Posted on 03/27/2006 1:35:38 AM PST by wolf78
BRITAIN and France have experienced long periods of conflict and rivalry but now victory in one area can be claimed: Britons are more intelligent than the French.
A new European league of IQ scores has ranked the British in eighth place, well above the French, who were 19th. According to Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster, Britons have an average IQ of 100. The French scored 94. But it is not all good news. Top of the table were the Germans, with an IQ of 107. The British were also beaten by the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Italy, Austria and Switzerland.
Professor Lynn, who caused controversy last year by claiming that men were more intelligent than women by about five IQ points on average, said that populations in the colder, more challenging environments of Northern Europe had developed larger brains than those in warmer climates further south. The average brain size in Northern and Central Europe is 1,320cc and in southeast Europe it is 1,312cc. “The early human beings in northerly areas had to survive during cold winters when there were no plant foods and they were forced to hunt big game,” he said. “The main environmental influence on IQ is diet, and people in southeast Europe would have had less of the proteins, minerals and vitamins provided by meat which are essential for brain development.”
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Of course I'm glad that I could contribute with my own IQ of 160+ .
I'm ethnically Chinese, and I think Chinese in Hong Kong collectively have a median IQ of around 115? 100 for NZ sounds right.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
America is still #1
This test might be highly controversial because of the means it used to elaborate these not so pregnant numbers. As a german I am certainly pleased that I have such a high chance to be statistically smart ;-)
It also shows that it's only good for europe that the poles are on board.
"I'm ethnically Chinese, and I think Chinese in Hong Kong collectively have a median IQ of around 115? 100 for NZ sounds right."
The average IQ of Hong Kong is 107 according to The Wealth of Nations (by the same author as this study.) By the way, I don't think the sample median is typically used to estimate the location parameter of population IQ's since the sample mean is a more efficient estimator when the distribution in question is more or less normally distributed - as is the case with IQ's.
Personal story: I did so badly on the first IQ test I took when I was a kid that they put me in a "special" class where half the kids had to wear helmets to keep them from hurting themselves. I am proud to say that I never had to wear a helmet. ;-)
because of german durch and polish students ;-)
For normal/Gaussian distributions median is exactly the same value as the mean so I don't think there is any difference in the value concerned, although I admit my use of median sounds a bit weird [chuckle].
I once took a free test by emode and it says I have an IQ of 138! I doubt my real figure is that high - I would have guessed 115 to 120 sounds more reasonable. But again, who knows?
Does this mean we change all of the Polish and Italian jokes to Serb jokes?
"For normal/Gaussian distributions median is exactly the same value as the mean so I don't think there is any difference in the value concerned, although I admit my use of median sounds a bit weird [chuckle]."
It is true that the expectation and median of a normal distribution are equal. However, as far as estimators go the sample mean and sample median behave quite differently. The sample median is typically preferred when there are heavy tails or skewness. However, when things are more or less normal (i.e. symmetric, no heavy tails or skewness) then the sample average has better statistical properties as an estimator of location. Of course, I am not an expert on intelligence measurement so this may not be the reason at all - I was just trying to sound smart! ;-)
"I once took a free test by emode and it says I have an IQ of 138!"
I took the same test and got 170. Did you by any chance ever wear a helmet to school? ;-)
Reads as though a caterer is seeking a contract with MENSA.
Now there is scientific PROOF that vegetarians are less intelligent.....(as if we didn't already know...)
American university students may have the highest IQs because our system is the most meritocratic, and we have long used the (formerly) IQ proxy SAT for college admissions. The average PhD has an IQ of 130, IIRC, but that doesn't stop them from being Democrats. And, the vaunted Germans are socialist lemmings. I always heard that the average white American IQ was 100 by definition (i.e. the tests were developed here and normed to our population around the 1st World War). Average Jewish IQ was supposed to be around 108, and the average for Japanese and Chinese around 110 (but undestand for Japan and China it would have been a relatively small subset of the population who were tested, not a true cross section - or perhaps that was for Japanese and Chinese in the US, which would make sense).
Hehe, I didn't get exactly the same treatment, but I got quite a few schoolground taunts at my primary school days which implied something very similar LOL.
Britain averages 100 but England averages 102 - trust the Scots to hold us back again! ;-)
But jokes aside, is the emode test reliable? I had one other IQ test when I got admitted to high school classification but I was never told the results. Although I got put into around 65-percentile class after that test.
Is the US average IQ still 98?
Sounds like junk science to me .
Brain size has nothing to do with intelligence either.
"But jokes aside, is the emode test reliable? I had one other IQ test when I got admitted to high school classification but I was never told the results. Although I got put into around 65-percentile class after that test."
No idea. I do know that my GRE scores could easily get me admittance into Mensa if I wanted (which I don't.) My feeling is that IQ measures some useful component of intelligence but after some score (say 130 or so) I think it starts to become somewhat meaningless to compare. At that point it is discipline, motivation, creativity, etc. that become the determining factors. Look at Marilyn Vos Savant, she supposedly has the highest IQ in the world and what does she do? She writes newspaper columns.
I took an IQ test.
I stapled and read it through a Bushnell 3 X 5 scope and marked my answers with a 160 grain boattail. A 5 knot wind dropped my IQ a few points.
I am hoping for a calm wind day next time!
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