From: skh4161@mvs.draper.com (Kjeld Hvatum)
Subject: Re: Reply to previous comments on Mega Test
Organization: Draper Laboratory
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 04:18:00 GMT


>From: hollombe@polymath.tti.com (The Polymath)
>Message-ID: <1992Oct1.223210.3712@ttinews.tti.com>
>
>The SAT is a predictor of academic success, as measured by likelihood of
>graduation.  It works by testing for the presence of certain knowledge and
>skills necessary to such success.  A low score on the SAT merely indicates
>a lack of said knowledge and skills.  It says _nothing_ about _why_ they
>are lacking.  To pose an extreme example, someone who never learned to
>read could do no better than random on the SAT verbal, even if they were a
>genius.

I agree.  But you didn't address my point that many IQ tests are almost
purely verbal tests, and are virtually identical in content to the
vocabulary sections of the SAT verbal.  Hence, your claim that the
correlation between SATs and IQ tests is in merely an artifact is not
generally supportable.  However, I think I understand your point, and we
may mean different things by the word "artifact".  Perhaps you'd say
that written IQ tests consisting mostly of vocabulary items are not
tests of general intelligence.  I don't want to get into another thread
on this, but I'm not sure I'd call a Wechsler test, or any other test, a
genuine test of "general intelligence", unless you trivially define
"general intelligence" to that which your favorite test measures.

Robert Sternberg (Yale) thinks the reason vocabulary is one of the
single best indicators of intelligence is that it indirectly tests the
ability to learn meaning in context.  As I've said before, the Wechsler
folks have observed that one of the single best indicators on that test
is the vocabulary section.

Again, I think I see the point you're trying to make about the SAT
providing only a floor, rather than being a sure indicator.  I agree,
and I think that applies to many IQ tests as well.

>.  Since nearly all of these are multiple choice tests whose
>instructions include the admonition to choose the best available answer,
>the problem seldom arises.

I'm sorry, I don't see very many ambiguous items on the Mega
Test, if that's what you mean to imply.

>}........ at Mensa's cutoff level, I agree with their policy.  It's too
>}close to the bottom of the Mega test, requiring relatively few correct
>}answers, which might be too easily obtained.
>
>This begs the question.  Why do you think their bylaws were so written?
>If they're no longer appropriate, why haven't they been changed?  Isn't
>that why Mensa _has_ a Supervisory Psychologist?

As I said, I think it is appropriate.

>Here's a parting thought to consider:
>
>I've never completed a calculus course.

And, as I've said before, neither has the person who attained the
highest score ever on the Mega Test and the Titan Test (a perfect
score).

>My chalkboard is currently
>covered with equations in my attempt to derive the answer to one of the
>Megatest questions.  Some of my mathematician friends assure me such an
>answer exists (of course, _I_ won't ask them what it is).  If I succeed,
>am I more intelligent than a degreed mathematician who learned in a class
>the technique I had to re-invent from first principles?  How can the test
>score account for this? (I say it can't).

What amused me about the mathematical questions on the test is that
calculus is absolutely not needed to solve any of the questions.  I can
think of one or two questions which could be solved with simple
calculus, but the more elegant solutions require no calculus whatsoever.

And yes, in general, the less academic experience you have, the more
impressed I'd be with a given score.  As I've said before, IQ tests,
SATs, and the Mega Test are largely tests of long-term academic
achievement, rather than measures of innate neural efficiency.

skh@draper.com
Newsgroups: rec.org.mensa