Why do physics majors have high IQs

[zoobyshoe]

And of course (as requested in Post 4 by @Vanadium 50) the implied claim that physics majors actually do score higher than other college majors would have to be verified.

Well, I decided to google "average iq of physics majors," and google gave me this selection:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&.....1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..0.19.2276.RonBVawvXgg

The first few sites seem to agree that physics majors have the highest I.Q.'s of all majors.

So, the obvious question is, "When and how did physics majors take control of designing I.Q. tests?"

 

[lisab]

So, the obvious question is, "When and how did physics majors take control of designing I.Q. tests?"

Ssshhhh now my darling -- you've had such a long day! Don't worry about such things; take a deep breath and stretch...OH WOW, check out this thing:

 

[Sophia]

I don't understand the relevance of this. Newton and Hilbert, for example, were "white men with Western education" who are guilty of inventing (or rather: discovering?) numerous theoretical concepts. Otherwise, I think I largely agree with you, as I believe you have more expertise on this topic than I do.

I am not saying that white men can't invent or discover anything good.
I was addressing the issue that iq tests were used to somehow grade the "quality" of a person in the past. It was also used to prove that other races are inferior because on average, they scored worse than Asians and white people.
So the question of defining intelligence arised and also the experience of people with high iq scores who had trouble in real life has proved that iq is not the only measure able to define success and happiness.
That's why now we also have emotional and social intelligence. There is one book that mentions 120 types of intelligence!
Of course, it is a serious problem if a person has significantly low iq score. But it seems that if you are average (90-110) you can expect to be as happy and successful as someone with above average mathematical intelligence.
It just depends on so many other factors!

 

[DiracPool]

For some reason I took an IQ test when I think I was in the 7th grade, and it turned out to be really high. So they put me into these two programs; One was called MGM, mentally gifted minors, and the other was ELO, Education learning opportunity. The only thing I remember from this is that they took me out of the regular boring classrooms every Tuesday and bussed me over to some "black classroom" across the city where we basically did nothing all day but have fun. There was no cognitive effort required at all. So that worked for me.

 

[Sophia]

So, the obvious question is, "When and how did physics majors take control of designing I.Q. tests?"[/QUOTE]

Well it's because of the time and space when it was invented. As someone else already said, people with mathematical intelligence are considered smart, because for an average person, math is difficult.
Also, in the past gaining education guaranteed that you get a nice job and become wealthy. So what they did was create a general test based on skills that were required at school at that time and said that if you can do that, you can do well at school and have a good life.
If you can't do the test, you are stupid and sentenced to manual labour for the rest of your life.
Of course, I am exaggerating. No one was so explicit. But on average, this thought has been in collective unconscious mind for a long time.

 

[zoobyshoe]

So, the obvious question is, "When and how did physics majors take control of designing I.Q. tests?"

Well it's because of the time and space when it was invented. As someone else already said, people with mathematical intelligence are considered smart, because for an average person, math is difficult.
Also, in the past gaining education guaranteed that you get a nice job and become wealthy. So what they did was create a general test based on skills that were required at school at that time and said that if you can do that, you can do well at school and have a good life.
If you can't do the test, you are stupid and sentenced to manual labour for the rest of your life.
Of course, I am exaggerating. No one was so explicit. But on average, this thought has been in collective unconscious mind for a long time.

My question was a little joke: if physics majors have the highest I.Q., it could only be because they got control of designing the tests and designed them so that their skill set would give the highest results. Hahaha.

But actually, I.Q. Tests were invented, not to identify smart people but to identify people who would need extra help in the new required school system in France:

Interest in intelligence dates back thousands of years, but it wasn't until psychologist Alfred Binet was commissioned to identify students who needed educational assistance that the first IQ test was born.
Alfred Binet and the First IQ Test
During the early 1900s, the French government asked psychologist Alfred Binet to help decide which students were mostly likely to experience difficulty in schools.
The government had passed laws requiring that all French children attend school, so it was important to find a way to identify children who would need specialized assistance...

http://psychology.about.com/od/psychologicaltesting/a/int-history.htm[/QUOTE]

Binet was mostly interested in identifying retarded people and calculating an intellectual age for them so they could be taught at a level they could handle. The alternative would have been to take them out of school and put them in asylums, as some people wanted to do, where they'd get no education at all.

 

[S.G. Janssens]

I am not saying that white men can't invent or discover anything good.
I was addressing the issue that iq tests were used to somehow grade the "quality" of a person in the past. It was also used to prove that other races are inferior because on average, they scored worse than Asians and white people.

