How IQ does or doesn't correlate to Go skill

Since this thread was made separate from the other, I’d like to ask you some more questions. For what it is worth, I’ve posted my results to the other thread as you had originall requested :wink:.

I think that is commendable and I hope you are able to achieve success. May I ask how you define intellectual development? The phrase is too general. The words alone could portray multiple meanings.

  • Intellect:
    The faculty of reasoning and understanding objectively¹, especially with regard to abstract² or academic³ matters.

     
             1. Objective:
                 (Of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions
                  in considering and representing facts.
     
             2. Abstract:
                 Existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence.

     
             3. Academic:
                 Relating to education and scholarship.

     
  • Development:
       → A specified state of growth or advancement.
       → An event constituting a new stage in a changing situation.

 

As above, can you please describe, in your own words, what IQ means to you? Because looking online and searching books on Amazon dedicated to the topic, reveal that the perception of what IQ means is quite open to interpretation. Unless you have observed all the people who play go, watching a select number of individuals engaging in the activity is not conclusive. How can you know that IQ has a connection?

Successful people come from all walks of life. Plenty of people most would classify as stupid play Chess or Go. Just like plenty of stupid people choose to go to school. The fact that smart people are known to engage in an activity is not indicative that the activity creates smart people or makes people smarter. Have you researched the history of Go in China at all? There are plenty of people who through their life away pursuing becoming a Go professional that were viewed both as foolish, not smart, and often considered to be addicts or viewed in the same light as gamblers (despite the lack of gambling.

 

The study I linked show very specifically how the brains of Go professionals, those affected the greatest by and dedicated the most to Go, are changed by their intensive pursuits. The science being used to monitor the brain, which parts are activated, how those parts are affected over time, and what Go professionals gain from the activity, is cutting edge. The paper is very thorough. If you are truly curious about how Go affects a person, this is an amazing place to start.

 

If you look at the qualities of a successful Go player, they are very much in alignment with that of any successful individual. Strong willpower, dedicated, doesn’t give up, strong focus, thinks ahead, proficient in evaluating situations in terms of gain and loss, willing to study in order to get better, understands that deliberate practice is key to achieving success, and so on. My children enjoy Go but two of the three are the opposite of competitive. They do not like confrontation and do not react much to losing. They see it as a chance to learn and improve. I have played many people in Go who are of a similar non-competitive mindset.

In terms of what qualities are necessary to be successful, that is a very well covered topic in the history of man. To my knowledge nobody has written a book yet that discusses Go leading to or cultivating success. Instead you have self-help and Entrepreneur books that dissect the components of success. Or my all time favorite, Napoleon Hill’s “Think And Grow Rich”. This guy spent 20 years interviewing the most successful people on the planet and distilling the essence of what he learned into a book. The research was commissioned by the famous robber-baron Andrew Carnegie. Napoleon Hill’s 17 Principles Of Success (image) is a great distillation of that book’s primary lessons.

 

Indeed. Not giving up is about all that matters in terms of a person being successful. You can have physical handicaps, a horrible starting position in life, mental illness, and every shade of “this person is unlikely to make it” holding you back, but if you don’t give up, you tend to succeed. Your focus, determines your reality.

However, success is also a relative term. Successful how? In the eyes of society? Money, wealth, family, quality of character, inner peace, finding your way onto the pages of history… what kind of success are you trying to prove that engaging in Go might lead to? The “Rich” in Napoleon Hill’s book title doesn’t allude to another other than living a rich life. Not to be confused with wealth. But happiness and a life of worth. Truly an amazing read and one of the strongest building blocks upon which the Self Help movement and literature was birthed from. You should check it out :smiley: Napoleon Hill is one of my personal heroes :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

:slight_smile: I did not managed to answer to many of the previous questions, and I am bombarded with a new batch. Glad to see that the subject is of interest. To save myself of some others I will ad an explanation. First, a joke. One drunkard was crawling in his four around a street light. One passerby asked him: -Did you lost something? May I help you? -Yes I lost my keys, -Are you sure that you lost them here?, because the pavement is pretty clean and I do not see any key here. -No, not at all, I lost them there next to my car. - And then why are you looking for them here? -Because here is enough light.

