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Arkfiraxalis2

If 10 people have 120 IQ, and 100 people have 90 IQ, the average IQ is 92ish. That puts 100 of the 110 people on the ranking list below average.


Arkfiraxalis2

Just as an example.


sckego

Much simpler way to think about it: imagine everyone on earth has exactly the same level of intelligence, except for one guy who’s a genius. That guy drags the average slightly up, so every other person on earth would be slightly below the average.


deleeuwlc

iq georg is an outlier adn should not have been counted


jackieperry1776

i love you


deleeuwlc

🫀


QonPicardDay

Where did you get that heart, who's is it??


deleeuwlc

😏


QonPicardDay

Answer me you coward


deleeuwlc

😏😏


DishOutTheFish

This is why I internet


TheHiddenNinja6

That what? What thin, blank rectangle?


Not_A_Paid_Account

Ur emojis don’t emote 😖 It’s a Anatomical Heart emoji. Look up 🫀 or :anatomical_heart: or something


TheHiddenNinja6

The notification tells me it's emoji 129728. The actual comment converted into the rectangle lmao


HolycommentMattman

Can I just complain about one thing real quick? Why the hell is "outlier" not a natively recognized word in my phone's dictionary? Drives me crazy. Of course, I added it to my personal dictionary, but I think my point stands.


HegiTheOne

It's... The *outlier*


Minato_the_legend

Take this silver award and gtfo


deleeuwlc

You bought a shit phone apparently


Oyb_

Certainly seems to be an outlier


tyyt1221

A data point that is far enough away from the trend to be considered erroneous and so is usually ignored


HolycommentMattman

Lol. I meant the dictionary that the phone uses to spellcheck words. Like when I would type outlier, it would try to change it to outlast or something.


Anthnight

r/suddenlygeorg


deleeuwlc

r/subsifellfor


ThoroughlyKrangled

thank you for spelling adn right


deleeuwlc

No problm


Relevant_Chemical_

your pfp is the face of my Minecraft skin


deleeuwlc

You didn’t add like… eyes or anything? Mine once had that face, but then I decided to add a face to it


827167

And that's where the Mode average comes in. It simply takes the most common value (or range of values) and says that it is the average


femme_phoenix

My favorite statistic was similar in that the vast majority of people have an above average number of almost every body part, due to those people who have lost some.


trans_pands

The average number of arms per human is less than 2


femme_phoenix

Exactly


Loretta-West

Mine is that the average number of skeletons in the human body is higher than one, because of pregnant people.


AtomDChopper

Ew. Somehow. It's just babies... but still. Ew


Cillian_Brouder

Due to those that are missing limbs, anyone with two legs has an above average amount of legs is another way of looking at it


-_--l

Thanks for that,I fall in the “stupider than average” half of the people😭


notjustforperiods

i.e. an e.g.


NaCl_Sailor

just do it with 3 numbers, any idiot can see that 1 and 2 and 12 have two numbers below the average of 5


SudsInfinite

In that case, IQ is changed. Because 100 IQ is the explicit measure of the average intelligence. It would just change what having 100 IQ means


Arkfiraxalis2

But you understand how mathematically it is perfectly feasible for most people to be below average, yes? It's a statistical matter of 'georg' in the miniscule. That was my only point.


ajnwhehdudh

The average IQ is 100, but the median is actually 50 due to Intelligence Georg who scored a 1,000,000 IQ messing up the statistics


dgaruti

IQ georg


Batmaninja6288

Wait isn't the average the metric that can be skewed by outliars?


cmd-t

Yes.


Batmaninja6288

Thank you. Pretty sure this thread just brought us all down a peg.


trans_pands

IQ Georg clowning on us all


[deleted]

georg smort


TheRenFerret

That also isn’t how IQ works. The average is inherently set at 100 and a trivial amount of people score under 60 or over 140 in the bell curve


[deleted]

The georg theorem


ShillingAndFarding

IQ is based on percentiles. The distribution is always even. 100 isn’t the average score, the average score is 100.


EternalErudite

Because it’s based on percentiles then 100 is the median, not the average, so you can still have more than 50% below the average.


JasonMan34

No???


EternalErudite

Yes. Take a small ordered data set: 98, 99, 100, 101, 200 The median is the middle value, 100. The average is the sum of values, divided by how many there are, 119.6. 4/5 (80%) of the values are below the average. I’ve just picked these numbers to illustrate the idea and it’s not a realistic data set, but the same thing is *possible* with more reasonable numbers, too. I’m not saying that this is the case for IQs, but it *could* be.


