Hi On Mon, 26 Apr 2004, Peter Flom wrote: > Well, I have my PhD in psychometrics; I am (relatively speaking) a > defender of IQ tests. And, by and large, I agree with the statements > John Kulig makes here. But, when a serious person can seriously say > > "we can measure it better than we can define it" > > then we know that there is some problem. (I am NOT saying the statement > is incorrect, only that it is indicative of a general confusion in the > field)
But was it any different in the early days of physical attributes? Was there perhaps some point when people could measure "temperature" better than they were able to define it? Improvements in measurement and definition of any construct can surely go hand in had, sometimes with one leading, and sometimes with the other leading. > When we go further and try to correlate this murky thing called > intelligence with ANOTHER murky thing called 'real world success' then > we are really on a slippery slope. Perhaps a slippery slope to understanding? > When we insist on imposing linearity on this relationship, and we do > this ACROSS fields, and then meta-analyze the > results.....then.....welll.....GIGO. Wouldn't it be fairer to say that the analyses are UNDER-estimating the correlations, rather than that they are garbage? > One measure of 'success' is income. Here, I have seen studies that > show a curvilinear relationship between IQ and income, largely because > the highest paying jobs (CEO and the like) are usually taken by people > with modestly high IQs (in the 130 - 140 range, IIRC). And the highest > IQ people often enter professions that are NOT that high paying (e.g. > academia and research), but which offer other rewards > > But, of course, income is only one measure of success. > > Success WITHIN a field may be related to IQ (probably is) but the > relationship probably varies from field to field, and is unlikely to be > linear in ANY field; and, in most fields, may not even be monotonic. Which brings us full circle ... back to the whole question of when to transform variables. Best wishes Jim ============================================================================ James M. Clark (204) 786-9757 Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax University of Winnipeg 4L05D Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED] CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark ============================================================================ . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
