intelligence tests
thoughts on varoius types of intelligence, my iq results, what people have, use excercise...
took an iq test. Missed 4 questions out of 43. One I actually guessed right and then looked down at breakfast, and up again and entered in the wrong dot! Doah. Another I just did fast, second-guessing myself, inwardly shrugging (it was the 1st question- I hadn't decided to play yet- if I had, I know I would've gotten that one). The third I just read through the question too quickly without pausing to consider it. A second look rendered the answer dead obvious (again, early in the test before I started to decide to commit to taking it). The fourth was an honest mistake- I didn't figure it out.
Now what does it say about one's intelligence to be so lazy as to not read carefully, or try, or being so inattentive as to hit the wrong dot? (we all know about the typos and spelling errors). I feel like my own abilities are shadowed by my poor use of them. I can do any number of things better than I can do logic puzzels, but I see people with less ability doing much more with it. Perhaps it's easier with more focus (which I lack).
I think that a key componant of intelligence is actually using it. I would not consider someone stupid for not understanding something. I would see them as someone who can learn new things. ...but someone who knows better and doesn't use that knowledge- that's a special kind of stupid. One I always kick myself for.
...of course, another key componant of intelligence is being able to choose (and quickly) if it's worth using at certain moments- efficiancy. ...but then again if you rarely have to use it, I would expect it too get out of shape, and lazy. I feel out of shape in all ways at the moment.
Hmmm. They rate my iq at 133. I took one as a kid and it was higher, but I'm not sure how accurate the test was (a grad student did it, and I was very bored and uncooperative). I'd like to see some multiple intelligence tests. This one had me 100% on Spatial, with the other errors evenly spread (2 on qualitative, but one was the one I guessed right). Hmmm. I don't think of logical reasoning as my strongest intelligence by much. Better at other things, but I knew I wasn't crippled at it. It felt good to use that part of my brain for a few minutes- it doesn't get enough excercise lately. Hmmm.
I have the feeling that most of my friends would do just as well on this thing. Who knows about the reliablity of such a thing though? I learned over the last couple years that what I think of as "average intelligence" is only an average among the people I spend time with. That said, I firmly believe in a wide variety of intelligences, and that the iq tests only measure a certain subset of those.
I feel like the interelationship between complex social, historic, biological, historical, psychological, etc. ideas to be much more intricate and to require more delicate combinations of thought than the iq tests even attempt to capture. And the kinds of sensory and physical intelligence needed in serious athelics, crafts and arts is another dimension as well. I also imagine that there are depths of logical and technical intelligence that these tests are not challenging (the sort that programmers might deal with). Hmmm. Brains are interesting.
Dad was talking about whether a college education matters in terms of actual ability in one's field (divorcing it from life enrichment). His idea was that tests might be more conclusive about ability than college experience. But I don't know. There's the whole element of learning to finish things, study, learning to learn... you cando that outside college too, but I think you'd need long term and complicated tests to measure that.
reading "Blink" right now too- fasinating ideas, studies and revelations about how cognition works.
So anyways- thinking of componants to intelligence (partly as a teacher) and what defines it. Any thoughts?
took an iq test. Missed 4 questions out of 43. One I actually guessed right and then looked down at breakfast, and up again and entered in the wrong dot! Doah. Another I just did fast, second-guessing myself, inwardly shrugging (it was the 1st question- I hadn't decided to play yet- if I had, I know I would've gotten that one). The third I just read through the question too quickly without pausing to consider it. A second look rendered the answer dead obvious (again, early in the test before I started to decide to commit to taking it). The fourth was an honest mistake- I didn't figure it out.
Now what does it say about one's intelligence to be so lazy as to not read carefully, or try, or being so inattentive as to hit the wrong dot? (we all know about the typos and spelling errors). I feel like my own abilities are shadowed by my poor use of them. I can do any number of things better than I can do logic puzzels, but I see people with less ability doing much more with it. Perhaps it's easier with more focus (which I lack).
I think that a key componant of intelligence is actually using it. I would not consider someone stupid for not understanding something. I would see them as someone who can learn new things. ...but someone who knows better and doesn't use that knowledge- that's a special kind of stupid. One I always kick myself for.
...of course, another key componant of intelligence is being able to choose (and quickly) if it's worth using at certain moments- efficiancy. ...but then again if you rarely have to use it, I would expect it too get out of shape, and lazy. I feel out of shape in all ways at the moment.
Hmmm. They rate my iq at 133. I took one as a kid and it was higher, but I'm not sure how accurate the test was (a grad student did it, and I was very bored and uncooperative). I'd like to see some multiple intelligence tests. This one had me 100% on Spatial, with the other errors evenly spread (2 on qualitative, but one was the one I guessed right). Hmmm. I don't think of logical reasoning as my strongest intelligence by much. Better at other things, but I knew I wasn't crippled at it. It felt good to use that part of my brain for a few minutes- it doesn't get enough excercise lately. Hmmm.
I have the feeling that most of my friends would do just as well on this thing. Who knows about the reliablity of such a thing though? I learned over the last couple years that what I think of as "average intelligence" is only an average among the people I spend time with. That said, I firmly believe in a wide variety of intelligences, and that the iq tests only measure a certain subset of those.
I feel like the interelationship between complex social, historic, biological, historical, psychological, etc. ideas to be much more intricate and to require more delicate combinations of thought than the iq tests even attempt to capture. And the kinds of sensory and physical intelligence needed in serious athelics, crafts and arts is another dimension as well. I also imagine that there are depths of logical and technical intelligence that these tests are not challenging (the sort that programmers might deal with). Hmmm. Brains are interesting.
Dad was talking about whether a college education matters in terms of actual ability in one's field (divorcing it from life enrichment). His idea was that tests might be more conclusive about ability than college experience. But I don't know. There's the whole element of learning to finish things, study, learning to learn... you cando that outside college too, but I think you'd need long term and complicated tests to measure that.
reading "Blink" right now too- fasinating ideas, studies and revelations about how cognition works.
So anyways- thinking of componants to intelligence (partly as a teacher) and what defines it. Any thoughts?