5 ms·

Before anything one should probably check or at least ballpark their IQ score. The median IQ for mathematics PhD students probably hovers somewhere around 145,

Before anything one should probably check or at least ballpark their IQ score. The median IQ for mathematics PhD students probably hovers somewhere around 145, about the top 0.2% of the population, correlated with about a 1510/1600 on the SATs, a 34 on the ACTs, etc. Those aren't perfect correlates but you're much more likely to have an SAT or ACT score than a professional IQ score handy. Math is infamously g-loaded, pure math even more so. An unfortunate fact of life. On the bright side, math is very much a "shoot for the moon and you'll land among the stars" subject to pursue if you even loosely keep industrial or business applications in mind.

crinkly 1y ago
I did consider doing a mathematics postgrad qualification but my IQ is high enough to realise I liked actually getting paid decent money.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  Yes, exactly! One reason it's valuable to look at these numbers is because it makes you take a step back and say "Wait - I'm in what percentile?" That naturally leads many people to ask whether making only $200,000 a year as a professor somewhere is really a price you're willing to pay, as opposed to making multiples of that as the smartest guy in the room in any number of private industries. Opportunity cost matters!
  - crinkly 1y ago
    Bit more complicated here in the UK with salaries in academia. But in private sector I was earning 1.5x average mathematics professor salary before I even had a mathematics degree. And equity on top of that. Not the smartest guy in the room by far but the most useful.
  - ndriscoll 1y ago
    If you're making multiples of $200k for being a smart guy, there's a decent chance you're doing something that a lot of people would be ethically uncomfortable with (HFT, ads/surveillance tech, etc.). Being happy with what you do in the world also matters, and $200k/yr is easily enough to support a family on a single income pretty much anywhere already.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
viccis 1y ago
My experience with pure math is that this is not necessary to get job as one, even at good institutions, but you will be terrorized by the arrogance of the ones you mention. Learning to deal with the "brilliant jerk" is a problem in many fields, but the ones I've met in pure math are some of the weirdest (and most vicious)
- qsort 1y ago
  At least from my point of view (in the industry, not academia) this is actually the opposite. Math graduates tend to be smart and humble and I respect them a lot. Sometimes it almost feels like math and physics are the last "real" degrees left.
  - monkeyelite 1y ago
    Yes, and those are the ones who didn’t make it to researcher.
    - Ivan92 1y ago
      Who's to say that you can't go into industry and not be a researcher? You don't have to stay in academia to do research. Many companies and industries tend to publish papers and some even work with universities for research.
      - zamadatix 1y ago
        I don't think that's what GP was saying, but I could be wrong.
      - monkeyelite 1y ago
        No I’m saying the top tier mathematicians tend to work in academia because that’s where the most math is done (general trend with exceptions).
        Ivan92 1y ago
512 1y ago
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- sombrero_john 1y ago
  Your personal experience does not line up with the empirical evidence at all. Some people are (much) smarter than others. It sucks, but that's life.
no_input 1y ago
The interest in pure mathematics probably sets inquiring individuals in a higher intelligence bracket already. If somebody got through high school enjoying and succeeding at geometry and calculus, then they probably could stomach most undergraduate work in the same manner. It seems a bit like gatekeeping to make people question whether they are smart enough when they will figure out pretty quickly if they have the aptitude or will to do it just by being exposed.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  >they will figure out pretty quickly if they have the aptitude or will to do it just by being exposed We disagree here, most people are not very good at figuring this out for themselves at all ime. It's always wise to compare yourself to known or semi-known metrics before you take the plunge into any given career, to make sure it really does seem like a good fit for you, or to make sure you can justify why you want to do it anyway even if the metrics paint an unflattering story.
oulipo2 1y ago
Not true at all, we need mathematicians and scientists from all backgrounds, and creativity comes in many shapes
6r17 1y ago
I was about to ask if there is any way we can bridge the mathematics the same way we did with programming ; I love going-on with an LLM to learn math and apply them directly to problems I'm facing ; and to be honest I often feel like a musician who never actually learned his tuning lately ; especially in topics correlated to balancing, monitoring, and even simply in projection of cost ; It's like I have been over-focused on complexity of algorithms without actually realizing that it's only one part of the problem - so I have a huge potential usage of mathematics and one can really easily leverage them thanks to AI - especially considering tests ; but that's where my road ends without a more sophisticated approach - and even then it's a very dark place to wonder by (eg: lot of time spent for seemingly unknown appliance) it does however start to feel even more attracting for these exact reasons - I feel like having problems to solve with just makes this a lot easier - but I'd love to be able to ground-up things even more - and especially be able to take shortcuts. I mean a lot of people just run a database but don't know wtf it does - but it still useful to them - maths however need to be understood to be really useful - Is there not a way to make this lot more navigable ? Are there bridge concepts that are important enough that we can spend some time to learn them ? (there are ofc) - and how deep shall we go ?