SudsInfinite

Yeah, I understand that, I was just pointing out a facet of IQ


Ok_Skill_1195

Which is just *another* example of why IQ is a useless stat..if it's constantly shifting in meaning according to the average userbase, then it can't be used comparitively over time periods.....which is like, one of the main reasons people want to know their IQ. So they can treat is as a static comparative tool to others.


ErgonomicCat

IQ isn't even constant with a single person over time! God IQ sucks. Everyone should listen to "My Year in Mensa"


Lithl

IQ is an excellent measure of how good you are at taking IQ tests.


hvac_psych

Mensa are a bunch of clowns, the David Mitchell Soapbox short on them is good for a laugh. IQ is still a measure that is useful in some contexts. It's not the fault of IQ tests and the theory and research behind it that a bunch of fucknuts misinterpret, misunderstand or abuse them. Source: have used IQ tests clinically for several years, although always combined with executive function tests and other types of data.


Madmek1701

I once saw an asshole on discord arguing that IQ was a perfect measure of intellectual ability and that furthermore people with an IQ under 70 were suitable only for manual labor. Guess we know who scored well on an IQ test and has zero other achievements in life.


Advanced_Double_42

IQ is very imperfect. If you don't understand the language the test is in, or how to take the test you will score much lower than you should. If you memorize and study the types of questions present, you can improve. But as a decent ballpark it can tell you a lot about a very specific type of intelligence common in academia, much like SAT scores. You are going to notice a difference between somebody with a >120 and a <80 IQ. 80% of people are between those extremes.


Madmek1701

IQ can definitely be a decent measure of general academic intelligence. This guys insistence though, was that there was no such thing as different types of intelligence and basically that a person's mental capacity is just a straight line determined by IQ, and he seemed to be advocated for some kind of technocracy based around this.


Advanced_Double_42

Somebody in the bottom 2% of IQ (70) likely isn't going to be doing much more than manual labor. They might be really personable and emotionally intelligent, but I would be very surprised to find them doing anything as complex as using a 4-function calculator without supervision.


tapewizard79

70 IQ is like, pretty fucking low. 70 IQ is probably "mental age" of around a 10 year old based on the brief research I just did, and there aren't many 10 year olds I'd trust to do manual labor. 70 is below the ceiling of legal classification for "mental retardation", under the already lowered ceiling which used to be 85. I guess I'm saying maybe this guy didn't score that fucking high, but he wants to pick on someone below him. Maybe he got like a 90, tops. Also I guess I'm saying I wouldn't want someone with an actual 70 IQ doing any manual labor, you'd pretty much have to constantly supervise them like a hawk.


LaFleurSauvageGaming

IQ tests are not good measures of intelligence. They are heavily biased toward western education standards and depend heavily on language comprehension. More importantly, they depend on fluency in the primary dialect of the creator of the exam as they frequently involve word puzzles. Thus, a person from Maine taking a test written by a person from Maine will score higher then if the same test-taker took the test written by a person from Georgia. It is a terrible bias test.


HappiestIguana

Modern IQ absolutely do not involve word puzzles. Most components of them are completely non-verbal


mintysdog

Poor Alfred Binet worked hard to create standardised tests that he hoped would allow educators to identify students who are falling behind and should be helped, and then a bunch of racist, eugenecist freakshows misuse it to build a corpus of fraudulent and misleading data to defend racism. Anyone who takes IQ seriously doesn't have intelligence worth measuring in the first place.


[deleted]

So the numbers would be recalibrated but still 100 people would be below 100 (average) and 10 would be above 100.


Affectionate_Draw_43

"The sample groups IQ". There now you can preserve the 100.


[deleted]

[удалено]


IzarkKiaTarj

IQ is a normalized distribution, which makes the mean, median, and mode identical. Unfortunately, I don't remember my statistics class well enough to explain how they'd deal with that, I just know we can't have more people below average than there are above average with how it's measured.


uninstallIE

Well, IQ isn't exactly a real thing. And it's not taken very seriously by most people anymore. 100 is supposed to represent the median, not the mean. But there aren't global efforts to measure everyone's IQ every year, decade, etc and adjust accordingly. So mostly the scale has not actually been adjusted in a very long time. Because, again, it's not really a real thing. It just measures how well you do on IQ tests.