I am like that drunkard, looking here, because where I would like to look is above my powers. I would like to see at a larger scale, enough to be representative, children tested for all dimensions of intelligence, like speed, memory, abstract thinking, spatial visualization and so on. An year later tested again, and see the difference for various groups. One group will be those who will start to play Go by own will for their own pleasure, other group who plays not for Go, but for the prizes offered at competitions, so is not for pleasure, but enforced on them through prizes. Other group who play enforced by system, as is enforced the everything else in schools today. And the last group who did not play Go at all. There was a similar study in US, in a smaller scale, which revealed benefits in some areas for children with ADHD or something like that, but is far from what I dream.

However, on the realm of real life, not dreams, I have some experience in the field of promoting Go. Fom the one of the teachers who told me to go away, because there they do not want to open the eyes of the children because if they became smart, they will go away, and will be none left to work the land, to those who offers us unconditional support. In my city there is already a good Go trainer who promotes and raise good Go players from those who play by pleasure. My segment is for the group who plays for prizes. Results are pathetic, correlated maybe with the dimension of the prizes I could offer, or maybe with the fact that playing for prizes is pointless. But I followed this path with the hope that this method will sift from the mass those few who will play for pleasure sometime later after discover the fun part of Go. Few years back, I asked the children what prize will be attractive for them and the best reaction was provoked by a visit to Disneyland. Way over my power. Now I beat around the bush for something like this http://tabara-medievala.ro/, some medieval camp, or maybe organize ourselves a camp with logical games theme. Anyway, these are things of long shot, and till then I tried this little survey, that may satisfy some of my curiosity. So for this curiosity accuracy and precision of a brain surgery is not an issue.

Now let see what you asked in this last message,

-Yes I mean intellectual development in general, as part of the general thing that is school.
-IQ is an assessment of overall intelligence of a person. Some say that is a static thing with what you are born, but I beg to differ.
-I know about the connection through observation. I explained in other comment above.
-I do not researched the history of Go in China, but I have read occasionally few things.
-The study you mention is cutting edge, I am still bleeding. Waiting to heal.
-About qualities of successful players, as I mentioned before, I am focused on the average players. I promote Go for the benefits for everybody, not only who manage to get on top.
-Thanks for the tip for Think And Grow Rich, it seems an interesting lecture.
-I do not try to prove that engaging in Go might lead to some certain success. Actually I preach that any intellectual activity done with passion is as beneficial as playing Go, but this is just a personal belief that may stir controversy, so I just touch as a matter of fact I will not pursue discussion on it. I may be wrong, and Go may be a better tool than any other tool, and I try to find proofs. This survey being an feeble attempt in this endeavor.
-I meant success as something relative, as meant those from the study. Here you can watch the presentation and decide better of what type of success the study took in visor. https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance

Assuming you had an effective way to actually measure generalized intelligence, I’d still only expect it to correlate loosely with Go playing ability within the Go community. Intelligence isn’t one dimensional. There’s many factors that contribute to generalized intelligence, only a few of which are relevant for becoming a strong Go player.

As an analogy, consider decathletes. Decathlon score is correlated to throwing ability. Among a general populace, strong decathletes are more likely to be good throwers than weak decathletes. However, among a population of competitive throwers, decathlon score is likely far less correlated to throwing ability. Olympic-level decathletes would get blown out in a strict throwing competition against good high school athletes. Decathlon is a decent measure of general athletic ability, but throwing well correlates only to a few specific axes of athletic ability.

The best Go players are intelligence specialists, not intelligence generalists. Just as good athletes tend to be good, if not great, at most athletic tasks, so to are good thinkers good at most thinking tasks. However, in terms of actual strength among competitive athletes, or competitive go players, specialization will win out of general ability every time.