- auggierose 1y ago
  Here is a project in that direction: https://www.math.inc/gauss https://www.math.inc/gauss I think that yes, math will become much more accessible, and pure brain power will become much less important to use and understand math successfully. I don't like attitudes like that of hiAndrewQuinn. If you like math, just do it, there is no need for an IQ test.
nartho 1y ago
Two things : > The median IQ for mathematics PhD students probably hovers somewhere around 145 Does that mean the 145 figure is only a guess on your end ? Second, as far as I know, an individual's IQ is not something set in stone, and can absolutely be improved with training. I remember reading (that's an anecdote so correct me if I'm wrong) that rewarding a good score with money was able to improve the outcome by up to 20 points. It doesn't sound absurd to me that someone with a slightly above average IQ could get close to 140 after 6, 7 years of high level math training.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  >Does that mean the 145 figure is only a guess on your end ? EDIT: Mea maxima culpa, confusion crept in, my 145 number was supposed to be a much looser guess for actual working full time mathematicians. I miswrote this in the original post as applying to math PhD students, which are much lower. Closer to a 130 median. ORIGINAL: It's not quite a guess, but I don't have precise data on this exact thing either. Previous studies in this field have consistently found a range of between 140 and 150, and you can probably find those with some Googling if you want to corroborate it yourself. I have a long cached memory of seeing a study where theoretical physics PhD students had an average IQ of 150, which also loosely supports this, since theoretical physics is almost its own form of pure mathematics. >an individual's IQ is not something set in stone, and can absolutely be improved with training Most psychological research I've seen says no such thing, unfortunately. Believe me, I would love for that to be the case - one extra point of IQ correlates to roughly $1000 extra income per year in the US, and so if your 20 point claim were really true we could potentially cause a double digit spike in GDP over the next few months just by implementing it in smart ways. But my baseline belief is that study is almost certainly an outlier in a sea of similar studies which support the null hypothesis.
  - BeetleB 1y ago
    Did a Google search, and the only actual, definitive thing I found was this: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5008436/#tbl1 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5008436/#tbl1 Note that it's an IQ of 128 vs 125 for humanities. With the small sample size, it's basically noise. And given that this is Oxford, I would expect the average PhD student to have less than these numbers.
fine_tune 1y ago
I got rage baited by this so hard, cant comprehend thinking this way. Hung out with PhD's, economists, bankers, trust find kids, scientists, and artists - who maybe weren't top tier enough, but none thought this way. Literally the weirdest take on a forum filled with dreamers, but every take is valid.
- the__alchemist 1y ago
  It's not comfortable, but this seems to be what the priors point to. I suspect that pure mathematics is one of the most intelligence-dependent fields; one where hard work, practical solving problems and a large knowledge base is less of a substitute.
  - thr0waway001 1y ago
    > one where hard work, practical solving problems and a large knowledge base is less of a substitute. I have seen this first hand. I remember when I was in university doing my math major. This one older adult lady (she seemed 40yrs old, and very attractive too), she had decided for some reason or other she wanted to do a major in mathematics. Not for a job or anything but just to do it. Whereas the rest of us, let’s face it, we just wanted a good job in STEM. Bless this lady, she was so determined and hard working. She would show up to every lecture, first in, last out, and she would show up to every study session and give it her all. But unfortunately, she was not good at grasping the concepts nor solving the problems. It was shocking how little she grokked the introductory concepts for the amount of effort she put in. She worked harder than anyone in our group. I don’t think any of us had the heart to tell her that maybe a math major was not in the cards. I never saw her on campus in my 3rd year and on so imagine she dropped off. But I was rooting for her.
    - lordnacho 1y ago
      I think what happens is, IQ is a sort of speed. They teach the class assuming they can get most people through it at whatever pace they are used to teaching at. If you're quick, you can keep up with a below average effort, and vice versa. As you get higher and higher up in the stratosphere, the balance between "we need enough students" and "we need to go faster" ends up favouring the few super intelligent people, along with the people who can arrange their lives to put in the hours. That's not to say you can't learn something if you are slow. You just can't learn it at the pace they are teaching, and you might not have the wherewithal to learn it at your own pace. So to you it looks like this lady would never learn it, but I would guess if she had a personal tutor they would be able to pace it.
HSO 1y ago
> "shoot for the moon and you'll land among the stars" I´ve never been able to wrap my mind around this saying.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  Ha, yeah, it's a weird saying. I think it makes more sense if you imagine the sky as like a static painting you shoot yourself into with a cannon or something.
  - nxobject 1y ago