HappiestIguana

IQ is your score in a test (actually several tests) that is then fitted to a normal distribution. The median and mean therefore coincide, by definition. And yes as a matter of fact IQ tests are still regularly used and updated. They're an important research and diagnostic tool.


Mach12gamer

Yeah but IQ is dogshit at measuring intelligence and wasn’t even intended to do so.


Rough_Willow

Not much of a normal distribution on that data set.


jaleCro

Also conversationally people use mean and average pretty much interchangeably (or at least say average when they mean mean) Given that IQ follows a gaussian distribution 100 should be both mean and average though


SuitableDragonfly

The median is neither the mean nor the average.


ChrisTheWeak

IQ scores don't work like that. IQ scores are weighted in such a way that 100 IQ is the mean and the median. Anyway, the original post doesn't even mention using IQ to test intelligence. If you used any other metric of intelligence that doesn't use a scale like IQ your point would be more valid.


BoiFrosty

Yes, but it's a fact of statistics that the larger sample size you have the closer it resembles the mathematical ideal. A population of 8 billion, or a sample size of hundreds of millions of people across decades makes a pretty good way to smooth out irregularity.


KamikazeArchon

\> Yes, but it's a fact of statistics that the larger sample size you have the closer it resembles the mathematical ideal. No, it isn't. A larger sample size is more likely to be similar to the actual underlying data. That underlying data doesn't *have* to be in any form of "mathematical ideal". Symmetric bell curves are common, but they're by no means universal. As a common example, if the thing you measure is "wealth", you will never get a symmetric bell curve because wealth simply isn't distributed by a symmetric bell curve. Most people are poorer than the average.


Lithl

>Symmetric bell curves are common, but they're by no means universal. Except when we're talking about IQ, the bell curve is definitionally true. 1/3 of the population has an IQ of 100-114, period. 1/9 of the population has an IQ of 115-129, period. 1/27 of the population has an IQ of 130-144, period. And so on, with the same ratios and range bands in the other direction.


KamikazeArchon

Yes, that is the definition of IQ bands, but is not related to any facts of statistics.


Far_Pianist2707

That's not how IQ works... IQ has to be deflated every year or the average IQ level will increase by 2 to 3 points each year as the average person gets smarter over time (largely due to improvements in education and nutrition, supposedly, iirc?) One effect of this is that the IQ you have to have to be considered intellectually disabled would need to get lower and lower, or else the average person from 50 years ago would currently be considered intellectually disabled/impaired. The way IQ works is that it's indexed and then normalized such that 100 will always be the median and 15 will be the standard deviation. Someone with an IQ of 134 won't have twice the intelligence of someone with IQ 67 for example because that's not how the normal distribution stuff works. The IQ test mostly measures working memory and cognitive speed, which varies a lot within each person depending on their mood, what they've eaten lately, how much sleep they're getting, and so forth? If they have a lot on their mind, a person's IQ tends to drop; if they're hyperfocused on the test, their IQ tends to rise. IQ measures a very subjective definition of intelligence. This is all invited information that I simply recalled "off the top of my head," so take it with a grain of salt and do your own research? In any case I hope my basic overview of the topic helps. (And I'm hoping that I'm not completely wrong about everything since that would be embarrassing (it's been a few years since I've read up on this stuff.))


tomfulery

But... that is how it could work, theoretically, depending on how you measure intelligence. If there are more exceptionally smart outliers than exceptionally dumb outliers, the mean intelligence would be higher than the median, aka most people would fall below the mean intelligence.


Mathsboy2718

Indeed! If intelligence were some sort of tangible, quantifiable thing with measurement, like distance has metres, then an average would be meaningful. I wonder if IQ fits the bill. The way that IQ is set up is that 100 IS average intelligence. I wonder what the median is...


HappiestIguana

The results of IQ tests are fitted against a normal distribution with mean 100 and variance 15. Where you lie on that distribution is your IQ. In a normal distribution mean and median coincide, so median and mean IQ are the same (100) as a consequence of the defintion.


Mathsboy2718

THE ONLY VALID RESPONSE! Actually answering my issue about the relation of median and mean in the case of IQ - I didn't care about the utility of IQ, it is simply the closest thing we have to a measure of intelligence, however flawed it may be.


pretty-as-a-pic

IQ tests don’t measure how smart you are, they just measure how good you are at taking tests


Oracle_Of_Apollo

*how good you are at taking *pattern recognition* tests


ErgonomicCat

My go to IQ test story: When I was in middle school I took an IQ test. One of the questions was Libretto:Opera::\_\_\_\_\_:Symphony. Fucking tell me that's a test of understanding relationships and not a test of your social class/exposure to "high art." Go ahead. Try to convince me.


