IQ Estimates by College Major

http://www.statisticbrain.com/iq-estimates-by-intended-college-major/

by evo_9 • 14 years ago

4 7 14 years ago

126 bitches.

What good is an estimate of the average IQ by college major? Without even a standard deviation for each, what does it tell you that could ever be useful?

zissou• 14 years ago

Reminds me of my favorite statistical/philosophical quote:

```When one commits to making statements about the average, they may be talking about someone who never exists, but they make very nice statements.```

It reflects on our over used emphasis of the 50th percentile when making statistical statements that are meant to be informative. In policy, the average across a population, or subset of the population, is often used as a form of a "fairness" rule. IMHO, examining other quantiles can be much more informative about the nature of a distribution, perhaps for economic policy reasons.

rcirka2• 14 years ago

I'm curious why it ends at 103. If the mean score is supposed to be 100, does that mean anyone below that isn't fit for college - half the population?

jmillikin• 14 years ago

If the minimum average IQ for a major is X, then there will be many students in that major with IQs less than X.

Also, keep in mind that the study is deriving IQ from students' performance on standardized tests. These tests are primarily intended to measure education, rather than intelligence, and so this might simply be showing that the average education level of college students is higher than the average of the general population.

If they wanted to be honest about the reliability of their data, they would have left the IQ column off completely.

gdwatson• 14 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#Correlations_with_IQ

rcirka2• 13 years ago

ah ok, that makes sense. It would be nice to see the histograms for each major to see the IQ ranges

IQ Estimates by College Major

Related Stories