    That's not a bad outcome, especially if the world ends up being one large Truman show and you escape! ;)
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mikebenfield 1y ago
What's much more sensible than taking an IQ test is looking at your experience with math to date.
- erxam 1y ago
  Yes. Apart from the fact that IQ tests are racist bunk, there's no need to do some fancy self-discovery journey or anything to determine whether you're cut out for pure math or not: if you have to ask, then it's not for you.
tea-coffee 1y ago
Imagine if Richard Feynman used his IQ as a metric for deciding whether he should become a physicist. Physics would not be the same. I am certain that there are mathematicians below, near, and above an IQ of 145 that all have great research productivity. IQ tests do not approximate the creativity, effort, and collaboration required in a mathematician. Not to mention the dubious nature of the 145 claim. Of course, there are some people that will have a greater aptitude for mathematics than others. But you do not need to be a genius, and this is echoed by Terence Tao [0]. [0] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-t...
- Ivan92 1y ago
  Just to complement your post, Richard Feynman's quote on the topic: “I was an ordinary person who studied hard. There are no miracle people. It happens they get interested in this thing and they learn all this stuff, but they’re just people.” ― Richard Feynman
  - thr0waway001 1y ago
    I dunno man but I always believed Feynman was expressing a very “aw shucks” everyman type of sensibility to motivate his students but really he’s a genius who just never saw himself on par with the other genius demigod scientists of his time but still far removed from common people like me for example. Or he knew he was exceptional but he just liked to distinguish himself from the more square academic types by appealing to the regular people. Either way, I never bought his claim that he was not exceptional.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    I think Feynman was bullshitting you, sorry to say. This is just a manifestly crazy claim from a guy who scored literally #1 on the Putnam.
- impossiblefork 1y ago
  Also possible that Feynman had superb verbal-mathematical ability and bad visual-spatial ability and took a visual-spatial test. It's unusual but not incredibly so. I am the same way.
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deleted 1y ago
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nxobject 1y ago
Or, alternatively, you could just skip over "general intelligence" and get to your second measure that's directly validated against college outcomes – SAT score. (My understanding is that the "general" GRE – not the math subject test – is less of a predictor of completing a PhD, but I think we can come up with a hundred reasons why.) [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0206570&type=printable https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
!!!! IMPORTANT COMMENT !!!!, because the edit button is now gone: I misspoke, 145 should have been my loose estimate for the median of actual working mathematicians and taken with many more grains of salt. Mathematics PhD students cluster around a much more attainable average of 128-130. Per [1] this would map to a much easier SAT score of only around 1280. My general point still stands that you probably want to look at this and consider your potential career in math against this, but the skill curve is less punishing than I initially thought. [1]: https://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/satiq.aspx https://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/satiq.aspx
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lordnacho 1y ago
But why would you do an IQ test, when you could just do a math test? Surely a math test is a better indicator of math ability than a test that is merely correlated?
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  That approach would work too, but generally (not always) math tests require you to already know a fair bit of math to do them. IQ tests can and have been designed with don't even require the use of language, let alone any conceptual machinery that strong.
kaladin-jasnah 1y ago
Unfortunately, I have heard logic like this throughout my life, leading me to decide that because I struggled with (some subset of) math, I am not an intelligent person, which led to forcing myself to do pure math in college to prove my intelligence. This led to many significant and awful mental health issues. While this is a bit of a fallacious logical leap, it's not impossible that other people have went through this because of this sort of information being hammered into their head. I choose to believe succeeding at anything is mostly about persistence and interest, barring other immense structural factors. I have zero interest after doing difficult pure math classes, so I stopped. I now think I am good at what I do, but everyone's intelligence and interests are different. I think this sort of quantification of intelligence is really harmful to people. I don't want to exclude people from pursuing their interest because their SAT score wasn't high enough. I have met math PhD students with bad GPAs and poor math class grades in their undergrad. On a tangent, CS undergraduate programs are insanely competitive and filter in crazy ways, and most of my friends who were passionate about CS (especially systems CS and SWE) did ECE just to avoid the competition and dispassionate culture. Your GPA and SAT scores had to be insane to get into almost any undergrad school for CS.
StopDisinfo910 1y ago
In a shocking twist of fate, people who do abstract reasoning and patterns oriented exercises all day long score high on a test measuring abstract reasoning and patterns manipulation. /s You have your cause and effect reversed. You don’t need high IQ score to do maths, doing a ton of maths will naturally increase your IQ score. IQ is not general intelligence.

