Importance of IQ

[lavalamp]

Or non-importance as the case may be.

I'm curious as to what people on this forum, ostensibly a fairly intelligent group, think about IQ.

For instance, if you have several candidates apply to you for a job (something technical, not just gardener or nanny), would their IQs be a factor in your decision as to who to hire (assuming such scores were available and you knew the standard deviation used, etc, etc)?

Drawing from personal experience, I once applied for a job working for a council as a webdeveloper, as part of the process they had all the candidates sit what was effectively an IQ test.

Where would you rank IQ compared to other factors, such as how hard someone works or experience in a certain field?

I've also included a poll, so feel free to leave any comments about that too.

Secondary objective: to see who breaks down first and brags about their IQ.

[Batalov]

"Bad IQ tests bad.
Good IQ tests good!
Rest of advice based on years of Jedi teaching experience, yes.
This advice I dispense. Now."
Voluntarily taking a reputed test (once!) and then never tell anyone results - good!
Any job related IQ test in disguise - is evil, but walking away in disgust will not do you any good. You will apply for the next job - and guess what? And next?
The hiring people at small companies strangely think that this "clever" trick will solve their problems -- even if they are hiring a person to essentially paint walls (and at large companies such creative morons will be eventually told by HR department to stop inviting a harassment lawsuit). Do they really think that they are all GLAT?! They are hiring a person to write a C# wrapper for an automatic email front-end for a corporate database, for Pete's sake! (true story here; I am talking about my new three-four doors down neighbor*, to be clear)

____________
*EDIT: ...and his intelligence is fine. I pitched him ProjectEuler and he solved just a couple of problems.
... #396 and #397. ;-)

[LaurV]

There are few threads around already, answering to these questions.
I only wnat to address this part:

Originally Posted by lavalamp

For instance, if you have several candidates apply to you for a job (...), would their IQs be a factor in your decision as to who to hire (...)?

Definitely not. I think the attitude is more important. I have friends and colleagues who are getting wonderful results in their job and life due to their positive attitude toward the work, they know and are able to follow their goals and fulfill their tasks better then others who would score higher on an IQ test. Generally, intelligent people are lazy (see why the the "Gagarin test" is called so).

Regarding your "secondary objective" if you read the threads I was talking about, you will see I already boasted about that

[gd_barnes]

Have you ever sat an IQ test? What does that mean? Do you mean: Have you ever taken an IQ test?

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by gd_barnes

Have you ever sat an IQ test? What does that mean? Do you mean: Have you ever taken an IQ test?

What else could it mean?

[gd_barnes]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

What else could it mean?

Several things:

Q: Have you ever sat on an IQ test?
A: No. It would be crumpled up if I had.

Q. Have you ever sat with an IQ test?
A: Yes. I've sat down with an IQ test in front of me. That doesn't mean that I took the test though.

Q: Have you ever sat in on an IQ test?
A: No. Why would I sit and watch others take an IQ test?

Serious question: Is "sit" slang for "taken" in British English? Or perhaps it's an incorrect translation from another language. The question actually confused me. I realize that a large number of people on the forum are not from the U.S.

The bottom line is that there is a word missing.

[davieddy]

I think most of us realize that there are some clever people here.

I would like to count myself among them (albeit going a tadge senile).

I don't think the IQ tests tell you too much.
Ernst said something similar somewhere else I can't remember.

D

:(

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by gd_barnes

Serious question: Is "sit" slang for "taken" in British English? Or perhaps it's an incorrect translation from another language. The question actually confused me. I realize that a large number of people on the forum are not from the U.S.

The bottom line is that there is a word missing.

Umm... no, there is no word missing, and inserting prepositions where there shouldn't be one is a bad thing . I can't speak for British English, but certainly in my particular variety of American English, "to sit a test" is synonymous with "to take a test" (admittedly not used very often, but I wouldn't call it rare).

Number 11: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sit



Actually, maybe it is a Britishism I picked up... but I have a feeling it's American as well.
Edit: It certainly is a Britishism, but I've only ever spent 2 hours in Heathrow once, so I must have picked it up from Harry Potter or something (To be clear, I'm fairly sure most of my friends would understand it, but I'll test that hypothesis tomorrow (if I remember ))

[gd_barnes]

Hum...one learns something new everyday, especially on this forum. Thanks for the websters reference. Being at #11 certainly means that it's not used much in that manner. In all honesty, I was about 80-90% confident in what it meant. The other 10-20% made me question it. I thought there might be a small chance that it meant something like "Have you reviewed an IQ test?"...perhaps to determine the validity of the questions as they relate to determining intelligence or the correctness of the answers.

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by LaurV

There are few threads around already, answering to these questions.

Originally Posted by davieddy

I think most of us realize that there are some clever people here.

I would like to count myself among them (albeit going a tadge senile).

I don't think the IQ tests tell you too much.
Ernst said something similar somewhere else I can't remember.

D

:(

Thank the Google.

Here it was a diversion from the OP: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthr...550#post310550

Ernst in turn links from there to here, which I also found via Google.
http://mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=5409

D, I think the stuff by Ernst you want is in the latter thread.

[lavalamp]

Originally Posted by gd_barnes

Have you ever taken an IQ test?

Stealing is wrong.

From reading those other threads, it seems that a lot of complaints about IQ tests are related to bad questions which are ambiguous or assume prior knowledge, and scammy online tests which not all online tests are, but perhaps the vast majority. I'd have to say that obviously some tests are better than others with regards to ambiguity, and there will always be scams. Deal with it I guess.

As far as what LauV said, "Generally, intelligent people are lazy", I think I would have to agree. But that does not mean of course that it is true in every case, it almost seems as though you are prejudiced against intelligent people because of it. I was not able to find anything relevent when searching for "Gargarin test" by the way.

If I were in charge of hiring someone, I too would probably rate attitude and motivation above IQ score, but if two candidates were on par in terms of those traits, then I would be fine with using IQ to break the tie.

I don't think that IQ tests are a perfect way of measuring intelligence, but it surely is at least positively correlated with it to some degree, and can therefore be used as an indicator.