Re: IQ
What needs to be present are items that are highly g-loaded, or items that are highly predictive of your performance across a wide variety and mix of subjects. Ravens APM is a pretty good example of that; that is, if you perform well on this test you probably perform well on just about everything else as well.
Of course, it's not the best example of this because Ravens contains only spatially oriented questions, which can under predict performance of verbally oriented individuals, but still. That's the idea behind it all.
Conclusions you can draw depend on whether or not you're talking about the individual or a population. However, conclusions are always statistical in nature, or probabilistic, which important to note.
For example, for individuals, you can draw probabilistic conclusions about the persons academic aptitude (across the board - essentially all subjects), propensity to commit felony, speed of learning, propensity to make errors, overall job performance, overall health, among other things. The most important factors are probably academic aptitude and job performance, but those two things tie in a lot of the other factors.
They allow you to fairly accurately gauge at least a baseline of where someone should be able to perform in academic or job related environments. They can tell you about how easily someone will master a job, or how quickly they'll become bored with that type of work if the IQ is too high. As such, IQ scores can be useful to institutions. The US Military is a big proponent of IQ testing and always has been. They know all too well that IQ affects everything from the ability to aim to the likelihood of damaging one of their precious aircrafts :P Hell, even Wonderlic IQ scores are predictive of quarterback skill in football, where IQ is correlated at around r= 0.5 with successful throws and number of yards thrown.
With respect to populations, population IQs are related to crime rates, health care quality, GDP (IQ is actually the largest single factor predictor of a country's GDP o_O ), among other things.
As such, it's a very useful statistical tool. I think the problem that people tend to have with IQ though is that they perceive it to be something that it isn't; they perceive it to be some sort of magical one dimensional number that is supposed to tell you everything about your intellect and people don't want to be measured by a single number. No, it isn't a magical number; it doesn't tell you a lot of things, but that doesn't mean it's unimportant.
We also have to consider the limitations of something like an online test, which just gives you a number, vs an evaluation from a psychologist that could give you much more information. One is clearly superior to the other.
What needs to be present are items that are highly g-loaded, or items that are highly predictive of your performance across a wide variety and mix of subjects. Ravens APM is a pretty good example of that; that is, if you perform well on this test you probably perform well on just about everything else as well.
Of course, it's not the best example of this because Ravens contains only spatially oriented questions, which can under predict performance of verbally oriented individuals, but still. That's the idea behind it all.
Conclusions you can draw depend on whether or not you're talking about the individual or a population. However, conclusions are always statistical in nature, or probabilistic, which important to note.
For example, for individuals, you can draw probabilistic conclusions about the persons academic aptitude (across the board - essentially all subjects), propensity to commit felony, speed of learning, propensity to make errors, overall job performance, overall health, among other things. The most important factors are probably academic aptitude and job performance, but those two things tie in a lot of the other factors.
They allow you to fairly accurately gauge at least a baseline of where someone should be able to perform in academic or job related environments. They can tell you about how easily someone will master a job, or how quickly they'll become bored with that type of work if the IQ is too high. As such, IQ scores can be useful to institutions. The US Military is a big proponent of IQ testing and always has been. They know all too well that IQ affects everything from the ability to aim to the likelihood of damaging one of their precious aircrafts :P Hell, even Wonderlic IQ scores are predictive of quarterback skill in football, where IQ is correlated at around r= 0.5 with successful throws and number of yards thrown.
With respect to populations, population IQs are related to crime rates, health care quality, GDP (IQ is actually the largest single factor predictor of a country's GDP o_O ), among other things.
As such, it's a very useful statistical tool. I think the problem that people tend to have with IQ though is that they perceive it to be something that it isn't; they perceive it to be some sort of magical one dimensional number that is supposed to tell you everything about your intellect and people don't want to be measured by a single number. No, it isn't a magical number; it doesn't tell you a lot of things, but that doesn't mean it's unimportant.
We also have to consider the limitations of something like an online test, which just gives you a number, vs an evaluation from a psychologist that could give you much more information. One is clearly superior to the other.
Began to get lost at the last 9 or so. I once took this other one which I thought was pretty OK, got 140. I guess I got dumber. lol
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