Correlating IQ and STEM performance

[gen x]

Is it true that high IQ and STEM are correlated?

 

[QuarkyMeson]

No. IQ scores are meaningless quantities wrt what field or area of study people end up in. It's an imperfect measure used as one component of diagnosing developmental or learning disabilities and even more useless for anything outside of that.

 

[symbolipoint]

Is it true that high IQ and STEM are correlated?

Two necessary parts of the answer:

• Yes.
• Be careful how you think about "IQ", since effort is too often undervalued unjustifiably.

edit:
Even with that, I still do not disagree with @QuarkyMeson .

 

[DEvens]

IQ tests are not perfect, but don't need to be. A test of "puzzle solving" sort of intelligence, if well constructed, will have a good correlation with success in physics.

"Perfect" would mean that every person who scored high on the test became a physicist, and nobody who scored low ever did. That is, of course, not going to happen. Very little is "always." Especially about humans.

There are different kinds of smarts. For example, in physics, inter personal skills are not as important as puzzle solving. They are still important to some extent, since you do need to talk to your prof. And eventually some sort of employer, whether a university or in industry.

Of course there are many caveats and "do you mind if I don't" warnings and such. As mentioned, you have to be prepared to do the work. There is a lot of physics, and it depends on a lot of math. And doing the work usually requires that you have at least some amount of desire to do so. You have to like the work to some extent. Otherwise you will avoid it.

 

[DaveE]

Is it true that high IQ and STEM are correlated?

What an odd question. Perhaps you could be more specific?

1) STEM is not a measurement. Perhaps you need a performance metric? Or are you just counting some (undefined) count of participation? What do you think STEM is and how is it measured?

2) Yes, many things can have some correlation with STEM; birth zip code, sex, eye color, etc. That doesn't mean the correlation is good (high correlation coefficient), and even if it was, that doesn't necessarily tell you useful information. For example, the well know correlation between ice cream sales and shark bites.

 

[DaveE]

Anyway, Yes. But I wouldn't let that stop anyone. There are many other factors involved.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222403422_Intelligence_and_Educational_Achievement

 

[symbolipoint]

1) STEM is not a measurement. Perhaps you need a performance metric? Or are you just counting some (undefined) count of participation? What do you think STEM is and how is it measured?

Young People! And sometimes, less sophisticated middle age and old people!

 

[symbolipoint]

Anyway, Yes. But I wouldn't let that stop anyone. There are many other factors involved.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222403422_Intelligence_and_Educational_Achievement

Not yet read the article, but the ability to earn a degree in a "Difficult" subject. or having earned an advanced degree in any of S.T.E.M. means only (1) Did well academically and received some help, or (2) was skillful at the parts and processes to achieve the advanced degree.

Once you later have the chance to work with some of them, you may wonder HOW? Their great talent and imagination may seem very lacking.

 

[DaveE]

Young People! And sometimes, less sophisticated middle age and old people!

I suspect it's a disconnect between what the physics community thinks "correlation" actually means versus the general public. It's not about age, it's about vocabulary and education. Better questions get better answers. In the context of a vague question, a vague understanding of the terms isn't unexpected. I come across that a lot and I find it quite confusing; how to answer an ambiguous question.

 

[jedishrfu]

My understanding of things was that IQ tests are imperfect for a number of reasons. One being the background of the person taking it as questions can have an implicit bias for one culture over another.

The popular tests for college entry were IQ tests recast for college entrance and were meant to gauge how well an incoming student would do as a freshman and nothing more.

There was a story of the Kpelle people of Liberia who were asked to sort everyday items into categories. The researchers expected them to sort food into food and utensils into tools. However, they thought in terms of function and placed the potato knife next to the potato.

This kind of reasoning can happen in a test, and the test taker would get it wrong.

 

[ohwilleke]

My guess is that the OP is getting at something along the lines of the analysis of this paper (discussed further by one of the authors at the link below):

Non-linear Psychometric Thresholds for Physics and Mathematics

Stephen D.H. Hsu, James Schombert

We analyze 5 years of student records at the University of Oregon to estimate the probability of success (as defined by superior undergraduate record; sufficient for admission to graduate school) in Physics and Mathematics as a function of SAT-M score. We find evidence of a non-linear threshold: below SAT-M score of roughly 600, the probability of success is very low. Interestingly, no similar threshold exists in other majors, such as Sociology, History, English or Biology, whether on SAT combined, SAT-R or SAT-M. Our findings have significant implications for the demographic makeup of graduate populations in mathematically intensive subjects, given the current distribution of SAT-M scores.

https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/05/psychometric-thresholds-for-physics-and.html

which determined that in physics and mathematics, students who had below a standardized test threshold were almost sure to fail in their major, while in most disciplines in college, there is no such threshold, and a hard working student with low standardized test scores has some reasonable probability of graduating.

Standardized test scores, in turn, are closely correlated with IQ.