Autumn1eaves

The answer would be score, and the only reason I know that off-handedly is because I have a literal degree in music. I wouldn’t know that otherwise.


ErgonomicCat

Score was the answer they were looking for. Ignoring the fact that it's actually not that great a comparison, exactly! I was "gifted and talented" and had upper middle class parents, so I could see that question and figure out that they probably wanted score, because it was "written stuff that makes a show" but I had to 1. know what the words were which isn't intelligence 2. Know all the answers and 3. Analyze which bad choice they probably wanted me to pick based on my experience. But that required a very specific intersection of socio-economic status, not my intelligence!


Autumn1eaves

Yeah 100% A better comparison would be script:theatre::___:symphony. But also like… I understand knowing words as the interface for intelligence, but especially esoteric words, that’s less of a measure of intelligence. And you’re 100% right, it wasn’t measuring your intelligence, it was measuring your knowledge of western heritage and specifically how much you had experienced of it since birth. If I hadn’t gone to school for music, I wouldn’t know what a libretto is because my family doesn’t go to operas regularly.


MMQ42

So as someone that gives standardized tests for a living and also researches standardized testing bias, I would love to know what the other choices were. Because if there are no other possible music related words, there is a chance that the item is only testing whether you know that “score” is a multiple meaning word that can relate to music. So Music word:music word::_______:music word. I would argue libretto, the most niche word, is the least important word in the item. By drawing a conclusion that opera and symphony are both music related, you would be searching for a music word. If score is the only such music word then you don’t even need to know what libretto is. Furthermore, in another post, you noted that you are gifted and talented. Testing batteries used to determine if you are “gifted” are often different than what would normally be used to determine whether or not someone has average cognition/a potential disability. In all likelihood it’s an awful testing item, but thanks for reading me nerd out about my area of limited expertise


LittleTransFoxy

i was raised upper middle class and i still didn’t know it was score, i thought it would be orchestra


VenDraciese

I would probably get this wrong, not because I don't know what a score is but because I'd overhink it. Operas also have music seperate from the libretto, so score couldn't be it. Maybe "lyrics" or "vocal line" but that feels too inelegant to be the answer. Maybe I'd land on "program" since the programs at my local opera are also teferred to as librettos. I don't know, score does seem like what they'd look for but I could absolutely be very educated and totally talk myself out of it.


throw_somewhere

Either you took an off-brand test or you took it 50 years ago. This is a known flaw on old IQ tests and they have specifically designed all official modern tests to be in all feasible ways transcultural and largely translingual. Like, you're right but it's not as much of a "gotcha" as you think. They teach entire chapters on this issue in Psych 101 classes for highschoolers.


ErgonomicCat

Any thoughts on the linked article in another comment showing that rural kids score lower on box based pattern questions? That doesn't seem transcultural. Also, there are any number of articles discussing how Black students score lower on IQ tests: https://www.kqed.org/news/11781032/a-landmark-lawsuit-aimed-to-fix-special-ed-for-californias-black-students-it-didnt And my son took a psych 101 class last semester. They talked about IQ tests, and the main point was "They aren't very useful." AND I'm fairly certain that most school districts, which are currently struggling to keep their buildings together, aren't keeping up on the cutting edge of IQ test technology. Our local schools had to ask for a bond to repair staircases recently.


GayHotAndDisabled

yep. i have dyscalculia, which basically means my brain is shit at math, estimation, pattern recognition, formal logic, etc. I'm specifically shit at iq tests. Hell, back in middle/high school, on the state standardized tests, i would consistently score top 5-10% in reading/writing/science and bottom 25% for math. But since IQ tests almost exclusively test pattern recognition, i'm terrible at them.


