Re: Pastis & Conley

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 03:16:31 +0000 (UTC), Carl Fink <carlf@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On 2006-04-24, Antonio E Gonzalez <AntEGM111@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Apr 2006 14:59:10 +0000 (UTC), Carl Fink <carlf@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Half the people in the world are below average in intelligence.

More specifically, below median intelligence . . . or is that mean
intelligence?

Mean and median are just two different ways of dividing the group "in
half" (for most values of "half"). No matter how you divide the
group, "half of the people" will be in one section and half in the
other.

Median. Mean (necessarily) only if intelligence follows a bell curve or
other symmetrical distribution.

I was taught (and Wikipedia agrees) that IQ tests are normalized so
that the mean IQ is always 100 and the distribution follows a bell
curve:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ>

<quote>
IQ scores are normalized. It is not possible to infer an IQ from a
test without specifying a sample population, as scores are interpreted
so the mean IQ will be 100. The standard deviation (?) is usually 15,
but 16 for the Stanford-Binet IQ test, and 24 for the Cattell IIIB
test. IQs are always reported as integers; it is considered impossible
for the tests to measure intelligence with such a degree of precision
as would make further fineness meaningful. Tests are designed so that
the distribution of IQ scores is Gaussian; that is, it follows a bell
curve; however, it is disputed that this bell curve still holds at the
extremes (see: fat tail). A difference has been documented between the
IQ score distributions of left-handed and right-handed test subjects;
the distribution in left-handed people tends to cluster at the two
extremes of the IQ scale.
</quote>

--

"The nice thing about a mare is you get to ride a lot
of different horses without having to own that many."
~ Eileen Morgan of The Mare's Nest, PA
.

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