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Hmmm, I assume that those IQ tests are. They are a century old, so I hope they are up to something, and are not just a scam, as many other scams in our life. For sure there are a lot of scam tests, but as I pointed before, there still can be found some genuine ones.

Good analogy. Did anyone made some statistics about benefits of decathlon versus other sport in physical development?

Oops, it seems you had not read my last post. I said I am not interested in top players, but regular players. I am curious about them, and I would really like to see a version of GoRatings where beside the GoR column is an IQ column, But I am not able to do that version of Gorating, so I try to make something similar, for players to Whom I have access. However, here on this forum the number of replies to my survey is at a pathetic level. I assume that who wants to answer, did it already. Now I need to go to some other forums if I want more answers,

I don’t think so. However, to be able to run, jump, and throw, all reasonably well, you need good general fitness. If you look at good decathletes, they tend to lag their specialist peers substantially for individual disciplines, though. (Especially throwing. That’s almost always their worst discipline, as the body types for runners and jumpers are closer to each other than they are to throwers.)

I read it, and I think that this trend will be there at lower ranks, as well. I think you’ll have a strong correlation at DDK/TPK, where a generally intelligent person can get the hang of the basics quickly, but the correlation will drop off steadily as rank increases, and the importance of specialized intelligence (e.g. reading ability) becomes increasingly important, and the skills that can be picked up by someone with generally good intelligence (such as learning the basics quickly) are possessed by and increasingly large portion of players.

This would be similar to throwing ability for decathletes. Compared to a non-competitive population of throwers, they probably do well, since they have good general fitness. As the competitive ability of their peer group increases, the correlation will decrease until it becomes negative at top levels, since someone with a more generalist build (as measured by higher decathlon scores) will likely be a worse thrower.

For Go, I’d expect a strong correlation at TPK/DDK, a moderate correlation at SDK, a slight correlation for amateur dans, and basically no correlation, or even a slight negative correlation, for pros.

In terms of IQ tests, they’re generally flawed because they represent the ability to test well, more than anything else. Someone that’s done a lot of similar standardized tests will have an inflated score. Someone that gets anxious about testing will tend to underperform their actual generalized intelligence. Someone that was tested a lot as a child will tend to overperform, compared to someone that wasn’t.

That’s for full on professional IQ tests, as well. Internet ones are near worthless. They’re too short and too inconsistent to be particularly accurate, or to be a good indicator of general intelligence. I haven’t taken it, but the one you’ve linked seems to have a vocab section (according to others), which will automatically lower the scores of non-native English speakers. You’ll probably still get some correlation if you get a lot of scores, but the noise level will be higher and the correlation weaker, especially for high scores, where more samples (i.e. questions on an IQ test) are needed to effectively measure a target variable.

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Surely this sort of testing is done for private schools (who gain funding based on the quality of their students and their performance), specialized academic training programs (camps and extracurricular programs targeting children who show high proficiency for learning, who struggle to learn, children with specific learning disabilities, special ed, and children seeking fun during the summer time), or some countries who place high importance on the quality of education (Japan for instance).

Then of course there are scientific groups who test large groups of children over decades for their own purposes, and later release that information in Case Studies or make their findings available to various sources in the world of academia. It is likely that data like this has been religiously collected since the early 1900’s. Have you put any time into searching for such information?
 

  1. The group who shows a natural interest in Go will have a genuine relationship with the hobby, based on interest or passion. I don’t think their general IQ will be affected any differently than any other group though. Unless you are trying to draw a correlation between how IQ is more strongly affected when somebody focuses and cares about an activity, versus when they aren’t focused because they do not care. Showcasing the benefits of practice versus deliberate practice.
     
    The more closely you pay attention, the greater your returns. 30 minutes of deliberate practice on a musical instrument, each day, will yield far greater results in one year than 2 to 6 hours of practice a day. This principle seems universal. I doubt Go is the exception to this law of learning.
     