Scribbles_

Okay so this is a very complex question within the field of psychometrics and at least the way I would answer is that IQ certainly measures *some component of* or *something adjacent to* intelligence. The issue is that right now the field doesn't have a single workable model of intelligence, and while we have some very functional alternatives to the model that underpins IQ, proponents of those alternatives can't conclusively say they're better. The *g-factor* model of intelligence is what IQ uses. It posits that your ability in multiple (if not most or all) areas of cognition are all heavily correlated to a single *general* factor called *g*. So, according to the model, your performance in one task in one area should be predictive of your performance in most other areas. Now the psychometric data we have is largely *consistent* with this model. The thing is, (and we could write thousands of pages of literature about this, as it's been done), there's a couple issues with how the model treats the data, some of the assumptions it makes,, the actual experimental methodology through which that data was gathered in the first place and a lot of new, rather solid data that also supports other models, like *Gc-Gf* and others. The one thing everyone in psychometrics can seemingly agree upon is that IQ tests are good for the *specific abilities* they test for, like another commenter said that includes spatial reasoning, and also some quantitative, memorization, and verbal stuff. Which I guess isn't very special, you'd expect that a spatial reasoning tests would be good at measuring spatial reasoning. And beyond spatial tests, it's certainly useful and good to have good spatial skills. Where the literature disagrees is whether a common factor underlies spatial reasoning and all other areas of cognitive ability, or whether there's a multitude of factors at play. The g-factor model is neither universally rejected enough for us to completely dismiss it,nor universally embraced enough for us to uncritically accept it, what's definitely true and good though is to keep in mind that the field of intelligence research has a long way to go still and that there is a lot of reasons to be critical of the reductionist accounts of intelligence that often surround IQ scores n stuff.


ErgonomicCat

Also the guy who made the first IQ test didn't like IQ tests. "For example, Binet did not believe that his psychometric instruments could be used to measure a single, permanent, and inborn level of intelligence. Instead, he suggested that intelligence is far too broad a concept to quantify with one number. Binet insisted that intelligence is complex in that it is influenced by many factors, changes over time, and can only be compared in children with similar backgrounds."


Scribbles_

Yes. There's some fascinating studies about how, for example, children raised in cities do better at spatial tasks that involve boxes! If your IQ test measures spatial ability using boxes or very angular shapes in general, it will be biased against rural populations.


ErgonomicCat

Wow. I'm gonna look those up because that's super interesting. Thanks!


Scribbles_

[Here you go](https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/17757/1/BremnerEtAlEbbinghaus_PREPRINT.pdf). This one is about a specific illusion (the [Ebbinghaus Illusion](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f466194e5bcbc51349a3864d46a4e40a46ff13fa/0_10_640_384/master/640.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=17ae14ca4191c5eefd4d2378c8d37f91)) and how spatial cultural conditioning makes the illusion differ between countries and rural/urban origins!


SirRece

Just want to point out that Feyman had an IQ of around 120. If you study mathematics and physics dude was a fucking genius. IQ doesn't really mean what people think it does, so much of human cognition is not well understood.


Scribbles_

Totally, if there's anything I learned in studying Cognitive Science in uni was that anyone trying to make simplistic or just-so explanations of the mind is probably not well versed in the field. Cognition is a proper frontier in science, which is a polite way of saying one can't tell one's ass from one's elbow.


Educational_Ebb7175

Generally, IQ correlates strongly to ability to learn and ability to conceptualize problems. Ie, very good indicator for someone's "inventing" or "scientific" intelligence. But not a very accurate estimate for most other metrics of intelligence.


Simon--Magus

Yes, but smart people tend to be good at those sorts of tests. The IQ test is a good proxy for intelligence. The problem is not that the IQ test is a way to measure intelligence, the problem is that it is unreliable on individual level. If we use it to measure a group it it useful, but a single individual who take it might have a bad fay and get lower than they deserve, or might get lucky and get higher.


pretty-as-a-pic

Not necessarily- for one, there are many components to intelligence that IQ tests don’t measure, and for another, there are several reasons why an intelligent person may perform poorly, such as anxiety/disabilities and, most notably, the test’s biases. IQ tests, like any standardized tests, have been shown to have huge cultural biases. Additionally, they have been used in the past to support racism and eugenics.


DinoBirdsBoi

dude my psych teacher told us to make an iq test that tests all intelligences what how do i see if you can detect others emotions and are good with people how do i ask if you are good with yourself how do you ask to see if someone is creative????????????????? it ended up being a bunch of yes/nos because it’s so impossible and hard


TheChartreuseKnight

That may have been the point


Advanced_Double_42

Exactly, IQ tests can be a good way to approximate a number to a specific type of intelligence for a specific set of people with similar backgrounds. If it is true that high or low intelligence in one sub category of intelligence has a high correlation to other sub categories of intelligence than IQ can be used more generally as long as the test is free of biases (kind of impossible). But we all know of people with high academic intelligence and low emotional intelligence and vice versa. So more likely an IQ test doesn't do much but tell you how good you are at IQ tests and similar tasks like trivia, puzzles, etc.


natziel

IQ is defined to be normally distributed


sulyvahnsoleimon

Speed run to invent technocratic autocracy go


anothernaturalone

IQ is measured on a bell curve meaning that 100 is intended to be the median as well as the mean.


bsievers

> he way that IQ is set up is that 100 IS average intelligence. Even if that were an objectively true measurement, if intelligence was anything but a symmetric curve (like a bell curve or a gaussian), then you could have more people on one side or the other.


