Better is to predict many external outcomes and average across them to find the best set of estimates. This is best on the assumption that maximizing reliability and construct validity will maximizing predictive validity. I suggest you download the SPI and use the indicators as your outcomes. Average across them (remember to use absolute values, or reverse by the S factor loading), and see which set does the best. https://www.socialprogress.org/
Or instead of averaging, make a model that predicts outcomes from some cases where you are really quite sure of the correct answer. Ideally Lasso regression IMO.
There's also the issue of selective migration. Personally, I doubt the genotypic IQ of natives in those countries is much lower than those of NW Europeans.
In fact according to this Kenya scores higher than India a non African country. I am curious on why you think that is and why india has lower iq than other Asian countries
What did you norm the IQ to, that is what did you set IQ=100 as? Usually it is set at the average IQ of the UK, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
National IQ is not that meaningful for big countries like US, China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, etc. The variation of IQ within a country can be as large as that of an European country and an African country. Take Brazil. The southern Brazilian states have large White European populations while the north of the country is full of mixed/Africans. Their IQ difference is 1 SD just like between Europe and Africa. Han Chinese mean IQ is 101. But if you compare Hans and Tibetans/Uyghurs, there's also a 1 SD difference.
I see North Korea number isn't to deviatted from other estimates which It really proves the case of hereditarianism I mean literally there are way richer and with better quality of life countries with less IQ
Seb, have you had a look at these PISA numbers from Iran?
This looks suspiciously high, but Iran is the birthplace of the world empire, and they've both become more literate and better performers on the Math Olympiad. They're eighth in total gold medsls these last ten games.
The numbers from Subsaharan African countries seem downright preposterous. No way does any country in Africa have an average I.Q. in the 90s. Let alone a dozen of them.
And my mistake! It's IIT with the funny number. PISA is much more believable, but is missing many countries. I do wonder if all the same Iran might have a legit score somewhere in the mid-90s rather than mid-80s all the same, but no way could it be in the mid-100s.
so counting singapore, macau and hong kong as greater china for being ethnically much the same, and excluding Liechtenstein as a microstate, the country with the 10th highest iq in the world is...Ireland.
From what I see PISA scores are converted to IQ scores for various countries. This can lead to very inaccurate results. PISA is primarily an achievement test, not a test of innate ability like IQ. PISA can be taken to be a close proxy for IQ if all other factors are controlled for. The key here being ALL OTHER FACTORS BEING EQUAL. But that's definitely not the case here.
When you have poor teaching standards, infrastructure and curriculum, as is often then the case in many developing countries it can result in scores below their true national IQ. Mind you, I'm not talking about the Flynn effect. Even a good student can underperform when the teaching and curriculum are of an inferior standard. That's were IQ tests score above these sorts of achievement exams as they measure the innate potential/aptitude rather than knowledge or test preparation. I think Lynn's work based on a meta-analysis of various national IQ studies is still the more rigorous and valid estimate of our required measure. PISA scores just don't cut it.
1. North/South Korea - basically all nutrition impact
2. Africa, Persia - poor education systems + nutrition
3. Surprised you didn't include Antarctica.
4. Israel scoring low indicates another hidden elephant in almost all of these colours - distribution. Some countries have elites that would score extremely high (Iran, Israel, Turkey, USA, South Africa) but due to the political system there are sizeable minority population with no nutrition and no education.
5. I'm still doubtful of Chinese data, but their nutrition is very good due to extreme overfishing of the whole Pacific (and other Oceans...)
6. I would argue with equal nutrition and education Sub-saharan Africa will have the highest IQ outliers in the world.
In conclusion, it's disappointing i haven't seen a good data on IQ, still. You can easily find huge databases from online IQ tests. Mensa has a short one, very robust, globally taken. These tests often have additional questions so data scientist could triangulate proper setting for each country to get an actually reliable result to correct for nurture. Hope i'm wrong and there is such statistics available.
