Is this the post you're looking to cite? From what I've been able to tell looking at that post and some related sources physicists seem to be about 2 standard deviations above the norm on average, with an uncertainty in that average measurement of a couple IQ points. This makes a physicist something like 1 in 50, rather than 1 in 100,000. Unfortunately it's not really clear what the standard deviation is for those numbers. An average, by itself tells you very little about a distribution. If we assume that the standard deviation of IQ scores of physics Ph.D.s is close to that of the rest of the population (this may be a bad assumption) then we expect 10% of physics doctorate holders to have an IQ of 110 or less, which would put them outside of the top quartile of the IQ distribution. You could play around with the parameters for the distribution here and come up with a bunch of different results, and I'm not totally sure which ones are meaningful.
I may be wrong. I may be framing the problem wrong. I may not have a good picture of just how bad merely average quantitative skills are. I do work with a lot of people who have Ph.Ds in physics and while some of them certainly have remarkable quantitative skills, others really don't. I know people who have gotten doctorates in physics who didn't score particularly well on the GRE. This is especially true in experimental physics (in physics the standard joke is that as a theorist you don't have to study anything that exists in the real world, and as an experimentalist you don't have to get the math right). Physicists are pretty smart people, but they're not all 1 in 100k and that's certainly not a requirement for being a physicist. Also, I think the level of quantitative ability necessary for physics research is often below the level needed to muddle through the coursework.
I'm sorry if this is the wrong place for this, but I'm kind of trying to find a turning point in my life.
I've been told repeatedly that I have a talent for math, or science (by qualified people). And I seem to be intelligent enough to understand large parts of math and physics. But I don't know if I'm intelligent enough to make a meaningful contribution to math or physics.
Lately I've been particularly sad, since my score on the quantitative general GRE, and potentially, the Math subject test aren't "outstanding". They are certainly okay (official 78 percentile, unofficial 68 percentile respectively). But that is "barely qualified" for a top 50 math program.
Given that I think these scores are likely correlated with my IQ (they seem to roughly predict my GPA so far 3.5, math and physics major), I worry that I'm getting clues that maybe I should "give up".
This would be painful for me to accept if true, I care very deeply about inference and nature. It would be nice if I could have a job in this, but the standard career path seems to be telling me "maybe?"
When do you throw in the towel? How do you measure your own intelligence? I've already "given up" once before and tried programming, but the average actual problem was too easy relative to the intellectual work (memorizing technical fluuf). And other engineering disciplines seem similar. Is there a compromise somewhere, or do I just need to grow up?
classes:
For what it's worth, the classes I've taken include Real and Complex Analysis, Algebra, Differential geometry, Quantum Mechanics, Mechanics, and others. And most of my GPA is burned by Algebra and 3rd term Quantum specifically. But part of my worry, is that somebody who is going to do well, would never get burned by courses like this. But I'm not really sure. It seems like one should fail sometimes, but rarely standard assessments.
Edit:
Thank you all for your thoughts, you are a very warm community. I'll give more specific thoughts tomorrow. For what it's worth, I'll be 24 next month.
Double Edit:
Thank you all for your thoughts and suggestions. I think I will tentatively work towards an applied Mathematics PHD. It isn't so important that the school you get into is in the top ten, and there will be lots of opportunities to work on a variety of interesting important problems (throughout my life). Plus, after the PHD, transitioning into industry can be reasonably easy. It seems to make a fair bit of sense given my interests, background, and ability.