crinkly 1y ago

I did consider doing a mathematics postgrad qualification but my IQ is high enough to realise I liked actually getting paid decent money.

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
Yes, exactly! One reason it's valuable to look at these numbers is because it makes you take a step back and say "Wait - I'm in what percentile?" That naturally leads many people to ask whether making only $200,000 a year as a professor somewhere is really a price you're willing to pay, as opposed to making multiples of that as the smartest guy in the room in any number of private industries. Opportunity cost matters!
- crinkly 1y ago
  Bit more complicated here in the UK with salaries in academia. But in private sector I was earning 1.5x average mathematics professor salary before I even had a mathematics degree. And equity on top of that. Not the smartest guy in the room by far but the most useful.
- ndriscoll 1y ago
  If you're making multiples of $200k for being a smart guy, there's a decent chance you're doing something that a lot of people would be ethically uncomfortable with (HFT, ads/surveillance tech, etc.). Being happy with what you do in the world also matters, and $200k/yr is easily enough to support a family on a single income pretty much anywhere already.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

viccis 1y ago

My experience with pure math is that this is not necessary to get job as one, even at good institutions, but you will be terrorized by the arrogance of the ones you mention. Learning to deal with the "brilliant jerk" is a problem in many fields, but the ones I've met in pure math are some of the weirdest (and most vicious)

qsort 1y ago
At least from my point of view (in the industry, not academia) this is actually the opposite. Math graduates tend to be smart and humble and I respect them a lot. Sometimes it almost feels like math and physics are the last "real" degrees left.
- monkeyelite 1y ago
  Yes, and those are the ones who didn’t make it to researcher.
  - Ivan92 1y ago
    Who's to say that you can't go into industry and not be a researcher? You don't have to stay in academia to do research. Many companies and industries tend to publish papers and some even work with universities for research.
    - zamadatix 1y ago
      I don't think that's what GP was saying, but I could be wrong.
    - monkeyelite 1y ago
      No I’m saying the top tier mathematicians tend to work in academia because that’s where the most math is done (general trend with exceptions).
      - Ivan92 1y ago