  2. The second group, who is motivated for prizes but is not actually interested or passionate about Go, is still taking part because they want to. They are likely to be the more competitive group, since winning is all they care about. Their relationship with Go may be healthy or unhealthy, but it is likely that they take the game even more seriously than those who have a genuine interest.
     
    I say this because genuine interest, like mine in Go, leads to an exploration of the hobby. The person is likely to wander from topic to topic, as their heart desires and their personal interests dictate. I, for example, have taken a particular interest in the rules and history of Go. I enjoy teaching new players and talking about Go as much as I enjoy playing the game. I go from interest to interest, within the sphere of Go, and am quite happy to do so. I am exploring and it is a natural process, that has evolved organically.
     
    But those who come to win, those who have a singular focus and purpose, are likely to excel much faster. Because they have no interest in Go itself. Go is merely a means to an end. The vehicle that will take then where they wish to go on a path that must be traveled to reach their goal. Sounds like this group is far more likely to practice deliberately. It makes sense, that if their motivation is true, this group will have the highest general IQ increase, as a result of pursuing Go.
     
  3. This group sounds like kids in Korea and China, less so in Japan, that forgo a standard education in school and instead attend Go school from an early age. Surely there have been studies related to this group of students, considering how common this practice is in these countries. I’m sure there are folks who have questioned if these individuals are being robbed of a bright future because their parents wanted to raise professional Go players instead. Have you tried looking into this at all?
     
  4. As I mentioned in my response to your first quote in this post, private schools and science and case studies are already available that have this information. You just need to look for it.
     

There was a smaller study that tested ADHD children using Go? Is this something you’ve heard about or did you read it? If you read it, do you know if it was recent? I’d like to try and track this down myself. It sounds very interesting :smile:
 

Learning, researching, and teaching are my passions in life. I homeschool six children and they are all different ages. I have such a passion for this and I have yet to meet a student that I could not reach. Based on your description, I cannot discern exactly what your personal situation is, relating to Go and students. Could you please tell me more? I am very interested in your story.

I began teaching three of my own children Go recently. I have one child I figured would be interested in Go naturally, because he enjoys abstract games. I figured that my other two children would be more of a challenge, based on their personalities and likes/dislikes in life so far; and things did turn out that way.

The key point in teaching anybody anything, is first gaining their interest. If you can show them why something is worth their time, their interest, and cultivate a desire within them to experience and pursue something, then they will become self led. The key to this is passion. For individuals particularly adverse to something, you must find a way to make this thing (like Go) appeal to them.

You cannot teach someone who believes they already know something. Because their mind will be closed to the possibility of learning more or learning something new. And to the same effect, a person will be unable to make a genuine connection with a hobby if they have already made up their mind that the hobby is not for them. They have preconceptions, personal bias, and opinions.

It is your job to find a way to shatter their notions and open the floodgates of possibility. Effective teaching can do this. Though to be effective, you must first know your audience. With my own children, since I know my audience, getting them interested in Go was possible. It wasn’t too hard either. My 14 son had the mindset that other activities were worth his time more. But he can be competitive. So I made sure to engage my interested son in a family area regularly, speaking of the competition and having a loud and fun time.

It was only a matter of time before he gave it a shot. That was my “foot in the door”, my chance to take a shot at changing his mind, and I watched him closely. Whatever he showed the slightest interest in, whatever he reacted well too, I made sure our games highlighted that. I made sure his games included moments like that. I engineered the situation and a natural interest sparked.

Now he can’t put Go down and loves playing in Tournaments on this site as often as he can. I created a Tournament group here on OGS so that he has access to endless competition. He is a very happy convert, with genuine passion. My other son is 9 and he isn’t competitive at all. After four months he is still 25k and struggles to grasp how to play well at Go. In the beginning I tried to teach him what I was learning, but he just didn’t have the interest yet. On top of that, he was afraid of losing. And just like my 14 year old, there were other things that he wanted to do more.

