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Declining IQ of college grads

Darat said:
Depends if talking about mean or median averages?
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Or mode, which is what I think the stat is actually referring to.

ETA: iirc, and it's been a while, mean literally means the average, so if one of the others is meant, it should be qualified as such. That's what I meant about playing games.
 
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Thermal said:
Or mode, which is what I think the stat is actually referring to.

ETA: iirc, and it's been a while, mean literally means the average, so if one of the others is meant, it should be qualified as such. That's what I meant about playing games.
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Pretty sure its all the same in a normal distribution, which I'm pretty sure IQ is in a normal distribution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution#Statistical_inference

ETA: It is a good point though, IQ of college grads may not actually be normal distribution as it should represent the upper side of the normal distribution of IQ. And now I've exhausted my knowledge of statistics.

Not entirely exhausted. If they are comparing median or mode then that could easily be a lot lower for college grads than the mean. If we assume that the top 40% of IQ havers is going to college the distributions peak will be at the low end as a lot more folks have an IQ of 110 than 140. So, Mode is the most common number, that will clearly be a lot closer to 102 than 140. the median is the number in the middle of the list of numbers, also a lot lower than the average.

I don't actually think thats going on but it could be.
 
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ahhell said:
Pretty sure its all the same in a normal distribution, which I'm pretty sure IQ is in a normal distribution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution#Statistical_inference

ETA: It is a good point though, IQ of college grads may not actually be normal distribution as it should represent the upper side of the normal distribution of IQ. And now I've exhausted my knowledge of statistics.

Not entirely exhausted. If they are comparing median or mode then that could easily be a lot lower for college grads than the mean. If we assume that the top 40% of IQ havers is going to college the distributions peak will be at the low end as a lot more folks have an IQ of 110 than 140. So, Mode is the most common number, that will clearly be a lot closer to 102 than 140. the median is the number in the middle of the list of numbers, also a lot lower than the average.
I don't actually think thats going on but it could be.
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Disagreed on the hilite. One genius in the school drags the median way up,but you wouldn't have a corresponding idiot to bring it lower than the average. I would expect the median to be disproportionately high. Also, median averaging is generally ******* useless.
 
Thermal said:
Disagreed on the hilite. One genius in the school drags the median way up,but you wouldn't have a corresponding idiot to bring it lower than the average. I would expect the median to be disproportionately high. Also, median averaging is generally ******* useless.
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Generally, you are correct but in my example I'm assuming that college kids are the top 40% of IQs so median would be lower than the mean in that case. That distribution would have a peak at the low end and a long tail at the high end.

ETA, I'd actually expect the distribution of IQ in college to be something like a normal distribution with a peak higher than the general population but tilted toward the low end of college IQs.
 
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So, I went back to read the article in the OP more closely. There's an add for an online IQ test that claims 70% of americans have a below average IQ.
 
Thermal said:
Disagreed on the hilite. One genius in the school drags the median way up,but you wouldn't have a corresponding idiot to bring it lower than the average. I would expect the median to be disproportionately high. Also, median averaging is generally ******* useless.
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An outlier would affect the mean, not the median. Changing the value of the endpoints in a distribution does not affect the value of the central point.
 
Elaedith said:
An outlier would affect the mean, not the median. Changing the value of the endpoints in a distribution does not affect the value of the central point.
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Outliers affect both median and mean, but the median more dramatically.

Say you have 10 people, 9 with IQs of 100 and one with an IQ of140.

Mean average IQ: 104
Median average IQ: 120
Mode average IQ: 100.

Median is powerfully more affected by the outlier.
 
Thermal said:
Outliers affect both median and mean, but the median more dramatically.

Say you have 10 people, 9 with IQs of 100 and one with an IQ of140.

Mean average IQ: 104
Median average IQ: 120
Mode average IQ: 100.

Median is powerfully more affected by the outlier.
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The median is the middle score (100) when rank ordered. It is not affected at all by the value of the highest score.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
The same system largely prevailed in the US which, while having no formal system of titles, was just as class ridden as the UK.
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It still is.

Rich kids with no academic achievement or interest will come tongue to get college degrees. Smart kids from families that have never been to college will continue to pick non-college career paths that are more familiar to them.

My neighbor volunteers at the local high school to help combat that second scenario, but the fact that it still requires active intervention to steer even a few gifted kids towards college is an indication that it requires effort to overcome these class boundaries.
 
Dr. Keith said:
It still is.

Rich kids with no academic achievement or interest will come tongue to get college degrees. Smart kids from families that have never been to college will continue to pick non-college career paths that are more familiar to them.

My neighbor volunteers at the local high school to help combat that second scenario, but the fact that it still requires active intervention to steer even a few gifted kids towards college is an indication that it requires effort to overcome these class boundaries.
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Yeah all these kids were going to get in based on their academic ability:

https://www.businessinsider.com/college-admissions-scandal-full-list-people-sentenced-2019-9
 
Dr. Keith said:
It still is.

Rich kids with no academic achievement or interest will come tongue to get college degrees. Smart kids from families that have never been to college will continue to pick non-college career paths that are more familiar to them.

My neighbor volunteers at the local high school to help combat that second scenario, but the fact that it still requires active intervention to steer even a few gifted kids towards college is an indication that it requires effort to overcome these class boundaries.
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Dude... you could employ a more tasteful euphemism.
 
Brainster said:
The utility of that knowledge is actually quite a bit less than you might think. A college is looking at students and trying to figure out which ones can make the grade at their institution. Businesses are looking at college grads and trying to figure out which ones to hire. Nobody is comparing them to people in 1940.
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You are
 
A lot depends on what kind of degree you get.
I suspect a degree in the hard sciences or engineering is harder to get then a lot of liberal art degrees.
 
I doubt that's had time to seep through and be affecting average IQ scores. That being said it could be an interesting subject for some research.
 
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