Also i forgat to add one thing - human growth hormones - are what causes almost all of the genetic and most non-genetic, non-education related variation in intelligence among fellow humans. Very simple.
Over the past 80 years there has been a massive selection against political dissidents in North Korea. This may have influenced IQ, unsure to what extent though.
Better is to predict many external outcomes and average across them to find the best set of estimates. This is best on the assumption that maximizing reliability and construct validity will maximizing predictive validity. I suggest you download the SPI and use the indicators as your outcomes. Average across them (remember to use absolute values, or reverse by the S factor loading), and see which set does the best. https://www.socialprogress.org/
Or instead of averaging, make a model that predicts outcomes from some cases where you are really quite sure of the correct answer. Ideally Lasso regression IMO.
National IQ have been my main obsession for the last few days. Spending countless of hours. Figuring out the correct numbers etc.
Thank you for this beautiful post seb. This feels like Christmas
About SE Europe results:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Romani_population_average_estimate.png#mw-jump-to-license
There's also the issue of selective migration. Personally, I doubt the genotypic IQ of natives in those countries is much lower than those of NW Europeans.
Good point. And good source.
Why Israel IQ is inferior to many white gentile countries?
African/Arab immigration.
why do you think for example Morroco has a lower iq than subsaharan African countries like kenya?
Not sure if this is the updated dataset, but I suspect that the cause is African admixture.
Yeah but isn't kenya pure african ancestry, yet Kenyans score higher than morrocans on iq tests
seems no answer sadly
In fact according to this Kenya scores higher than India a non African country. I am curious on why you think that is and why india has lower iq than other Asian countries
It seems plausible as they have a high proportion of them as I have checked
Israel is only 35% Ashkenazi at most. Rest are Mizrahi 40% (IQ 95), Arabs 20% (IQ 85), Others (Ethiopians etc.) 5%.
Crem here https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/updated-estimates-of-iqs-within-israel said Israel has a g of ~97 (~110 Ashkenazi, ~100 non-Ashkenazi Jews and Russians, ~85 Arabs). PISA scores are lower I think mostly due to effort, when you extract the g-factor the score jumps quite a bit. Look here and command f Israel: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/cf9910a0-en.pdf?expires=1723936109&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=3F5B444018B0E83CDC886D6DC1AFC76A
What did you norm the IQ to, that is what did you set IQ=100 as? Usually it is set at the average IQ of the UK, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
UK Whites, if not I artificially set the UK's IQ to 99.2 (which seems to be the average when samples are normed to the mean of UK Whites).
National IQ is not that meaningful for big countries like US, China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, etc. The variation of IQ within a country can be as large as that of an European country and an African country. Take Brazil. The southern Brazilian states have large White European populations while the north of the country is full of mixed/Africans. Their IQ difference is 1 SD just like between Europe and Africa. Han Chinese mean IQ is 101. But if you compare Hans and Tibetans/Uyghurs, there's also a 1 SD difference.
Why is Kosovo such a big outlier?
No idea. Probably selective migration + differential fertility.
Probably also partly because of SE Europe Gypsy-factor as mentioned by Stefan above.
There are actually very few gypsies
dysgenic migration, and in the case of Kosovo and Albania it continues for several centuries
I see North Korea number isn't to deviatted from other estimates which It really proves the case of hereditarianism I mean literally there are way richer and with better quality of life countries with less IQ
I imputed that one.
Buuuut they do suprisingly well in science competitions. Right tail is strong, I guess.
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2019/07/22/North-Korea-finishes-fourth-at-International-Mathematical-Olympiad/2051563808996/
Indeed, Qatar and North Korea are good examples of a rich country with low IQ and a poor country with high IQ to prove the hereditarian position.
What are you even comparing with 'richness' when comparing a capitalist country to a true communist country?
"Richness" isn't just denominated in US dollars, it is standard of living.
Seb, have you had a look at these PISA numbers from Iran?