For him, he didn’t enjoy playing the family that much. He took his losses hard and it affected his self esteem. I wasn’t sure how to handle this, as loss is a big part of Go. I myself struggled with Go affecting my self esteem, as I was struggling to win more than he was. Since I was still learning Go and my knowledge of Go was extremely shallow, I backed off and stopped inviting him to games. I chose to watch him instead and gave him his space.

Over the next two months he watched the three of us playing matches together. Unlike my 14 year old, this made him feel isolated from the group in a way that led to to further distance himself from Go. He would play a game here and there, but again he was taking the losses to heart to such a degree. It frustrates me now, looking back, that I didn’t realize how much losing affected him during that entire time.

I too had struggled with losing, although I had started to seek knowledge on how to progress. I searched forums and kept a look out for advice. I researched losing itself, looking for how to see it in a positive light. And when my relationship with losing had changed, I was able to sit down with him and began coaching him about his losses. Talked to him about how losing didn’t matter. Coached him a little bit on his games and mistakes he was making.

And this is when things turned around. He became okay with losing, understanding that he was learning each time that he lost. It stopped being a negative for him and he quit caring about his rank. I continued to coach him on losing and the more that I did this, the more open minded and interested he became towards Go. I got him started in the forum here and he began seeing different facets of Go culture.

It was becoming more than a game you simply played. There were other aspects of Go that were interesting too. Simply being exposed to different conversations here on the forum was a step forward. Now he understood more of what was possible. He started enjoying Tsumego, began joining tournaments in our group, took a couple new players under his wing for basic teaching and socializing about Go, and began taking part in our ongoing family conversations about Go. Slowly his knowledge of Go accumulated and as a result his interest grew. Now his interest in Go has became genuine. And the block for him was his relationship with losing, not the game of Go itself.

Go is now an activity and a hobby that we all share and partake of with each other. Each person has struggled in their own ways to find a way to make the hobby their own. Each person has found different aspects of Go that they enjoy and all of us are approaching the hobby from a unique perspective. We share camaraderie together and have recently expanded into watching Hikaru No Go and reading 81 Little Lions. The boys want to build our own Go board at home and that is an ongoing project now.

Many children respond wonderfully to the social aspect that Go can provide, if you can but show it to them. Children also have interests in different areas of information. If the game itself is not interesting enough to draw them in, perhaps there are other angles of the hobby which will interest them. I cannot stress enough how your own energy, interest, excitement, and relationship with the game will color your explanation of Go, when teaching others. If you want to interest children in the hobby, you need to have a good pitch. You need to be prepared and you need to be ready.

Many people simply cannot comprehend the possibilities that you see, cannot understand what is possible. You must show them. Just about every person needs to be sold on why they should consider giving up their precious free time and attention in pursuit of any hobby or new experience. You could be holding the worlds greatest food, toy, experience, book, vacation, etc… in your hands and all you need to do is tell people about it. Only to find that nobody cares because nobody understands why they should care or why it is important. As teachers it is our job to sell people on the benefits of learning. The how’s and why’s matter.
 

Concerning prizes, the size of the prize doesn’t matter. Knowing your audience and creating effective incentives does. For example, look at a business like a Carnival or Chucky Cheeses. Places where you spend money and are slowly rewarded tickets, which can be exchanged for cheap stuffed animals and cheap little toys that usually cost $0.25 to $1.00 each.

Kids see the prizes and see a game and they go wild. The very idea of winning a prize is exciting, even if the prize is trivial. You don’t need a trip to Disneyland to be effective. You need to be creative in coming up with prizes and solutions you can regularly offer to them. In my home I limit electronics usage, exchanging access for hard work and for showing responsibility.

When I can, I offer my free time and share special activities with them. When I was potty training, I offered ice cream and little candies. When I need physical labor done, depending on the size of the job, I have enticed them with comic books, movies, a pizza party, playing other board games of their choosing, Jeopardy with food rewards for correct answers, one on one time with me when I run errands, and whatever else I thought might interest them personally.