512 1y ago

[deleted]

sombrero_john 1y ago
Your personal experience does not line up with the empirical evidence at all. Some people are (much) smarter than others. It sucks, but that's life.

no_input 1y ago

The interest in pure mathematics probably sets inquiring individuals in a higher intelligence bracket already. If somebody got through high school enjoying and succeeding at geometry and calculus, then they probably could stomach most undergraduate work in the same manner. It seems a bit like gatekeeping to make people question whether they are smart enough when they will figure out pretty quickly if they have the aptitude or will to do it just by being exposed.

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
>they will figure out pretty quickly if they have the aptitude or will to do it just by being exposed We disagree here, most people are not very good at figuring this out for themselves at all ime. It's always wise to compare yourself to known or semi-known metrics before you take the plunge into any given career, to make sure it really does seem like a good fit for you, or to make sure you can justify why you want to do it anyway even if the metrics paint an unflattering story.

oulipo2 1y ago

Not true at all, we need mathematicians and scientists from all backgrounds, and creativity comes in many shapes

6r17 1y ago

I was about to ask if there is any way we can bridge the mathematics the same way we did with programming ; I love going-on with an LLM to learn math and apply them directly to problems I'm facing ; and to be honest I often feel like a musician who never actually learned his tuning lately ; especially in topics correlated to balancing, monitoring, and even simply in projection of cost ; It's like I have been over-focused on complexity of algorithms without actually realizing that it's only one part of the problem - so I have a huge potential usage of mathematics and one can really easily leverage them thanks to AI - especially considering tests ; but that's where my road ends without a more sophisticated approach - and even then it's a very dark place to wonder by (eg: lot of time spent for seemingly unknown appliance) it does however start to feel even more attracting for these exact reasons - I feel like having problems to solve with just makes this a lot easier - but I'd love to be able to ground-up things even more - and especially be able to take shortcuts. I mean a lot of people just run a database but don't know wtf it does - but it still useful to them - maths however need to be understood to be really useful - Is there not a way to make this lot more navigable ? Are there bridge concepts that are important enough that we can spend some time to learn them ? (there are ofc) - and how deep shall we go ?

auggierose 1y ago
Here is a project in that direction: https://www.math.inc/gauss https://www.math.inc/gauss I think that yes, math will become much more accessible, and pure brain power will become much less important to use and understand math successfully. I don't like attitudes like that of hiAndrewQuinn. If you like math, just do it, there is no need for an IQ test.

nartho 1y ago

Two things : > The median IQ for mathematics PhD students probably hovers somewhere around 145 Does that mean the 145 figure is only a guess on your end ? Second, as far as I know, an individual's IQ is not something set in stone, and can absolutely be improved with training. I remember reading (that's an anecdote so correct me if I'm wrong) that rewarding a good score with money was able to improve the outcome by up to 20 points. It doesn't sound absurd to me that someone with a slightly above average IQ could get close to 140 after 6, 7 years of high level math training.

