Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: Bias on IQ tests
Message-ID: <18514@think.UUCP>
Date: 25 Mar 88 01:02:08 GMT
References: <153reneerb@byuvax.bitnet> <20779@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <3933@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <3943@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1222@cos.com>
Sender: usenet@think.UUCP
Reply-To: barmar@fafnir.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 32

In article <1222@cos.com> smith@cos.UUCP (Steve Smith) writes:
>In this light, I remember reading somewhere that two of the criteria for
>an intelligence test are:
>
>1.  Men and women must have the same average scores.
>
>2.  High status people must have a higher average score than low status
>    people.
>
>In other words, if the scores don't come out like this, the test "isn't
>valid".  This could explain a whole bunch about the way the scores tend
>to come out.

Remember, there isn't a univerally agreed-upon definition of
intelligence.  But, since a test must be intended to measure
something, the designers of the test must choose their criteria, and
this will involve some arbitrary specifications.  Thus, if the
designers believe that people usually have high status BECAUSE they
are of higher intelligence (or, if the designer believes that
environment affects intelligence, that high status results in high
intelligence), he would obviously doubt that a test that showed that
high status and high intelligence were not correlated was measuring
the same intelligence that he defined.

Whether this particular definition really correlates with what most
people consider intelligence is a separate issue.

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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