8 ms·
IQ is normally distributed because it's graded on a curve to make that true by definition. I'm not sure how it's distributed on any sort of 'natural' scale.
by OscarCunningham 4y ago
IQ is normally distributed because it's graded on a curve to make that true by definition. I'm not sure how it's distributed on any sort of 'natural' scale.
- jacquesm 4y agoWhat would such a natural scale look like?
- derefr 4y agoMaybe a cross-species IQ score would be interesting. Chimpanzees and corvids both can solve many IQ-test problems, but also are not experiencing the Flynn effect as far as we know. So we could measure IQ in multiples of a chimp's IQ, just like we measure cars in multiple's of a workhorse's sustainable pulling output. (Which is actually a less objective measure, when you think about it; we were breeding workhorses to increase that very target at the time the concept of "horsepower" was invented!)
- jacquesm 4y agoThat would be a great start. And it would also force us to acknowledge that a lot of the things that we are doing with these animals are utterly un-ethical.
- OscarCunningham 4y agoI'm reminded of the paper 'Measuring universal intelligence: Towards an anytime intelligence test' https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370210001554 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000437021....
- jacquesm 4y agoThank you for the pointer.
- derbOac 4y agoNo, it's scaled but linearly and not redistributed. There's still studies of relatively raw distributions and it still looks normal. The biggest deviations from normality are due to an excess mass in the lower range due to disease, and a tendency for scores to spike a tiny bit at certain numbers, probably due to people administering the test fudging a bit sometimes for various reasons.