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From: cam@edai.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.edai   031 667 1011 x2550)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Inheritance of IQ
Message-ID: <482@edai.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 31 Jul 89 13:59:28 GMT
References: <5453@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <2061@cbnewsh.ATT.COM> <5480@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <458@edai.ed.ac.uk> <602@visdc.UUCP> <3072@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <603@visdc.UUCP>
Reply-To: cam@edai (Chris Malcolm)
Organization: University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh
Lines: 27

In article <603@visdc.UUCP> jiii@visdc.UUCP (John E Van Deusen III) writes:

>In article <3072@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu

>I again want to state that all humans have essentially the same genetic
>compliment.  No one race of humans has "evolved" beyond the others, if
>evolution is defined to be the assimilation of a positive random genetic
>mutation.  What exists among humans is only variation in the expression
>of a common pool of genetic information.

Quite so. The same is true of dogs. But if it came to racing a poodle
against a greyhound I'd bet on the greyhound. On the other hand, if I
wanted a smart dog I'd get a poodle.

>The levels of genetic intelligence within a population fit a standard
>probability distribution; that is, 95% of the population is within two
>standard deviations of the mean.  

This is tautologous. It was PRESUMED by those constructing IQ tests that
the results OUGHT to fit a normal distribution; so they fixed the test
so that they did. There is no other reason why the distribution should
be normal: many simple physical measurements have skewed normal
distributions, bipolar distributions, etc..
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.edai   031 667 1011 x2550
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK