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Coscott comments on Open Thread, September 23-29, 2013 - Less Wrong
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Comments (261)
Where did you get those numbers?
Not reality. 41% of people in the US are enrolled in college (in 2010) Source. If we assumed that the US has representative IQ and use a 15 SD IQ scale, then the top 41% of IQs are all people with IQ of at least 103.41. I calculated that average IQ of a the top 41% of the population on wolfram alpha. (It is easy, because by definition, IQ follows a normal distribution.) I got 114.2.
If US citizens between 18 and 24 are representative of the entire population in terms of IQ, it is literally impossible for the average IQ of an undergrad student to be 115 or higher.
Hmm. I'm not 95% confident of then number I gave, but I haven't been able to turn up anything disconfirming.
I did a bunch of research on the heritability of IQ last year for a term paper and I repeatedly saw the claim that university students tend to be 1sd above the local population mean, although that may not apply in a place with more liberal admissions practices like the modern US. More research below, and I'll edit in some extra stuff tomorrow when my brain isn't fried.
Some actual data here (IQs estimated from SAT scores, ETS data as of 2013)
Surprisingly, at least looking at science / engineering / math majors, it looks like people are smarter than I would have guessed; Physics majors had the highest average at 133 with Psychology majors pulling up the rear with 114, and most of them are clustered around 120 - 130. For someone who deals with undergrads, that is frankly shockingly high.
Outside of the sciences, even the "dumbest" major, social work, managed a 103 and a lot of the popular majors are in the 105-115 range. Another big surprise here too; Philosophy majors are really damn bright with a 129 average, right up under Math majors. Never would have guessed that one.
Still, it's obvious that the 115-120 figure I gave was overly optimistic. Once I look at some more data I will amend my initial post so that it better reflects reality.
Naive hypothesis: Given the Flynn effect, and that college students are younger than the general population, could that explain the difference? That Coscott's conditional "If US citizens between 18 and 24 are representative of the entire population in terms of IQ" is false?
IQ tests are at least supposed to be normed for the age group in question, in order to eliminate such effects, but I don't know how it's done for the estimates in question.
I think that is likely.