The value of something is always determined by the eye of the beholder. For something to be special, one merely must believe that it is special. Based on the examples of what you are offering as prizes to the children, or theoretically asking them what they would prefer as prizes, I think you are simply aiming too high.

Try to lower the bar, offer things you can provide for free or with very little financial investment. Rather than asking the kids what they want, thinking up a bunch of ideas that you can deliver. Then start trying different things out. Over time you will find options that children enjoy; things that work and that you can deliver without breaking the bank or getting parental consent forms for.

Can you tell me more about how you are approaching your students or the children in question, when attempting to get them involved with Go?

 

I agree completely. General Intelligence does raise the more that people gain experience and receive education. We are all blank slates when we are born. We all have a natural ability to survive and to adapt. However, those can be exponentially boosted through experience, knowledge, targeted training, and deliberate practice.

 

When you say that you are focused on average players, what exactly are you hoping to discover? A direct correlation between the usage of Go and a raise in general IQ? Or that Go can somehow facilitate greater general success in life (like learning a disciplined martial art)? If so, and you were able to prove this somehow, what would you do with that information? That is, how does knowing this affect you? Is it just a personal curiosity or? I’m very curious :nerd_face:.

 

I am a word nerd and this made me swoon. Well said ckersch88 :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

 

I think you make a very good assessment here. And I agree wholeheartedly. By the way, what does TPK stand for?

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20+k – Twenty-plus kyu

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I’ve performed a little research on the topic to help you show that doing further research is definitely worth your time. I found someone on reddit who shares your interest in this topic.

  1. Milton N. Bradley is a big believer that children should play Go and that it helps teach them crucial skills that will help them be more successful in life. Here are several resources so you can explore his work:
     
    Goodreads.com Author Page
    Go For Kids by M. Bradley
    Milt’s Go Page
         ○ The Legend Of The Mysterious Stranger
         ○ Go In Japanese Education
         ○ Why Every Child Should Learn Go
         ○ Go And The Gifted Child
         ○ There Is No Satisfactory Alternative To Go
         ○ The South Huntington After School Go Program
         ○ Teaching The New “R” of Reasoning

  2. All About Influence in Go/Weiqi/Baduk - Kids and Go (articles about Go education for kids)

  3. Baduk (the Game of GO) Improved Cognitive Function and Brain Activity in Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (pdf, [web](https://europepmc.org/articles/pmc4023088

  4. Spreading Go Among Europeon Youth, Report of 1st Workshop (192 pages)

  5. Play Go and Grow! Why Every School and Library Should Teach Children Go by Roy Laird, Ph.D.

  6. 10 Great Habits for Children Playing Weiqi

  7. Weiqi Wonders: Conversations About the Game of Go in China (documentary, government article)

  8. Benefits of Weiqi | Intrinsic Value of Weiqi

  9. School Teachers and other Youth Go Organizers information (helpful organizing kids, lots of links)

  10. Comics aimed at getting kids interested in Go (might be helpful to you)

  11. Hikaru No Go: Manga/Anime targeted at child audiences to develop interest in Go (wiki, series)

I did not bother to list the trove of online conversations, simpler blog posts, reddit and forum discussions and Go and how it affects children positively, basic awareness raising articles about go and kids, parents gushing about how it has made a difference in their own children’s lives, Go schools talking about how successful it is and how they work, Sensei’s Library articles related to individual’s experiences attending Go schools from childhood, or anything of this nature.

There is an entire world out there just waiting to help you answer your questions and search for and prove the truth you so passionately hold in your heart. If this is more than a passing fancy to you, if this question a hole in your mind, then I encourage you to just start looking and connecting with other like minded people. There are resources galore out there, models that work, people who can help you find ways to develop children’s interest naturally or how to better incentivize them to enter this hobby. You are not alone :hugs::nerd_face::wink:

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I strongly support OP’s believe that some correlation exists. I also strongly support that tests that measure things like vocabulary are deling deep into irrelevant territory. I am providing a link to a test provided by the danish branch of Mensa. The result is not to be taken too seriously, but it follows the exact same approach as the actual acces-granting test. Language is a complete non-factor for the actual test. The website itself is in danish, but I suspect people can navigate it regardless, if your browser doesn’t simply translate it.

https://mensa.dk/iqtest/

I’m at 132 myself. I’ve been playing on and off for 10+ years with several long breaks - my 500 OGS games since 2014 probably accounts for roughly a quarter of my played games. Haven’t studied too seriously, but watched a lot of Nick Sibicky some years ago. I’ve peaked around 4k.

