CellBioGuy comments on Innate Mathematical Ability - LessWrong

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

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Comment author: CellBioGuy 18 February 2015 06:14:04PM 3 points [-]

Satire aside, it seems to me that these Raven matrices get a lot easier to figure out once you've seen a few. At first glance I couldn't make heads or tails of the one you provided, but I went and took an online Raven matrix test and afterward that one seemed straightforward enough (in the sense that I quickly found a rule that was consistent with the rest of the matrix and produced one of the possible options). Presumably the easier ones familiarized me with the sorts of patterns the examiners were wont to use and reuse.

I've heard a version of this proposed as an explanation for the Flynn effect - industrialized urbanized nations with standardized schooling exposing people to more and more problems of the type the IQ test contains over time.