50% of americans are more intelligent than average american.
More intelligent than the median American.
Maybe not the mean American because the distribution is skewed as IQs can be higher than 200 but not negative.
Technically, yes.
In practice there are but a handful of people with an IQ at or above 200 (the rarity of that is less that 1 in 4 billion - source ).
Even if we do take in account that the bottom of the IQ in live humans is in fact a bit higher than zero, because the extremes are so incredibly rare, the deviation of the mean from the median is in practice minuscule.
1 in 4 billion
Your source was calculated using the NORMDIST function in Excel. Not from empirical data.
Here’s an actual list containing more than 2 people above 200
because the extremes are so incredibly rare, the deviation of the mean from the median is in practice minuscule
Opinion dressed up as fact. To give a counter example this study showed that there were substantial departures from normality in the distribution.
Yeah, the 1 in 4 billion seemed exaggerated on the low end when I read it. I went ahead with it anyway since, even if there are 1000 people with an IQ at or above 200, that by itself would not pull the curve upwards much (because it’s 1000 out of 8 billion people) and hence your original claim that the mean is not the same as the median “because the distribution is skewed as IQs can be higher than 200 but not negative” was bollocks.
My point stands untouched that the justification you originally gave backing your claim that the IQ mean not being the same as the median was mathematically unsupported or, as you so colourfully put it: “opinion dressed as fact”.
As for this paper you linked, it curiously doesn’t back your claim either. From the abstract, we get that whilst the mean is 100 and the mode is indeed 105, the statistical distribution of IQs is NOT a Normal Distribution but rather the sum of TWO Normal Distributions. This means that you can’t in fact make claims about the median from the mode (as you would be able to for a normal distribution, were mean = median = mode) because a sum of two normal distributions has TWO peaks so you can perfectly have one at 105 and another one below that which can yield a median which is equal to or even below the mean.
Again from the abstract those two distributions are “one reflecting normal variation in general intelligence and one refecting normal variation in effects of genetic and environmental conditions involving mental retardation”, which seems to imply that the second has a peak at an IQ value below the first.
That said, I don’t even disagree that your claim that the median is above the mean might be right. What I have yet to see from you so far is something other than “opinion dressed as fact” or quoting of papers which don’t mathematically back your point.
In before “MeDiAn iS A TyPe oF AveRAgE, huRRR”.
The rational person in me knows that IQ as a metric of intelligence has long since been proven to be bullshit pseudoscience.
But the anti-american in me is just going to turn that part of my brain off and chuckle for a few moments…
As an American, this article fits with my experience… but I honestly thought the gap would be larger.
now you’re a true American! one of us! one of us!
I’m not surprised. Immigrating to Canada for seven years and then visiting home was very eye opening.
I don’t think there are many non-Americans in this thread who are surprised by this.
I’ve lived in the States. I’m not surprised either.
Yeah really. Step 2.54 cm beyond any metropolitan area and the US is deeply lacking in positive quality of life.
We probably need to put some national safeguards in place that keep the states from fucking their own educational systems over.
There should be a national minimum for educational standards that the states are not allowed to bypass.
you must be American, because there is a federal dept of education. Betsy Devos ring a bell?
problem with having a federal department of anything is conservative agendas tend to “poison the well”.
one way to combat this is department heads should be elected not appointed, and they should have term limits imposed.
It’s nearly impossible to do anything good when you have a major conservative party set on doing bad.
You could have a position of “We should provide food to all children so they can learn without being distracted by hunger” and people would be like “that’s communism i’d rather those kids starve”
Which is something that happened recently.
but not in Minnesota! those fuckers got outclassed by Walz.
I’m proud my state started giving out free breakfasts and lunches to all schoolchildren, regardless of income, year round, a full year before Walz did.
Nicolas Cage, “You don’t say?”
Healthline is a shit tier source to be fair. Even wikipedia says it is a terrible source. They put it in the same category as the daily mail.
Looks like links to it are completely blacklisted, too. That’s rare to see.