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
>Does that mean the 145 figure is only a guess on your end ? EDIT: Mea maxima culpa, confusion crept in, my 145 number was supposed to be a much looser guess for actual working full time mathematicians. I miswrote this in the original post as applying to math PhD students, which are much lower. Closer to a 130 median. ORIGINAL: It's not quite a guess, but I don't have precise data on this exact thing either. Previous studies in this field have consistently found a range of between 140 and 150, and you can probably find those with some Googling if you want to corroborate it yourself. I have a long cached memory of seeing a study where theoretical physics PhD students had an average IQ of 150, which also loosely supports this, since theoretical physics is almost its own form of pure mathematics. >an individual's IQ is not something set in stone, and can absolutely be improved with training Most psychological research I've seen says no such thing, unfortunately. Believe me, I would love for that to be the case - one extra point of IQ correlates to roughly $1000 extra income per year in the US, and so if your 20 point claim were really true we could potentially cause a double digit spike in GDP over the next few months just by implementing it in smart ways. But my baseline belief is that study is almost certainly an outlier in a sea of similar studies which support the null hypothesis.
- BeetleB 1y ago
  Did a Google search, and the only actual, definitive thing I found was this: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5008436/#tbl1 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5008436/#tbl1 Note that it's an IQ of 128 vs 125 for humanities. With the small sample size, it's basically noise. And given that this is Oxford, I would expect the average PhD student to have less than these numbers.

fine_tune 1y ago

I got rage baited by this so hard, cant comprehend thinking this way. Hung out with PhD's, economists, bankers, trust find kids, scientists, and artists - who maybe weren't top tier enough, but none thought this way. Literally the weirdest take on a forum filled with dreamers, but every take is valid.

the__alchemist 1y ago
It's not comfortable, but this seems to be what the priors point to. I suspect that pure mathematics is one of the most intelligence-dependent fields; one where hard work, practical solving problems and a large knowledge base is less of a substitute.
- thr0waway001 1y ago
  > one where hard work, practical solving problems and a large knowledge base is less of a substitute. I have seen this first hand. I remember when I was in university doing my math major. This one older adult lady (she seemed 40yrs old, and very attractive too), she had decided for some reason or other she wanted to do a major in mathematics. Not for a job or anything but just to do it. Whereas the rest of us, let’s face it, we just wanted a good job in STEM. Bless this lady, she was so determined and hard working. She would show up to every lecture, first in, last out, and she would show up to every study session and give it her all. But unfortunately, she was not good at grasping the concepts nor solving the problems. It was shocking how little she grokked the introductory concepts for the amount of effort she put in. She worked harder than anyone in our group. I don’t think any of us had the heart to tell her that maybe a math major was not in the cards. I never saw her on campus in my 3rd year and on so imagine she dropped off. But I was rooting for her.
  - lordnacho 1y ago
    I think what happens is, IQ is a sort of speed. They teach the class assuming they can get most people through it at whatever pace they are used to teaching at. If you're quick, you can keep up with a below average effort, and vice versa. As you get higher and higher up in the stratosphere, the balance between "we need enough students" and "we need to go faster" ends up favouring the few super intelligent people, along with the people who can arrange their lives to put in the hours. That's not to say you can't learn something if you are slow. You just can't learn it at the pace they are teaching, and you might not have the wherewithal to learn it at your own pace. So to you it looks like this lady would never learn it, but I would guess if she had a personal tutor they would be able to pace it.

HSO 1y ago

> "shoot for the moon and you'll land among the stars" I´ve never been able to wrap my mind around this saying.

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
Ha, yeah, it's a weird saying. I think it makes more sense if you imagine the sky as like a static painting you shoot yourself into with a cannon or something.
- nxobject 1y ago
  That's not a bad outcome, especially if the world ends up being one large Truman show and you escape! ;)

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

mikebenfield 1y ago

What's much more sensible than taking an IQ test is looking at your experience with math to date.

erxam 1y ago
Yes. Apart from the fact that IQ tests are racist bunk, there's no need to do some fancy self-discovery journey or anything to determine whether you're cut out for pure math or not: if you have to ask, then it's not for you.

tea-coffee 1y ago

Imagine if Richard Feynman used his IQ as a metric for deciding whether he should become a physicist. Physics would not be the same. I am certain that there are mathematicians below, near, and above an IQ of 145 that all have great research productivity. IQ tests do not approximate the creativity, effort, and collaboration required in a mathematician. Not to mention the dubious nature of the 145 claim. Of course, there are some people that will have a greater aptitude for mathematics than others. But you do not need to be a genius, and this is echoed by Terence Tao [0]. [0] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-t...