What I mentioned Newton and Hilbert, I was not thinking about their capability to invent or discover something good. Rather, I wanted to point out that just the fact that something is invented or discovered by "white men" brought up in a Western culture, doesn't by default make it culturally dependent. Fortunately for physicists and mathematicians, in their fields this is a lot clearer than in the social sciences. For example, nobody sane would doubt the applicability of Newton's laws to apples falling from African trees, just because of Newton's race and cultural background. (Of course, I'm not talking about the small difference in the acceleration of gravity.)

Whether or not it is possible to define a measure of intelligence that is similarly independent of culture and whether IQ offers such a definition, I do not know. That's why I remarked at the end that I leave that question up to others that are more knowledgeable on this topic.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

What I mentioned Newton and Hilbert, I was not thinking about their capability to invent or discover something good. Rather, I wanted to point out that just the fact that something is invented or discovered by "white men" brought up in a Western culture, doesn't by default make it culturally dependent.

It's a bit unfair to assume that Sophia is oblivious to this. This is an obvious point, her remark was a reference to a known controversy.

 

[S.G. Janssens]

It's a bit unfair to assume that Sophia is oblivious to this. This is an obvious point, her remark was a reference to a known controversy

Right, as my remark was a reference to cultural independence rather than quality of concepts. That is what I wanted to clarify.

EDIT: Besides, I object to the suggestion that I have been unfair to @Sophia. Thank you.

 

[Silicon Waffle]

I like all Sophia's sound and correct ideas in this thread a lot. I think only kids will always try to show off how smart they are about things. To older or experienced people, issues with know-hows might be less important than their management.

 

[ZapperZ]

Did they start out with a high iq or did it increase because they were working with a lot of math and physics problems.

If this is a post-and-run, then this entire thread should be deleted.

@potato123 : you have presented a starting point that has no verification, i.e. there's no indication that it is even valid. Show evidence that physics majors have "high IQ". Otherwise, your starting premise is a unicorn.

This thread has gone into 2 pages long based on a rumor. And I'm being generous when I call it that.

Zz.

 

[Sophia]

BTW do you know your IQ score?
I think mine is somewhere around 110. I am not a science major, of course
Please move this to another thread if you think it's OT.

 

[S.G. Janssens]

BTW do you know your IQ score?

I don't think mine was ever tested. (Maybe it was, back in primary school, but in that case I must have forgotten the outcome.) Now that I'm grown up, I would be too nervous to take a test. In fact, I don't think the outcome would be very high, as I process information very slowly.

 

[zoobyshoe]

If this is a post-and-run, then this entire thread should be deleted.

@potato123 : you have presented a starting point that has no verification, i.e. there's no indication that it is even valid. Show evidence that physics majors have "high IQ". Otherwise, your starting premise is a unicorn.

This thread has gone into 2 pages long based on a rumor. And I'm being generous when I call it that.

Zz.

ZapperZ, I found a lot of verification for it as I pointed out in post #31.

 

[livinonaprayer]

i've done a real iq test which consisted of a few long sessions with a psychologist who gave me lots of tasks to do, like identifying patterns in pictures, determining which shape will come next, memorizing geometric shapes, logic stuff and many more i can't remember. i think the iq test measures a very specific type of 'smart', which is rarer in society, that people who have a talent for math and physics often have, like being creative in a logical/mathematical way, thinking 'outside of the box' and recognizing patterns. when studying physics and math, taking notes and memorizing the equations is simply not enough to truly understand the material. you have to have that certain talent to some level to do well in these fields and that might explain why they are a little more 'selective' i guess. however, when studying a subject you need a lot more than 'raw' talent to succeed and there are other abilities, just as important, that an iq test doesn't measure. plus, what does op mean by 'high iq'? high compared to what? the average? high school students? college students? other science majors? completing a degree is one thing, but how many of those will have the grades and ability to continue on to grad school? phd? or even become professors? that's just my opinion here

 

[WWGD]

i've done a real iq test which consisted of a few long sessions with a psychologist who gave me lots of tasks to do, like identifying patterns in pictures, determining which shape will come next, memorizing geometric shapes, logic stuff and many more i can't remember. i think the iq test measures a very specific type of 'smart', which is rarer in society, that people who have a talent for math and physics often have, like being creative in a logical/mathematical way, thinking 'outside of the box' and recognizing patterns. when studying physics and math, taking notes and memorizing the equations is simply not enough to truly understand the material. you have to have that certain talent to some level to do well in these fields and that might explain why they are a little more 'selective' i guess. however, when studying a subject you need a lot more than 'raw' talent to succeed and there are other abilities, just as important, that an iq test doesn't measure. plus, what does op mean by 'high iq'? high compared to what? the average? high school students? college students? other science majors? completing a degree is one thing, but how many of those will have the grades and ability to continue on to grad school? phd? or even become professors? that's just my opinion here

I assume by high (assuming judgement is meaningful), the OP would mean a couple of sigmas above the mean.