This looks suspiciously high, but Iran is the birthplace of the world empire, and they've both become more literate and better performers on the Math Olympiad. They're eighth in total gold medsls these last ten games.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country
Those numbers are from an online IQ testing website, so it's not surprising that they are noisy.
The numbers from Subsaharan African countries seem downright preposterous. No way does any country in Africa have an average I.Q. in the 90s. Let alone a dozen of them.
And my mistake! It's IIT with the funny number. PISA is much more believable, but is missing many countries. I do wonder if all the same Iran might have a legit score somewhere in the mid-90s rather than mid-80s all the same, but no way could it be in the mid-100s.
"World IQ: 85.6 weighed by population". Do you not mean "weighted"?
What is insane is if you exclude minorities from the USA and watch it jump into the top 3
so counting singapore, macau and hong kong as greater china for being ethnically much the same, and excluding Liechtenstein as a microstate, the country with the 10th highest iq in the world is...Ireland.
A diet with lots of smoked salmon, and the fresh Atlantic air must be good for the Brain!
Did you adjust for median age when you calculate National IQs? Aging causes cognitive decline. https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1749926101990670572
are you going to make your own global iq scores that you think are best?
From what I see PISA scores are converted to IQ scores for various countries. This can lead to very inaccurate results. PISA is primarily an achievement test, not a test of innate ability like IQ. PISA can be taken to be a close proxy for IQ if all other factors are controlled for. The key here being ALL OTHER FACTORS BEING EQUAL. But that's definitely not the case here.
When you have poor teaching standards, infrastructure and curriculum, as is often then the case in many developing countries it can result in scores below their true national IQ. Mind you, I'm not talking about the Flynn effect. Even a good student can underperform when the teaching and curriculum are of an inferior standard. That's were IQ tests score above these sorts of achievement exams as they measure the innate potential/aptitude rather than knowledge or test preparation. I think Lynn's work based on a meta-analysis of various national IQ studies is still the more rigorous and valid estimate of our required measure. PISA scores just don't cut it.
Some developed countries like Israel and Iceland and Uruguay perform below their genetic potential on PISA too.
See here: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/cf9910a0-en.pdf?expires=1723936109&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=3F5B444018B0E83CDC886D6DC1AFC76A and here https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/updated-estimates-of-iqs-within-israel
Interesting, almost zero genetics involved!
1. North/South Korea - basically all nutrition impact
2. Africa, Persia - poor education systems + nutrition
3. Surprised you didn't include Antarctica.
4. Israel scoring low indicates another hidden elephant in almost all of these colours - distribution. Some countries have elites that would score extremely high (Iran, Israel, Turkey, USA, South Africa) but due to the political system there are sizeable minority population with no nutrition and no education.
5. I'm still doubtful of Chinese data, but their nutrition is very good due to extreme overfishing of the whole Pacific (and other Oceans...)
6. I would argue with equal nutrition and education Sub-saharan Africa will have the highest IQ outliers in the world.
In conclusion, it's disappointing i haven't seen a good data on IQ, still. You can easily find huge databases from online IQ tests. Mensa has a short one, very robust, globally taken. These tests often have additional questions so data scientist could triangulate proper setting for each country to get an actually reliable result to correct for nurture. Hope i'm wrong and there is such statistics available.
Israel's low score is largely due to low effort: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/cf9910a0-en.pdf?expires=1723936109&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=3F5B444018B0E83CDC886D6DC1AFC76A
Cremieux factored out the g and the scores went up a lot: https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/updated-estimates-of-iqs-within-israel
I feel like you are over-estimating the affect of nutrition. In U.S., Blacks had less IQ than other races even when controlled for income.
Can you share a study where IQs were compared when controlling for income, nutrition, neighbourhood and education level?
Also i forgat to add one thing - human growth hormones - are what causes almost all of the genetic and most non-genetic, non-education related variation in intelligence among fellow humans. Very simple.
Over the past 80 years there has been a massive selection against political dissidents in North Korea. This may have influenced IQ, unsure to what extent though.