Moved: spelling/punctuation/Skitt's Law derail

[Annie]

This is mine. The one with the pearls. You may have seen her elsewhere around here. ImageUploadedByTapatalk HD1339585366.542945.jpg

[Worldslaziestbusker]

Originally Posted by owheelj

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.230...47699083936317

Peer reviewed study examining the relationship between scores on IQ tests and grammar.

To demonstrate that this is a trend (and therefore, not a perfect relationship), and because it's behind a paywall here are the results;

IQ Range, Number of students getting good score on the grammar test, number getting a poor score;

114-152, 16,10
104-113, 8,18
94-103, 2,24
75-93, 1,25.

The IQ ranges are disproportionate so that each group size is of equal numbers (26). As predicted by me, there is an obvious trend.

Edit; The correlation coefficient was 0.5 and the p-value was <0.01.

Well done. This data supports the contention that a relationship between grammar and IQ exists*. Now, all you have to do is find data tying grammar to correctness in arguments and you will have made a case to support your original posit. Where once you said you could not, it turned out you could.
It would be interesting to see how the relationship changed over time as English curricula developed and in light of the Flynn effect.

Regarding my failure to communicate encouragement: this could be due to an inability to communicate effectively on my part, an inability to comprehend on your part, or a combination of the two anywhere along a spectrum between the extremes. If it is down to me entirely that is something I will have to work on, but I was not willing to let you state that I had not made an effort to try polite, potentially less counter productive approaches first. I tried and it did not work. I only turned to scorched earth bluntness because I was sick of you stomping through threads with the emotional equivalent of size twelve steel caps, and then mewling like a hurt fawn anytime anyone attempted to pick you up on matters of tact, and getting pissy when held to standards you seek to hold others to, whether explicitly or implicitly.
If it weren't for the fact you are extremely good at a sport I consider as cool as The Pixies I would have lost my rag long ago.


* though pointing it out after having your grammar errors highlit counts against you both in terms of the relationship with IQ and of the horse sense required to not flaunt your short comings.

[owheelj]

though pointing it out after having your grammar errors highlit counts against you both in terms of the relationship with IQ and of the horse sense required to not flaunt your short comings.

Not really, because it's a trend and 38% of people in the highest IQ group also failed the grammar test - not that I've ever claimed to be intelligent or unintelligent. Clearly to take this trend and try to apply it to a particular individual would be a silly and irrational thing to do. If you did that, you'd have just over a 25% chance of being wrong, which is high. But these things are just definitional, which is why the trend exists, and why it was so easy to predict that it would without seeing actual evidence. Intelligence is really just the ability to acquire and apply knowledge. A grammar test is the demonstration of acquired and applied knowledge. A "choose the correct side in a debate" test is just a demonstration of acquired and applied knowledge. All I'm saying is that people who know more and apply that knowledge better will (in general, as a trend, not comparing individuals) do better on test of demonstrating acquired and applied knowledge. It's self evident, and it's self evidence because of what intelligence is, and what those things are. You could rewrite it as; "people who are more intelligent will tend to better at tasks that require intelligence than people who are not as intelligent". Do I really need to provide evidence for such a statement?

[Logic please]

Originally Posted by owheelj

Intelligence is really just the ability to acquire and apply knowledge. A grammar test is the demonstration of acquired and applied knowledge.

So, if that's the extent of it, what is the role of aptitude then? Or skills acquisition and development?

I'd also suggest that definitions of intelligence are a little more varied and complex than your above quote implies.

[owheelj]

Yeah I studied intelligence and IQ tests at university, and agree it is much more varied and complex, but I think my definition is still concise and accurate (see Goleman's definition, and Bar-On's). I would say that aptitude and skills can be aspects of intelligence, but the relationship is harder to measure. Certainly how quickly a person can learn new skills is correlated with intelligence, including physical skills, but there are a number of confounding factors which make measuring the nature of the correlation difficult. The beauty if trends is that if the confounding factors are not correlated with the trend, the confounding factors just become greater variation around the same relationship.

Of course there is also the debate about the many aspects of intelligence - some academics think that there are many different types of intelligence, while others think that there is really just one, but different people apply it differently. There are some good studies that have demonstrated that some of the different "types" of intelligence really are just applications of "general" intelligence (especially "emotional intelligence").