Engineering: Intelligence and Skill Required?

[SublimeGD]

Have any of you actually taken an IQ test? I think everyone should google IQ tests and read a little about it. It seems like everyone is spouting off comparing IQ tests to SAT tests and other standardized tests... apples and oranges. There is some b.s. to the IQ test, but it has some merit. For example asking "general knowledge" questions like the country with the highest population doesn't measure my definition of intelligence. But there's also sections where you have to solve little puzzles and stuff, which I think is a pretty good indicator of intelligence. If guy A is consistently more proficient at solving little mind puzzles that guy B, then clearly guy A has got something that guy B doesn't. Is it intelligence? Can any of you define intelligence? We use the term all the time but can you really define it?

Also, on Feynman... I watched a video of him talking on youtube a while ago. I remember him saying something along the lines of "I have a limited intelligence, but I channeled it in a very specific way."

 

[muppet]

My parents got me to take the Catell test when I was about 8, so yes. The weird thing about IQ is that what it actually measures is the ratio of a person's mental age to their chronological age, multiplied by 100. So an 8 year old with a an IQ of 150 should be roughly as mentally developed as an average 12 year old; when he's twenty, as the average thirty year old. But what that means when you reach 40, 50 years of age and you're as intelligent as the average 60, 75 year old is beyond me. I think it was actually developed as a measure of how rapidly you would progress as a child, rather than measuring some objective intelllectual 'capacity'.

 

[shawshank]

Go on YouTube and type Feynman on Honors, it's a good interview.

To be honest, I hate anyone who dares call himself more intelligent than any other human being. You can say that you have more interest but not intelligence. everything is a matter of interest. When I was a video game freak on the computer 24/7, I couldn't give a crap about grade 10 science and I ended up getting 68 in that course but now in grade 12 I just come to class and I listen, i don't write too much down but I listen with interest and I'm getting 98% (highest mark in any uni course in our school).

 

[muppet]

Thread death... possibly because everyone who comes on to post ends up YouTubing Feynman?

 

[Phred101.2]

OK is it arrogant for someone who is more intelligent (and maybe has figured this out for themselves, like) to say so to someone else, you think? If it isn't any use, why is it used by so many people to measure whatever it is that gets 'measured'?
I was supposedly a 'bright kid', and I remember getting a high score when I was 7 which got me into a special class, but I also did poorly at math at high school (only scraping through at 15yrs at the end of year, and missing by miles at the end of the next years maths exam). I always did really well at English and languages, English especially I didn't really need to study (which convinced my class teacher I would fail the class miserably, but passed with high marks despite not paying much attention in class).
I have done magazine tests and still do pretty well, but as I'm saying, it doesn't guarantee anything much.

You have to be interested, and that was my problem with an ordinary education, I guess I didn't realize it was so boring until I got one.

 

[xAXISx]

My parents got me to take the Catell test when I was about 8, so yes. The weird thing about IQ is that what it actually measures is the ratio of a person's mental age to their chronological age, multiplied by 100. So an 8 year old with a an IQ of 150 should be roughly as mentally developed as an average 12 year old; when he's twenty, as the average thirty year old. But what that means when you reach 40, 50 years of age and you're as intelligent as the average 60, 75 year old is beyond me. I think it was actually developed as a measure of how rapidly you would progress as a child, rather than measuring some objective intelllectual 'capacity'.

Actually that's not completely true. Original IQ tests that were designed specifically (and only) for children use this method. This IQ test was completely useless for adults, hence why all modern IQ tests are normalized for the average adult population. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ for a good explanation of the topic.