One of the best parts of being famous is when other celebrities drop by, and yesterday famous blogger Robert Lindsay made a surprise appearance on this blog. Commenter Lion of the Judah-sphere wrote:
Robert Lindsay is interesting, and has a wide breadth of knowledge like many high verbal IQ people (think of Malcolm Gladwell). However, mathematics ability is one of the best indicators of general intelligence, and it’s quite a rare person who can barely even pass Algebra but still claims to possess an full scale IQ > [140]. In other words, I need more evidence.
The best measure of raw fluid mathematical talent is probably the Figure Weights subtest on the WAIS-IV which has a g loading of 0.78. However raw talent only seems to explain 66% to 70% of the variance in various cognitive performance, suggesting talent only correlates 0.82 with performance. If we assume that the correlation between g and math performance is caused simply by their shared correlation with math talent, then the correlation between g and math performance is simply the product of these two correlations: 0.78*0.82=0.64. Commenter misdreavus strongly objects to this type of reasoning, but it was endorsed by none other than the great Arthur Jensen.
A 0.64 correlation means that that someone with an IQ of 140 on a hypothetically perfect measure of g (2.66 SD above the mean) would on average be 2.66 SD(0.64)=1.7 SD above the mean in mathematical competence. The standard error of the estimate would be 0.77 SD so you could say with 95% confidence that a 140 IQ would have math skills between +0.16 SD (55 percentile of the general population) and +3.24 SD (99.95 percentile). Robert Lindsay estimates his math skills to be around the 70 percentile, putting him within this statistically expected range.
[UPDATE, JUNE 2, 2015: The end of this post has been edited based on feedback in the comment section]
Everyone in my family with IQ’s 140-150 have above average math skills. I think I tested 70th percentile on math on junior college entry. So that top 30% of the population. All of my family are right around there. Most high IQ people, even those of us who lean verbal, have above average math skills. It is just that we are not real great at math, we can’t do higher math and we hate math. But to say we suck at math is not true.
When I said “suck at math”, I meant relative to your IQ. You yourself said on your blog: “All of my family except my Dad have or had genius IQ’s, and we are all awful at math”
https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/can-geniuses-suck-at-math-of-course-they-can/
I realize you didn’t mean it literally.
Hi can you please redo your math and instead of setting math skills at 80, set them at say .7 or top 30%?
Also I must tell you that I have known a number of women with IQ’s of 140+.
140
143 (2)
156
That’s four women with IQ’s over 140, and I never heard that any of them were any good at math. They never talked about math anyway. I know the 140 IQ one was not good at math.
Actually I was involved with all these women LOL.
Anyway, I think with genius females (IQ = 140+) I believe you are going to find quite a few who are not very good at math. In fact, it would strike me as almost normal.
OK, I edited the end of the post.
Also I must tell you that I have known a number of women with IQ’s of 140+.
140
143 (2)
156
That’s four women with IQ’s over 140, and I never heard that any of them were any good at math. They never talked about math anyway. I know the 140 IQ one was not good at math.
Unless you authenticated these numbers in some way, I would be very suspicious of them since self-reported IQs are notoriously inaccurate particularly when people give no specifics about where they got their score.
But I do agree that super high IQ women would be less likely to be good at math since women in general are worse at math and the math skills of high IQ women would regress to the the female math mean.
Pamp ”study” numbers and not real people. The problem about him is that he’s sooooooo self confident to perceive own mistakes.
He’s a above average mathematician and complete absent theoretical thinker, i.e, verbal real ( and not recreational) creative, The problem solver. Pamp is not a problem solver because he is a problem. Someone need solve him.
He don’t know substantially anything he ”study”.
When he see the study about average iq ceo’s, he can’t accept ”little” average iq of their heroes. Circular thinking. He need deformate reality to fit with your absolute ”truth”.
A lot of people are bad in math and in visual and good in verbal.
The purification of verbal iq:
Verbal + math,
verbal only,
Verbal + specific verbal domain ( metaphor and analogy ability or linguistic ability),
abstract verbal thinking ability only + capacity to organize thinking quickly, strongly correlate with verbal creativity TO be used in everyday communication.
I just found out that Richard Borcherds ,a British Feilds medalist mathematician, had the WAIS IQ test administered on him by a Cambridge Autism specialist called Simon Baron-Cohen.
The fields medal is the nobel prize of math but its superior to the nobel prize because to win a nobel prize you need funding but to win a fields medal you just need paper and a pen .
His result was VIQ (124) PIQ (147) giving FSIQ (137)
results at top of page 15 he is DB.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KcZTZGoxqvkJ:www.tamaqua.k12.pa.us/cms/lib07/PA01000119/Centricity/Domain/401/The%2520Extreme%2520Male%2520Brain%2520Theory.PDF
His result adds more weight the view that the genius level IQ is 145, as he has a 147 performance IQ (PIQ) and is a world class mathematician.
It also shows that you cant judge someones math potential by their FSIQ.
math ability = PIQ
.
The Visual Puzzles, Figure Weights, and Cancellation subtests might then be expected to be good measures of bilateral dorsal stream, right dorsal stream, and left dorsal/ventral stream integrity, respectively.
I scored 130 in Figure weights but 80 in cancellation.
I now know where in the brain those two things are.
It’s good to know because I think I have brain damage.
130 – 80 = 50 points difference.
I like math but I make so many mistakes that I did not get that far.
Visual Puzzles 115 bilateral dorsal stream
Figure Weights 130 right dorsal stream
and Cancellation 80 left dorsal/ventral stream
Would word problems in math be more Verbal IQ than Nonverbal, if yes, then would someone with a Verbal IQ of 115 struggle with them big time?
Pumpkin, if you have a high Matrix Reasoning (115+) and Arithmetic (115+) Score, but average scores on other fluid reasoning (not including spatial ones) subtests, could you still be incredibly successful in Theoretical Physics, Math (Pure math, abstract algebra, Calculus), Computer Science, and other STEM fields?