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My understanding at a high level is that an IQ test is basically made by generating a bunch of cognitive tasks that putatively test different aspects of cogniti

My understanding at a high level is that an IQ test is basically made by generating a bunch of cognitive tasks that putatively test different aspects of cognitive functioning (e.g. verbal reasoning, visuospatial reasoning, attention, working memory, etc.). For most people, performance on one type of cognitive task (e.g. verbal reasoning) is highly correlated with performance on the other types of cognitive tasks. This allows you to model the test as a hierarchical statistical model with some general intelligence factor (denoted G) at the top and then specific cognitive tasks branch off from there. You can then infer what G is just by statistical inference on the "branches" (the performance on the individual cognitive tasks); similar to how you might infer someone's height if you only had access to their leg and arm lengths, as these are highly correlated with each other and also with height. I believe IQ scores are always population normed to have a mean of 100 but unnormalized scores are likely available to compare across time.

geraldalewis 4y ago
> For most people, performance on one type of cognitive task (e.g. verbal reasoning) is highly correlated with performance on the other types of cognitive tasks. It's cool that that's your understanding, but you're wading into territory that gets people sterilized and killed. I have a lot of trust in science, but not here. This video was informative for me: https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo For example, here's an IQ test; let's say its given to 5,000,000 Canadians, and 3,000 Texans (1): * What is the capital city of Canada? * Which Canadian province is the largest by land area? * Who is considered the "Father of Medicare" in Canada? * Name the two official languages of Canada. * Which Canadian team won the Stanley Cup in 2017? * What is the national sport of Canada? * What is the name of Canada's national anthem? * Name the famous Canadian dish made with fries, cheese curds, and gravy. * Who was the first Prime Minister of Canada? * In which Canadian city is the CN Tower located? I would expect a normal distribution for Canadians, but for the Texans to score in the bottom quintile (regardless of "general intelligence"). (1) I asked ChatGPT to come up with this test. (edit: formatting)
- chongli 4y ago
  This is why IQ tests switched to Raven’s progressive matrices [1] a long time ago. RPM avoids these issues of cultural bias. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven's_Progressive_Matrices?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven's_Progressive_Matrices?w...

geraldalewis 4y ago

> For most people, performance on one type of cognitive task (e.g. verbal reasoning) is highly correlated with performance on the other types of cognitive tasks. It's cool that that's your understanding, but you're wading into territory that gets people sterilized and killed. I have a lot of trust in science, but not here. This video was informative for me: https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo For example, here's an IQ test; let's say its given to 5,000,000 Canadians, and 3,000 Texans (1): * What is the capital city of Canada? * Which Canadian province is the largest by land area? * Who is considered the "Father of Medicare" in Canada? * Name the two official languages of Canada. * Which Canadian team won the Stanley Cup in 2017? * What is the national sport of Canada? * What is the name of Canada's national anthem? * Name the famous Canadian dish made with fries, cheese curds, and gravy. * Who was the first Prime Minister of Canada? * In which Canadian city is the CN Tower located? I would expect a normal distribution for Canadians, but for the Texans to score in the bottom quintile (regardless of "general intelligence"). (1) I asked ChatGPT to come up with this test. (edit: formatting)

chongli 4y ago
This is why IQ tests switched to Raven’s progressive matrices [1] a long time ago. RPM avoids these issues of cultural bias. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven's_Progressive_Matrices?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven's_Progressive_Matrices?w...