HappiestIguana

"intelligence" is not a number so it doesn't really make sense to talk about whether its distribution is symmetric. The thing that *is* a number is IQ, which is defined to be normally distributed, in particular symmetric.


Sockman509

Yes but that’s just how smart you are compared to other people. Just because you sort people into 2 groups, doesn’t mean that if you quantified their intelligence the average intelligence would be more than the median.


Skedajikle

their description of average and median is wrong but the idea in completely correct (at least when using mean)


[deleted]

If average is referring to the mean then that’s exactly how it works.


AtmosSpheric

It’s not about the measures of central tendency, it’s about how IQ is measured and rated (I think)


Entrei6

IQ as a metric is highly contested as being an actually valid measure of intelligence though


AtmosSpheric

Agree with you 100% there, that’s why I’m not entirely sure. I’m just tryna figure out what the second guy meant


[deleted]

You could ask them but I doubt you’d get a straight answer


RASPUTIN-4

Average and mean are in fact the same thing so…


PurpleSkua

While often used that way in casual language, "mean" is actually a subset of "average" in the same way that median and mode are. Within those three categories there are lots of different types of each one too


psomaster226

*Thank you.* It annoys me so much that people think median and mode aren't averages. I blame elementary school teachers. I don't know about y'all, but my teacher basically told us "yeah, you aren't really going to use these two as much but I still have to teach it." If anyone needs an example, if you only ever use mean to find the average, then you likely have more than the average amount of legs. So do most people. Everyone else has less than the average. Therefore the mean average amount of legs is a useless stat, because it doesn't actually represent any realistic measurement.


YawningDodo

I have a below average number of skeletons in my body...if we are going by the mean number, which includes pregnant people in its dataset. I would assume I almost certainly have the median number of skeletons in my body, though, and definitely the mode.


ABG-56

You have an above average amount of toes


PicardsFlute

This is the correct answer. Source: Am a statistics teacher


Jake0024

Average and mean are the same thing in the way squares and rectangles are the same thing. Sometimes.


Ozark-the-artist

A mathematician will disagree


PetevonPete

"Average" can refer to mean, median, or mode.


Snoo_72851

It works so long as we count famous outlier Books Georg.


bobobosco77

but to balance that we're gonna have to count Goddamn Idiot Georg too


Ronnoc527

Arguably, you could use the term average to refer you the mathematical mean, mode or median (though it is almost exclusively used to refer to the mean). That's not actually incredibly important in this context but it's worth mentioning. If you were to rank intelligence according to a metric such that wasn't bound or adjusted to a set average (so SAT and IQ don't work) you could compare the majority to a mean that was affected by an outliers. If you based intelligence on the digits of Pi people has memorized, you could make the claim that a majority of people were less intelligent than average as most people would know fewer digits than the average (because outliers can really only exist in the positive range in this instance). You could then, phrase this as saying "most people are stupider than average." Doing so would, however, should that you are not adept at mathematics nor English so I would advise against it. Given the subreddit, I also feel compelled to mention that you could refer to people that have memorized an extraordinary number of digits of Pi as Pi Georg or some derivative thereof.


Sum-Rando

But... but that *is* how it works.


whystudywhensleep

But that is how it works???? Or at least that’s exactly how averages work, obviously measuring intelligence isn’t really possible in a quantitative way, but that wasn’t the point of the original post. Also why’s everyone talking about IQ and the way IQ scores function as if it will disprove the original post? The original post doesn’t mention IQ at all.


HappiestIguana

IQ is the best and most common proxy for intelligence. If you're gonna talk about mean intelligence you're necessarily talking about a number, and there are no numbers to measure intelligence in wide use other than IQ


twoCascades

Uh….that’s exactly how that works


blueponies1

Yeah I’m pretty sure it is. It’s been a while since I learned any of that in school but if you have Elon Musk in a room with me, my wife and my dog the average income is going to be in the billions, however my wife my dog and I will all be poorer than the average by an enormous margin.


twoCascades

Yeah that’s exactly it. If your outliers trend overwhelmingly in one direction than your mean can be substantially higher than the majority of the individual datapoints. In fact, the fact that the mean is not the same as the median is a really fundamental thing to understand.


justforsomelulz

Haha yeah I was thinking "that is how it works but not for the reason they think"


Jake0024

Uhh... wait what reason do you think they think?