Ivan92 1y ago
Just to complement your post, Richard Feynman's quote on the topic: “I was an ordinary person who studied hard. There are no miracle people. It happens they get interested in this thing and they learn all this stuff, but they’re just people.” ― Richard Feynman
- thr0waway001 1y ago
  I dunno man but I always believed Feynman was expressing a very “aw shucks” everyman type of sensibility to motivate his students but really he’s a genius who just never saw himself on par with the other genius demigod scientists of his time but still far removed from common people like me for example. Or he knew he was exceptional but he just liked to distinguish himself from the more square academic types by appealing to the regular people. Either way, I never bought his claim that he was not exceptional.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  I think Feynman was bullshitting you, sorry to say. This is just a manifestly crazy claim from a guy who scored literally #1 on the Putnam.
impossiblefork 1y ago
Also possible that Feynman had superb verbal-mathematical ability and bad visual-spatial ability and took a visual-spatial test. It's unusual but not incredibly so. I am the same way.

deleted 1y ago

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deleted 1y ago

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nxobject 1y ago

Or, alternatively, you could just skip over "general intelligence" and get to your second measure that's directly validated against college outcomes – SAT score. (My understanding is that the "general" GRE – not the math subject test – is less of a predictor of completing a PhD, but I think we can come up with a hundred reasons why.) [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0206570&type=printable https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago

!!!! IMPORTANT COMMENT !!!!, because the edit button is now gone: I misspoke, 145 should have been my loose estimate for the median of actual working mathematicians and taken with many more grains of salt. Mathematics PhD students cluster around a much more attainable average of 128-130. Per [1] this would map to a much easier SAT score of only around 1280. My general point still stands that you probably want to look at this and consider your potential career in math against this, but the skill curve is less punishing than I initially thought. [1]: https://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/satiq.aspx https://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/satiq.aspx

deleted 1y ago

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lordnacho 1y ago

But why would you do an IQ test, when you could just do a math test? Surely a math test is a better indicator of math ability than a test that is merely correlated?

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
That approach would work too, but generally (not always) math tests require you to already know a fair bit of math to do them. IQ tests can and have been designed with don't even require the use of language, let alone any conceptual machinery that strong.

kaladin-jasnah 1y ago

Unfortunately, I have heard logic like this throughout my life, leading me to decide that because I struggled with (some subset of) math, I am not an intelligent person, which led to forcing myself to do pure math in college to prove my intelligence. This led to many significant and awful mental health issues. While this is a bit of a fallacious logical leap, it's not impossible that other people have went through this because of this sort of information being hammered into their head. I choose to believe succeeding at anything is mostly about persistence and interest, barring other immense structural factors. I have zero interest after doing difficult pure math classes, so I stopped. I now think I am good at what I do, but everyone's intelligence and interests are different. I think this sort of quantification of intelligence is really harmful to people. I don't want to exclude people from pursuing their interest because their SAT score wasn't high enough. I have met math PhD students with bad GPAs and poor math class grades in their undergrad. On a tangent, CS undergraduate programs are insanely competitive and filter in crazy ways, and most of my friends who were passionate about CS (especially systems CS and SWE) did ECE just to avoid the competition and dispassionate culture. Your GPA and SAT scores had to be insane to get into almost any undergrad school for CS.

StopDisinfo910 1y ago

In a shocking twist of fate, people who do abstract reasoning and patterns oriented exercises all day long score high on a test measuring abstract reasoning and patterns manipulation. /s You have your cause and effect reversed. You don’t need high IQ score to do maths, doing a ton of maths will naturally increase your IQ score. IQ is not general intelligence.