Healthline is a medical resource that is substantially written by non-expert freelance writers and reviewed by non-expert advisors. The content is frequently incorrect misinformation, sometimes dangerously so. Due to the heightened requirements for biomedical and medical sources on Wikipedia, the consensus of editors … was to deprecate Healthline as an unusable source … and to blacklist Healthline as a hazard to readers. References to Healthline should be removed from Wikipedia.
Brutal. If Wikipedia don’t fuck with you just delete yourself off the internet.
Time to cut the American south loose.
These national tests are yeesh material tho. Subtle, or not so subtle, at least tangential to, eugenicist or nationalistic ideals.
Can’t your read? It says American not English.
No me not
I can’t believe I’m saying this to defend the people who most often used it to justify their racism but the IQ test is not an objective measure of intelligence and was designed by eugenicists.
Only when you’re behind. Lol.
Also, the difference between the countries with the highest average IQ and the US was 10 points, which is the same kind of increase you can get in IQ testing scores if you tell the tester that they’ll get $10 if they do well.
Or if they played Tetris regularly. (Although that might be correlational only).
Part of the test is pattern recognition. Playing Tetris trains that.
Totally. The history of intelligence has sadly also been the story of eugenics. Fortunately, there have been process-based theories and contextual theories that have defined intelligence in more humane and useful ways. In this view, IQ tests do not measure an underlying characteristic, but a set of mental skills. Seen this way, intelligence becomes something people can gain with nurturance. If you’re interested, check out Relational Frame Theory.
I’ve said this so many times. There’s not even only one kind of intelligence. I once made a music video for what would be the best country fiddle player you ever heard. He literally couldn’t write his own name when he signed the contract.
We can’t even come up with a test that transcends all cultural biases. If we could come up with an objective test, the smartest person in the world could turn out to be an indigenous Brazilian living a stone-age life in the middle of the Amazon.
And if the smartest person in the world was from Slovenia, they probably wouldn’t be able to do anywhere near as well in the Amazon as some of the stupidest members of communities who live there.
I don’t think it was destined by eugenicists. I think it was used by eugenicists and the original creator warned against it being used that way. Basically like Darwinism.
Well, the way things seem to be going, it doesn’t surprise me too much.
According to the chart, here are a few other countries where the average is “dumber than the average human”:
Australia
Belgium
Belize
Brazil
Canada
Chile
Czech Republic
Denmark
France
Finland
Germany
India
Israel
Italy
Mexico
I suppose dunking on those stupid Belgians isn’t as eye catching of a headline as good, old fashioned America Bad bait.
Israel dumb woo!
Obviously. They think stealing from and murdering your neighbors brings peace. They dumb as hell.
I should be another one of those “dumber than the average human” folks (and yesterday Lemmy told me so because they are saying two different apps on my phone are the same app…?) but am pretty sure the thing with Israel went off the Hanlon’s razor long ago.
I have been to Czechia few times, the people there are definitely not dumb, lol.
You chose the worst example in the list, because Belgians are famously the butt of “haha they’re dumb” jokes, getting it from both their French and Dutch neighbours (maybe Germans too?).
I’d pick the Danes since they’re typically seen as a more evolved people.
For France, it just makes sense tbh.
Also the whole galaxy.
https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Belgium
“You stupid Ghent” - Ford Prefect
As an Estonian, I am glad to see Finland on the list.
I’m impressed you can do so well on the test while being estoned 24/7.
I wish weed was legal here. That would be amazing, but no we deal with horrific prices, horrific taxes and pretty bad pay. Atleast the country itself is beautiful (mostly).
Miserable fat Belgian bastards!
Do you think many Beliz…ians loudly proclaim themselves the greatest nation on earth, and act like it too? Has Chile squandered a good deal of the world’s productive output to produce a literally civilisation ending military capability and put it in the hands of morons?
A blind person on the bus is only a problem if they’re driving.
And 50% of them are stupider than that
