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This is my favorite quote relating to IQ tests: They gave him an intelligence test. The first question on the math part had to do with boats on a river: Port S
by aeonik 4y ago
This is my favorite quote relating to IQ tests:
They gave him an intelligence test. The first question on the math part had to do with boats on a river: Port Smith is 100 miles upstream of Port Jones. The river flows at 5 miles per hour. The boat goes through water at 10 miles per hour. How long does it take to go from Port Smith to Port Jones? How long to come back?
Lawrence immediately saw that it was a trick question. You would have to be some kind of idiot to make the facile assumption that the current would add or subtract 5 miles per hour to or from the speed of the boat. Clearly, 5 miles per hour was nothing more than the “average” speed. The current would be faster in the middle of the river and slower at the banks. More complicated variations could be expected at bends in the river. Basically it was a question of hydrodynamics, which could be tackled using certain well-known systems of differential equations. Lawrence dove into the problem, rapidly (or so he thought) covering both sides of ten sheets of paper with calculations. Along the way, he realized that one of his assumptions, in combination with the simplified Navier Stokes equations, had led him into an exploration of a particularly interesting family of partial differential equations. Before he knew it, he had proved a new theorem. If that didn't prove his intelligence, what would?
Then the time bell rang and the papers were collected. Lawrence managed to hang onto his scratch paper. He took it back to his dorm, typed it up, and mailed it to one of the more approachable math professors at Princeton, who promptly arranged for it to be published in a Parisian mathematics journal.
Lawrence received two free, freshly printed copies of the journal a few months later, in San Diego, California, during mail call on board a large ship called the U.S.S. Nevada. The ship had a band, and the Navy had given Lawrence the job of playing the glockenspiel in it, because their testing procedures had proven that he was not intelligent enough to do anything else.
-Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon (1999)
- bena 4y agoIs Harry Potter real? Because if he isn't, you're trying to use fiction as evidence of something in the real world.
- aeonik 4y agoDespite being fiction, the quote I shared is a plausible thought experiment that illustrates one kind of limitation of tests in general. It appeals to most people because they can empathize with over thinking test material. It's clearly representative of a real phenomenon. As I get older, I notice tests tend to become more irritating, because most systems depend on so many variables that every answer to a question needs an "it depends" to qualify any reasonable answer. This realization has been very important to my career as an engineer, because it helps me interact with customers in more productive ways during requirements gathering, design, or troubleshooting. Instead of trying to answer every customer question directly, I find it much more effective to dive into assumptions and explore the customer's perspective (most of the time). Using Lawrence's approach to a problem solving actually works very well, but will fail you on a test.
- bena 4y agoBut it's not real. It never really happened. It can't illustrate any sort of limitation because the limitation doesn't really exist in the fiction. Fiction can ask questions about reality, but it can never answer them. And dollars to donuts, Neal Stephenson couldn't actually do the things he claims Lawrence was capable of doing. And it's likely what Lawrence accomplished given the time frame is a bit impossible. But it doesn't have to be possible. Lightsabers are the length of swords because they are. The Enterprise achieves faster than light travel by creating a bubble of warped space because it does. Lawrence is able to formulate an entirely new theorem about fluid dynamics because he did. And let's be clear, in a real situation, Lawrence's approach is still kind of bad. Now the question itself is running some assumptions that it shouldn't, but the inferences aren't terrible. Over the length of the run, the average flow is fine to work with. The speed of the boat is speed in still water. Also, the speed of the boat is also going to be an average because multiple things also affect the speed of the boat, including the density of the water. But Stephenson didn't think about that, so it didn't matter in the fiction. Even though, it would in reality for someone doing these calculations. But the question, when asked in reality, needs a relatively accurate answer in a relatively quick time frame. And the numbers provided can give you that. Part of intelligence is also recognizing when it's time to gather wool and when it's time to get shit done. The bit about the glockenspiel is supposed to be a dig about the Navy failing to recognize his brilliance. But yeah. He needs to get things done. And he doesn't. So the Navy was correct to put him somewhere where it doesn't matter how long it takes for him to make a decision.