 
Something worth noting is that Mensa themselves do not recognize the validity of any IQ Test available online :see_no_evil::

"Membership in Mensa is open to persons who have attained a score within the upper two percent of the general population on an approved intelligence test that has been properly administered and supervised. There is no other qualification or disqualification for initial membership eligibility.

The term “IQ score” is widely used but poorly defined. There are a large number of tests with different scales. The result on one test of 132 can be the same as a score 148 on another test. Some intelligence tests don’t use IQ scores at all. Mensa has set a percentile as cutoff to avoid this confusion. Candidates for membership of Mensa must achieve a score at or above the 98th percentile on a standard test of intelligence (a score that is greater than that achieved by 98 percent of the general population taking the test).

Generally, there are two ways to prove that you qualify for Mensa: either take the Mensa test, or submit a qualifying test score from another test. There are a large number of intelligence tests that are “approved”. More information on whether a test you have taken is approved, as well as information on the procedure for taking the Mensa test, can be obtained from the nearest Mensa office. Beware - there are no on-line tests that can be used for admission to Mensa. Feel free to contact Mensa for specific details about eligibility." (source)

Having taken an actual, supervised admission-granting test provided by Mensa, I can assure you that there’s no significant difference between the linked test and that one (other than the specific “questions” being different of course) .

It’s only natural that they don’t accept online tests for admission, given the many ways one could cheat in a non-supervised environment. I do not read the quote as “online tests are inherently useless and wildly inaccurate” - only as “we do not accept online tests as documentation”.

I recommend taking a course in psychometrics / test creation.

You’ll (hopefully!) learn about the reasons no online test could be useful to this end.

I don’t care enough about the topic to take a course. Can you give me the TL;DR? Are you implying that an online test is without any sort of merit and says nothing useful about anything, or merely that the result is indicative at best? I can agree to the latter. The first is ridiculous. If I possess basic math skills, I’ll mostly do well in a test for basic math skills, unless severely affected by other factors, such as nerves, which is probably LESS of a factor online than offline.

As far as IQ tests goes, the linked test is conceptually identical to the supervised Mensa admission granting test I took, with the main difference being using pen and paper, and being offline in a room with a bunch of other people doing the same test. Disregarding the ability to cheat in a myriad of different ways, I don’t buy that “browser as a media” is inherently flawed compared to pen and paper.

Well, the TLDR version is: “You can’t make that comparison (this way).”

A proper (spoken) presentation explaining the most important issues would take at least an hour (and at least 2-3 hours to prepare). Assuming the audience knows the terminology; longer if the audience doesn’t. Maybe if I can find the time. :blush:

Which comparison? The level of accuracy can be up for debate, but all things equal - a person who significantly outperforms another person on that test is highly likely to outperform the person on “generic logical problemsolving”, which is what I assume OP is trying to link to Go. While I suspect OP is correct that a correlation exists, I am open for the possibility that, well, maybe there isn’t. The linked test does away with the error source introduced by linking things like vocabulary to problem solving.

I am not saying that you should put the test result on your CV and treat it as fact, but for OP’s purpose of non-scientific data gathering (which I realize sounds like an oxymoron as I type it), it’s superior to OP’s linked test.

However, I can also appreciate that taking a 40 minute test to get an indicative number in order to respond to a forum thread for some guy who wants to correlate that with Go experience and progress, which has error source of it’s own, in order to maybe reach an entirely invalid conclusion because of the sample size is way too small, seems like en epic waste of time for anyone not already interested in the topic of IQ testing. And I’ll also admit that for anyone with that interest, the test merely provide a rough indication.