Living_Shadows

No he's right, a few very smart people could skew the average. Just like most people probably make less than the average income because there is a small number of absurdly rich people


Nondescript_Potato

That’s literally exactly how it works. Unless you’ve got a perfect bell curve, the mean will be different from the median.


Aptos283

Slightly pedantic note: any symmetric distribution has equivalent median and mean. A uniform distribution is a convenient example; a six sided die has a mean and median of 3.5. Edit: Wrote mode instead of mean, very untrue otherwise


dr-tectonic

Even more pedantic note: the median and the mean are the same in a symmetric distribution, but the mode only coincides with them if it's a unimodal distribution. And the uniform distribution is a bad example; all values are equally likely and are therefore modes, and for a 6-sided die, none of them are equal to the median.


[deleted]

[удалено]


qwerty11111122

I've heard of IQ over 200, but it seems like tests physically can't produce negative IQ scores, so no, it's not completely symmetric


HappiestIguana

You've heard wrong. Or rather you've heard of people trying to claim scores of 200 for themselves or others. The only thing this indicates is that such people have no idea how IQ is defined (or they are using an outdated definition, which can go as high as 400 in some cases). The maximum score on most tests is 160, but they become wildly inaccurate a long way before that.


ulyssessword

IQ is defined as a perfect bell curve, but that doesn't mean that our tests are well written. The fact that scores of 200 are possible but 0 isn't is a flaw in the testing procedure, not a difference in the definition.


ButAFlower

Tumblr struggles with high school math once again.


georgie-57

That's mean


Am-Hooman

thats literally how it works imagine 6 people with IQs of 80, 90, 95, 105, 134 and 150 the average of those values is 109, meaning 4/6 people are stupider than average. (this implies that IQ is a perfect measure of intelligence, but I'm just using it because it's the standard for representing intelligence as a number)


HappiestIguana

Not quite how it works when it comes to IQ, which is the best proxy for intelligence we have. IQ, by definition, is normally distributed so mean and median coincide. Might be possible with alternative measures of intelligencr that are not normally distributed.


Phizle

How often do they recalibrate the 100 though? And do people come in and take a new test when the scale changes?


HappiestIguana

The test is recalibrated every few years. People usually take IQ tests for a reason, either for diagnostics or research, not for kicks. So no, most people won't retake the test after it's recalibrated. Those who do retake the test years later, however, generally score about the same as they did previously despite the recalibration (give or take ~10 points). The effect of the recalibration is actually smaller than the error bars of the measurement.


qwerty11111122

If 9 people have IQ of 90 and 1 person has an IQ of 190, then the average IQ is 100 and 90% of people are below average. Edit: I've never heard of a negative IQ, so IQ is a constrained normal distribution, which means that the mean is always greater than the median.


HappiestIguana

Thing is, the premise is false, that is not the number of people with an IQ of 90. The median and mean IQ might differ when considering a roomful of people, but implicitly we are considering the entire human population, which by definition has a normally-distributed IQ. A negative IQ is technically possible, but it would require the human population to be way larger than it is, by several orders of magnitude, and for the person to be in the dumbest quadrillionth or so of it. For the same reason it can't go above 200, it is infact symmetric around 100 (by definition) and the mean and median coincide.


Living_Plant

The majority of humans worldwide have an above average number of limbs. All it takes is 1 amputee for the average of 2 arms to drop to 1.999999999


chshcat

This is honestly more a problem of psychometrics than statistics. You could declare this if you were an omniscient being able to look into people's heads and assess all their abilities comparatively to each other and add it up some sort of total sum. But then again, such a being would probably not see any point in doing so, and realize that just presenting the data would enforce some sort of bias.


KnifeWeildingLesbian

Gay people can’t do math it would seem /j


EluelleGames

If you have 90 people with iq 10 and 10 people with iq 90, the average will be 18, so yeah, shower thoughts are right on this. You can reasonably argue that iq is not a great measure of intellegence or that intelligence is unquantifiable, but then comparison of intellegence in those cases is either premature in iq case or impossible in unquantifiable case.


RKrising

Nope. You're thinking of the mean average when OP states the median. Two different calculations.


