Voltaire at the same level as Newton, and JFK being way higher than Nixon, just comes off to me as unforgivable bias. JFK was a mediocre student while Nixon was a striver with a very good academic record. Voltaire is remembered mostly for empty platitudes today and is placed above much more influential philosophers with much broader areas of influence. And where the hell are Euler and Gauss?!
Newton's estimated ratio IQ of 190 (164 deviation IQ) makes sense because, as Seb has pointed out before, the correlation between eminence and IQ is around 0.6, so we'd expect Isaac Newton, who is quite possibly the most eminent man to ever live (6.67 SD roughly), to be around 4 SD in cognitive ability.I don't know enough about Voltaire to comment on his IQ.
Kennedy being smarter than Johnson is laughable. There should be an "ugliness" modifier for presidents, where handsome presidents are assumed to have an unfair electoral advantage.
I agree with most of your analysis. But I'm skeptical (though you can convince me) that IQ tests are that special compared with SATs etc. Seems to me they're all cognitive tests, with SATs being more culturally saturated (as Jensen would say). Scoring >150 on an IQ test would likely depend on some luck (i.e., error). True score + error > 150 not as difficult as True score > 150. Someone who aced SAT, ACT, GRE, etc., high enough–wouldn't that be more impressive than a one-time 150+ on one IQ test?
It would depend on the test -- many IQ tests for example have lower reliabilities at the upper ranges because they do not have enough highly difficult questions. Edited the text to clarify that a high ceiling is also necessary for a test to discriminate at higher ranges.
>Someone who aced SAT, ACT, GRE, etc., high enough–wouldn't that be more impressive than a one-time 150+ on one IQ test?
Probably, especially if it was the older SAT/GRE that had a higher ceiling.
"Wax enrolled in Yale University, graduating with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, summa cum laude, in 1975. She received a Marshall Scholarship to attend Somerville College, Oxford. She graduated from Oxford in 1976 with a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) in philosophy, physiology, and psychology.[5][10][11]
Upon returning to the United States, Wax dual enrolled in Harvard Medical School and Harvard Law School. While studying as a medical student, she was a resident tutor in both medicine and philosophy at Eliot House within Harvard College. She graduated from Harvard Medical School with a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.), cum laude, with distinction in neuroscience in 1981. Concurrently, Wax was a first year student at Harvard Law from 1980 to 1981.[5][10][11]
Wax practiced medicine from 1982 to 1987, doing a residency in neurology at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and working as a consulting neurologist at a clinic in The Bronx and for a medical group in Brooklyn.[5][8] She completed her legal education at Columbia Law School, where she became an editor of the Columbia Law Review and was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. She worked part-time to pay for her law school education, obtaining her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1987.[10][8] During her time as a law student at Columbia, Wax received two awards: the Emil Schlesinger Labor Law Prize and the Milton V. Conford Prize in Jurisprudence.[5][11] "
"Secondly, since IQ based on mental age is the simplest to estimate— and often yields more impressive figures— it remains the preferred method for attributing estimated IQs to historical figures. For instance, when it's claimed that William James Sidis (1898-1944) had an IQ of 300, this means that at age 4, he exhibited cognitive abilities equivalent to an average 12-year-old, not that his IQ was +13.30 on a standard deviation scale.
Finally, when someone claims to have an IQ of 180, it's worth considering that they might be referencing a mental age-based IQ. Alternatively, they could be masking the fact that their IQ was calculated using a standard deviation of 24, which would actually correspond to a standard IQ of 150."
To measure higher IQs have you looked at the Oxbridge admissions tests? Not that Oxford is going to have extremely high scores compared to elsewhere but the tests have a much higher ceiling (aligned with the general trend of UK testing compared to US). So to get into Havard, you need basically a perfect SAT)
To get into Oxford, you need a '70' normed score, which often corresponds to many wrong answers. The test is taken by an elite (I would guess ~105IQ, to begin with) and the questions seem very analogous to questions you would take on an IQ test.
So, I don't know the maths but I do know that roughly 10% of this group scores 70 or above, and a mean of around 58.7, so we can produce a rough formula of IQ=1.7X + 5.1
To get into Oxford, you need an IQ of 124--roughly what we expect of elite universities as you've calculated.
If this test correlates well with IQ (and the questions are very reminiscent of IQ tests) then it would consistently be measuring IQs from the 100--169 range
The papers are open-source question-wise and I have to imagine some of the questions are very g-loaded. If you wanted to, you could give out these tests to samples of people and create a really robust high-IQ test from the g-loaded questions.
Yes, that has been done extensively (SMPY studies). However, the exact scaling is not well known, and you have regression towards the mean with aging issues when testing children.
Voltaire at the same level as Newton, and JFK being way higher than Nixon, just comes off to me as unforgivable bias. JFK was a mediocre student while Nixon was a striver with a very good academic record. Voltaire is remembered mostly for empty platitudes today and is placed above much more influential philosophers with much broader areas of influence. And where the hell are Euler and Gauss?!
