Comments on: Are you smart enough?

By: esse est percipi

esse est percipi — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:35:19 +0000

GRE and IQ the straight dope. Neehaw.

IQ is not the ability to learn or anything else in particular. Here’s what it is. When Binet started the whole intelligence testing racket he discovered that almost whatever the test that test correlated positively with every other test. When the tests that correlated the most with one another and were most reliable were taken from a host of trail tests and put together the first IQ test was born.

Each of you has as many IQs as there are IQ tests. BUT. All your scores will be close to each other in percentile terms.

The Raven’s Progressive Matrices, Stanford-Binet, Wechsler, etc. all correlate with each other and each is accorded the status of intelligence tests ONLY because of this correlation.

AND the SAT, GRE, LSAT, and all the rest have as strong a correlation with these self-described IQ tests as any one of them has with the rest. In other words, they’re IQ tests.

By: J

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 22:05:56 +0000

That’s so true.

By: European Chemist

European Chemist — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 18:48:58 +0000

In Organic Chemistry, we tend to forget about the importance of MEMORY. The best way to impress people and make everyone think you’re a freakin’ genius is to remember reactions you’ve only seen once, and 4 years ago, while recovering from a hangover. THAT will make people respect you, even if you can’t have any creative ideas and all your research projects are about “enantioselective additions of diethylzinc to benzaldehyde”.

By: Kyle Finchsigmate

Kyle Finchsigmate — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 22:25:55 +0000

His awesomeness knows no bounds.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 21:50:56 +0000

I just came across this pic from paul’s chembark blog… best pic ever.
here’s the dude that puts both traits together:
http://chemistry.berkeley.edu/...../toste.jpg

By: Ψ*Ψ

Ψ*Ψ — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 04:13:06 +0000

i agree. chemists spend a good 4 or so years learning more useful long, obscure words than the ones that appear on the GRE.

By: Darksyde

Darksyde — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 02:19:00 +0000

grammar, and spellig, hopefully, are not, necessary skills;

By: Darksyde

Darksyde — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 02:18:11 +0000

I voted for imagination, but you also have to know crap. Do you know how annoying it is to ask the crystallography professor why the reciprocal space is the fourier transform of real space and get a non-answer, or, asking the inorganic professor if two improper rotations of order 6 product up to a rotation of order 3 and getting “I’m just a poor southern boy” as an answer.

By: milkshake

milkshake — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 23:57:03 +0000

I think his approach was very valuable to the comunity. He should write a step-by-step procedure paper and publish it in Angewandte. Something like “Remarkably Simple Method for Comprehensive Data Fabrication in Total Synthesis Of Complex Natural Products”

By: OrgChemist

OrgChemist — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:32:33 +0000

GRE is a horrible way to measure IQ. WTF does your present knowledge or arcane vocabulary have to do with your ability to learn? I swear I feel just as dumb as I did before I knew the definition of auricle.