I did a B.A. Psych, and you are correct, IQ ratings are culturally biased.
The one administered by the military to screen WW-2 applicants was blatantly
biased.
Over the years they (meaning the people who want to sell IQ exams to school
boards and government agencies) tried to address this, but our university
psychology prof told us that they haven't been able to do it very well.
That was in the late eighties, maybe they managed to do it by now, but I
seriously doubt it.
The other problem is that IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient - it was
age-specific, and was intended originally to be used to assess children's
development. I.e. at a certain age, you are supposed to know certain
things, and they use this quotient when evaluating children. I don't know
if they still debate this, it struck me as problematic at best, even though
I like Piaget very much.
Another problem is that people have been comparing IQ test results, and
found that some races tend to score better than others. This has been used
to support some pretty twisted perspectives, and has helped foster
stereotypes. In the early nineties the tables turned a bit when the stats
showed that asians tended to score higher than caucasians, which was a good
thing in my opinion, it stirred the pot.
The whole problem is that IQ scores may indicate something in a general
sense, but they are not all that precise in my opinion. The other problem,
same as for most tests is... a high score indicates that you scored high on
that particular test, it says nothing about the test's validity.
Do tests accurately reflect reality? In most cases I think that is
debatable, as anyone who did an IT certification lately would attest.
To muddy the waters even more, to justify the validity of exams they usually
rely on correlations, which don't indicate cause and effect much. So a high
correlation can indicate a concurrence, but nobody really knows why. When a
test does not "fit" with expectations... they change the scoring formula to
make it fit other "established" exams!
At least the IQ test is not a self-report, like so many of those psychology
exams are. Self-reports are notoriously inaccurate, they are based on what
people believe about themselves, which you can appreciate if you spent half
an hour asking probing questions to people you know.
Re. people using things without understanding why they might be accurate, I
would point to the Myers-Briggs personality types exam that is so popular
now, do the HR people who use it understand the theory behind that one? It
has to do with alchemy, archetypes and a bag full of other "esoteric"
concepts from C.G. Jung. I like C.G. Jung, though he is diametrically
opposed to so much of the computing/statistics obsession that exists in
north american psychology today. As a student of Freud he was dismissed as
a quack by most north-american psychologists. I personally believe he was
closer to the truth than many.
These are my (pointed) opinions of course.
Regards,
Patrice Boivin
Systems Analyst (Oracle Certified DBA)
-----Original Message-----
From: Weaver, Walt [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
<mailto:[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 12:00 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Subject: RE: computer history stories - Now: Age
discrimination?
I thought IQ was related to the culture one grows up in, not
something
you're born with.
In other words, if you're white and raised in a middle/upper-class
environment your chance at doing well on an IQ test are orders of
magnitude
greater than for other people.
I, of course, did very well on an IQ test when I was a teenager.
Then I
discovered beer and, well, things have gone, um, a bit downhill
since then.
--Walt Weaver
Bozeman, Montana, USA
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 1:49 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Yes, people are "born" with IQ, not smarts.
I also believe you can alter your IQ slightly.
From what I understand (which may be wrong) is IQ is simply how many
gallon
tank you were blessed with.
It does not measure how much you filled this tank.
"Do not criticize someone until you walked a mile in their shoes,
that way
when you criticize them, you are a mile a way and have their shoes."
Christopher R. Spence OCP MCSE MCP A+ RAPTOR CNA
Oracle DBA
Phone: (978) 322-5744
Fax: (707) 885-2275
Fuelspot
73 Princeton Street
North, Chelmsford 01863
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