Vaniver comments on Innate Mathematical Ability - Less Wrong

40 Post author: JonahSinick 18 February 2015 11:11AM

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Comment author: JonahSinick 18 February 2015 08:20:23PM 3 points [-]

I'm pretty sure that the the issue is with the conversion between performance on the iqtest.dk test and score. My best guess is that they're determining percentiles relative to other test takers, and that people who spend time taking IQ tests online are unrepresentatively high IQ.

Comment author: Vaniver 19 February 2015 03:46:46PM 1 point [-]

My best guess is that they're determining percentiles relative to other test takers, and that people who spend time taking IQ tests online are unrepresentatively high IQ.

I think this is likely; I seem to recall iqtest.dk saying something to that effect. Given the various reporting biases involved, though, I'm unwilling to jump immediately to that as a conclusion. I recall the Raven's numbers being lower than what you would expect given the SAT numbers, but being closer to the SAT numbers than the self-reported IQ numbers, which were higher than you would expect from the SAT numbers.

That is, even if I agree with your prior that LWers do better on Raven's than on other tests, observing LWers doing worse on a Raven's test than other tests should reduce my confidence in that, rather than me just using the prior to adjust the evidence to agree with it. (Administering a properly normed test, of course, would screen off the improperly normed test.)