Newton's estimated ratio IQ of 190 (164 deviation IQ) makes sense because, as Seb has pointed out before, the correlation between eminence and IQ is around 0.6, so we'd expect Isaac Newton, who is quite possibly the most eminent man to ever live (6.67 SD roughly), to be around 4 SD in cognitive ability.I don't know enough about Voltaire to comment on his IQ.
Kennedy being smarter than Johnson is laughable. There should be an "ugliness" modifier for presidents, where handsome presidents are assumed to have an unfair electoral advantage.
I agree with most of your analysis. But I'm skeptical (though you can convince me) that IQ tests are that special compared with SATs etc. Seems to me they're all cognitive tests, with SATs being more culturally saturated (as Jensen would say). Scoring >150 on an IQ test would likely depend on some luck (i.e., error). True score + error > 150 not as difficult as True score > 150. Someone who aced SAT, ACT, GRE, etc., high enough–wouldn't that be more impressive than a one-time 150+ on one IQ test?
It would depend on the test -- many IQ tests for example have lower reliabilities at the upper ranges because they do not have enough highly difficult questions. Edited the text to clarify that a high ceiling is also necessary for a test to discriminate at higher ranges.
>Someone who aced SAT, ACT, GRE, etc., high enough–wouldn't that be more impressive than a one-time 150+ on one IQ test?
Probably, especially if it was the older SAT/GRE that had a higher ceiling.
"the most educated person on paper..."
Amy Wax might be a contender:
"Wax enrolled in Yale University, graduating with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, summa cum laude, in 1975. She received a Marshall Scholarship to attend Somerville College, Oxford. She graduated from Oxford in 1976 with a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) in philosophy, physiology, and psychology.[5][10][11]
Upon returning to the United States, Wax dual enrolled in Harvard Medical School and Harvard Law School. While studying as a medical student, she was a resident tutor in both medicine and philosophy at Eliot House within Harvard College. She graduated from Harvard Medical School with a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.), cum laude, with distinction in neuroscience in 1981. Concurrently, Wax was a first year student at Harvard Law from 1980 to 1981.[5][10][11]
Wax practiced medicine from 1982 to 1987, doing a residency in neurology at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and working as a consulting neurologist at a clinic in The Bronx and for a medical group in Brooklyn.[5][8] She completed her legal education at Columbia Law School, where she became an editor of the Columbia Law Review and was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. She worked part-time to pay for her law school education, obtaining her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1987.[10][8] During her time as a law student at Columbia, Wax received two awards: the Emil Schlesinger Labor Law Prize and the Milton V. Conford Prize in Jurisprudence.[5][11] "
There's a carefully nurtured confusion: IQs > 150 are generally mental age IQs calculated during childhood, they give much higher IQs.
Excerpt from page 43 of "IQ: From Causes to Consequences - From Genetics to Cognitive Capitalism" (https://www.amazon.com/dp/295939853X/ ):
"Secondly, since IQ based on mental age is the simplest to estimate— and often yields more impressive figures— it remains the preferred method for attributing estimated IQs to historical figures. For instance, when it's claimed that William James Sidis (1898-1944) had an IQ of 300, this means that at age 4, he exhibited cognitive abilities equivalent to an average 12-year-old, not that his IQ was +13.30 on a standard deviation scale.
Finally, when someone claims to have an IQ of 180, it's worth considering that they might be referencing a mental age-based IQ. Alternatively, they could be masking the fact that their IQ was calculated using a standard deviation of 24, which would actually correspond to a standard IQ of 150."
To measure higher IQs have you looked at the Oxbridge admissions tests? Not that Oxford is going to have extremely high scores compared to elsewhere but the tests have a much higher ceiling (aligned with the general trend of UK testing compared to US). So to get into Havard, you need basically a perfect SAT)
https://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/media_wysiwyg/explanation-of-tsa-oxford-results2023.pdf
To get into Oxford, you need a '70' normed score, which often corresponds to many wrong answers. The test is taken by an elite (I would guess ~105IQ, to begin with) and the questions seem very analogous to questions you would take on an IQ test.
So, I don't know the maths but I do know that roughly 10% of this group scores 70 or above, and a mean of around 58.7, so we can produce a rough formula of IQ=1.7X + 5.1
To get into Oxford, you need an IQ of 124--roughly what we expect of elite universities as you've calculated.
If this test correlates well with IQ (and the questions are very reminiscent of IQ tests) then it would consistently be measuring IQs from the 100--169 range
The papers are open-source question-wise and I have to imagine some of the questions are very g-loaded. If you wanted to, you could give out these tests to samples of people and create a really robust high-IQ test from the g-loaded questions.
Cox is a woman by the way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharine_Cox_Miles
"Guy" is a gender neutral term.
Nice chemistry between the both of you. Good work.
Could the ceiling of IQ tests be circumvented by looking at the test scores of gifted kids from programs like Duke TIP and scale them up for adult IQ?
Yes, that has been done extensively (SMPY studies). However, the exact scaling is not well known, and you have regression towards the mean with aging issues when testing children.
What is the approximate iq of top mathematicians like terrence tao or gregory perelman?
Terence Tao is part of the SMPY cohort, which is 150+ at testing. https://gwern.net/doc/iq/high/smpy/2006-muratori.pdf
Terrence is likely in the 170s