I do however maintain that it does, in fact, provide such an indication (for anyone who takes the test serious and remains focused throughout it’s duration).

I had been hoping that someone would post an alternative, since ehomba picked one without much understanding on whether it was a good test or not. Cheers to you for providing one :blush:

 

That is awesome. Now I know what the mensa test would look like. I’ve always wondered but had no intention of taking it myself. Very cool :sunglasses:.

 

Indeed. For what it’s worth, I posted my reply about mensa because I found it funny that they do not allow tests, but the test was coming from a mensa website. I didn’t mean to bash you. By this point in the conversation we’ve well established that we are far outside the realm of “exact science” with this experiment. I’m glad that you posted. I think you’re contributions have definitely added substance to the conversation :innocent:.

 

Haha. I like to think of what is happening here as armchair science. It is the humble beginnings of all philosophical thinking and scientific pursuit. You’ve got to start somewhere :nerd_face:.

Im dumb AF, and i was still able to learn how to place a stone on the board, so i guess they really don’t correlate at all :confused:

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This link will be very useful for the discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Social_correlations
Important notes from the link:
Explained variance of IQ in predicting school performance is 25%
Explained variance of IQ in predicting job performance ranges between 4-36%
Explained variance of IQ in predicting income is about 15%
IQ can predict something as complex as income with a 15% probability which is pretty good for a test if you ask me. People who try to disregard IQ as a measurement of intelligence have no basis for that. It is scary for people to accept that a test can be so good at determining a person’s intelligence because intelligence is one of the most valued virtues in our society.
So, what can we say about link between IQ and go level with the information above? It would be safe to say that IQ’s explained variance in predicting go level is at least about 20% when the person’s go experience in months is accounted for.

IQ is literally a form of measurement for human intelligence. I haven’t seen anybody disregard that here. Seems like a pretty silly argument :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:.

I don’t think people fear the test. I believe most dismissal comes from the fact that IQ tests are not an exact science. An “IQ Test” can be many things, good and bad, poorly researched and thoroughly researched, but all of these tests are grouped together under a single name; despite their vast differences. There are enough bad apples among the bunch to muddy the water and create plausible doubt.

Human intelligence is also a highly subjective topic. The idea that a test can completely judge intelligence is a pretty tall order. Read a book on the topic and you will see what I mean. Intelligence can mean a lot of different things and be judged in a lot of different ways. IQ tests tend to typically test about 2% of the human range for intelligence, according to one book I read recently on the topic.

Consider how primitive our understanding of the mind, neuroscience, and psychology are at this point in time, and it also seems preposterous that we have figured out how to fully gauge a persons intelligence. I think the people who want to believe that IQ tests are totally legit have trouble making their arguments (from what I have witnessed). If it was solid science, that would simply not be the case.

Safe to say? I personally disagree. Could you elaborate on your thought process behind your viewpoint :thinking:?

I believe your argument is not very sound. You’re not giving a reason why IQ would be a good predictor of intelligence, but instead stating that people dislike IQ measurement for being scared to accurately predict one of the most valued virtues in society.

However, it doesn’t make sense that if this test was indeed a very accurate measurement of intelligence, that it wouldn’t be used. Imagine how useful it would be for various types of things to be able to accurately measure intelligence? You could give your job applicants an IQ test and know which one is the smartest, sounds like something people would want to embrace.

The reason why it isn’t used as much in that way, is that IQ tests don’t measure intelligence very accurately. At best they measure the ability to do IQ tests. A test that people can improve on by doing it more often is not a test of intelligence, it doesn’t make sense to me that a person who gets better and better at IQ tests actually becomes more intelligent.

It is not at all safe to say IQ and Go would correlate, just because income, job and school performance correlate with IQ. For one, you would first need data on correlation between Go and income, job and school performance to be able to claim anything like that.