in the mail it seems like at least once a month. One time, I wrote a short note saying that I was tired of seeing their offer and would now never accept the card on principle and that their best bet was to stop sending them and hope I forget and put it in the prepaid return envelope and mailed it. They stopped. I forgot. I got the card some years later and only remembered it was that one after having the card for some time. I told them what to do, and it worked!
pc86 5y ago
Yes half the population has an IQ under 100 but only a third of adults have a college degree. You're assuming the make up of marketing departments mimics broader society which I'm sure it doesn't.
- dhosek 5y ago
  I went to a highly selective college for undergrad. It's really easy to assume that this is typical of the college population, which it isn't. And even among that highly selective population, it was really easy to spot a lot of irrational behaviors. Hell, if test results are to be believed, I'm in the top 1% of the population intelligence-wise and yet I still lost $20 to a shell-game con artist on the “L” and that's just the tip of the iceberg of my own irrational behavior.

by dhosek 5y ago

LegionMammal978 5y ago

Regarding your first footnote, IQ is assumed to be a normal distribution since that is how it is defined: Measure a factor g of general intelligence, then translate its distribution of values onto a Gaussian distribution with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15. Since IQ is a relative measurement against the population, it can be distributed however one likes. That's not to say, though, that absolute intelligence (however one chooses to define it) is necessarily normally distributed.

dhosek 5y ago
I guess my biggest question is whether the distribution is symmetrical. I think mathematically¹, that if you do something like sum n values that are uniformly distributed from 1…k, you'll tend towards a bell curve as n ∞, so I have no reason to believe that you wouldn't get something like that with IQ tests, but I have a hard time convincing myself that it's necessarily so. Then again, whatever deviation from a pure normal distribution would probably not be dramatic and the median = 100 line would hold up regardless thanks to the definition of 100. --- 1. I've taught basic stats in the past, but my own stats education is rudimentary since I avoided anything that even vaguely approached applied mathematics in my mathematical education.
- barrkel 5y ago
  Intelligence distribution may not be symmetrical. I don't think it is, in fact I'm not sure what that would even mean. High intelligence means doing some things faster and low intelligence means not being able to do some things at all. The only way to symmetry or otherwise is via a quantification which converts these things to a scalar measure, and then distribution becomes a tweakable property of the quantification when tested against a population. And that's why IQ (not intelligence, they are not synonyms) is normally distributed. It is a tuned quantification, designed to be normally distributed. If it doesn't turn out that way, there is some divergence between the population it was tuned for and the sample you're measuring.

theonemind 5y ago

I used to get some credit card offer in the mail it seems like at least once a month. One time, I wrote a short note saying that I was tired of seeing their offer and would now never accept the card on principle and that their best bet was to stop sending them and hope I forget and put it in the prepaid return envelope and mailed it. They stopped. I forgot. I got the card some years later and only remembered it was that one after having the card for some time. I told them what to do, and it worked!

pc86 5y ago

Yes half the population has an IQ under 100 but only a third of adults have a college degree. You're assuming the make up of marketing departments mimics broader society which I'm sure it doesn't.

dhosek 5y ago
I went to a highly selective college for undergrad. It's really easy to assume that this is typical of the college population, which it isn't. And even among that highly selective population, it was really easy to spot a lot of irrational behaviors. Hell, if test results are to be believed, I'm in the top 1% of the population intelligence-wise and yet I still lost $20 to a shell-game con artist on the “L” and that's just the tip of the iceberg of my own irrational behavior.