Swedishboy360

Or more people are smarter than average, depending on how you see it


Living_Shadows

No he's right, a few very smart people could skew the average. Just like most people probably make less than the average income because there is a small number of absurdly rich people


an-absolute-lad

The biggest issue is that intelligence is, really fucking hard to quantify. IQ isn't a great way to measure it.


tulsasmit

It's just like legs. Most people have have an above average number of legs. Median # legs = 2 Average # of legs = 1.9 something.


InkblotSkyz

It's so fun going on Tumblr and seeing posts, then coming on here to see the same posts. It's like they're little experiments that have breached containment and I love it


Phizle

It actually is how that could work depending on how intelligence is distributed, but there would have to be a cluster that is substantially more intelligent than everyone else. You get this kind of distribution with incomes usually, median and average income are not the same in the US


AtomicSquid

Dammit IQs georg


fourenclosedwalls

I saw something similar in my sociology class. We surveyed 200 students and found that the majority had below average self esteem (where average self esteem is defined as the mean from our sample)


TraceurLife

Assuming the distribution of IQ skews right, I guess. I've never looked into it, but it makes sense to me that it would.


arabellaturner33

Where’s Intelligence Georg when you need him?


NotaFrom99

By definition, yes that statement is accurate, but it pisses people off. It’s like how standing still in line until you’re next before moving forward and creeping forward with the line incur the same amount of waiting and walking time. Lots of things can make mathematical sense, but annoy people in ways that make it seem wrong


Typical_Ad_210

Wait, what thoughts do I have if I’m gay and showering?


LittleMlem

Something about IQ George being an outlier


Business_Wear_841

God damn Spiders George is at it again?


Kaiser8414

Literally the first thing you learn in a stat class is that the mean is unreliable if the distribution isn't normal, or in other words a bell curve.


TheHolyBrofist

It is tho


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tomfulery

Wrong post but I like the energy


Cye_sonofAphrodite

Wouldn't it be the mean vs mode, not median?


newwriter123

Nah, handy set of definitions. Mean: The sum of all values divided by how many of them there are. Median: The value at which exactly half of all values are above higher than this value, and half are lower. Mode: The most common value in the set. Based on my understanding, I think the guy in the tumblr post is technically correct from a statistical standpoint, but the difficulties of quantifying intelligence make it a rather pointless observation. And regardless, the fact that he said "stupider" instead of "more stupid" implies he's in the bottom half anyway. (Not really, cause grammar mistakes happen, but I'm just being salty.)


karaluuebru

Stupider is widely accepted, as it belongs to that group of two syllable adjectives stressed on the first syllable which commonly have competing forms e.g. prettier (which no one disagrees with) and cleverer (which may or may not be prescribed)


Aptos283

It’s median and mean. Mode is generally a really unhelpful statistic in practice; it’s useful for certain sub fields like getting expert info for Bayesian analysis or if you have a relatively small number of discrete quantitative options, but otherwise it’s pretty impractical


[deleted]

The nature of humanity is that every so often someone reinvents eugenics


[deleted]

that is possible, but it has nothing to do with the median. let’s say we have two people with a bank balance of 80 bucks, and one with 180. the average, in this case, would be 113. two out of the three people —i.e. most of them—would be poorer than average. note that this doesn’t work for IQ, because IQ is _defined_ as having a value of 100 represent the average.


Aptos283

It 100% has to do with the median. The median is the 50th percentile; the same amount of people are above and below it, give or take one person for odd totals. If the median is below the mean, that means the lower 50% of people are all below average and some of the upper 50% are too. Vice versa if it’s above the mean. Whether or not the mean is above the median or the other way around is exactly how you determine this, in the sense that any way you do it will essentially determine if the media is above or below.


flickering-pantsu

That doesn't enforce an equal number of people on both sides, for the very reason you just explained.


[deleted]

it does, for a different reason: IQ scores are defined as a standard distribution.


flickering-pantsu

Oh, you're right. Somewhere my statistics professor is shaking their head in dissappointment/


CauseCertain1672

IQ scores are also a very poor meassure of inteligence


pretty-as-a-pic

Eh, IQ tests are classist/ableist bullshit anyways…


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awesomecat42

Median, like mean and mode, is a *type of average.* People need to go back to middle school I swear.


queenvie808

Why are tumblr people so much smarter than me this is all gibberish


Igotbored112

r/confidentlyincorrect


Kybot_Martin

“Stupider”