When people ask who has done the most to shape our world, we often think of those who have contributed the greatest technological advances. Certainly, the visionaries who launched the four Industrial Revolutions played a major role in reshaping our world. Beginning with the early steam-driven machines created by James Watt and Robert Fulton, to …
The brain of a young child grows at a prodigious rate. In a very short time, the child acquires verbal language, learns how to read and write, and absorb information quickly, retaining names and reciting snippets of television commercials with 100% accuracy. The child’s parents, having forgotten how quickly they acquired knowledge and skills during …
High intelligence is probably a prerequisite for genius, especially the kind of genius that is expressed in abstract fields like mathematics, physics and the other sciences, because measures of intelligence are highly correlated with performance in these fields. In the arts, high intelligence may be less important than a special creativity, skill or knowledge. Shakespeare’s …
How do you know if you’re a genius or just highly intelligent? Read More »
Intelligence is at a premium in fields that demand high cognitive skills. For many highly intelligent people, the existence of others who might be even more intelligent poses a threat to their supremacy. An example of the anguish experienced by those in the top intellectual echelon was captured in the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting. When …
What is the reason why many intelligent people are afraid of their IQ scores? Read More »
Intelligence, as measured by IQ tests is distributed throughout the human population like height and many other physical characteristics. Most men have a height that deviates a small amount from the average adult male height. In the US, the average male height is 5′9.5″. This means that 50% of American males are at or below …
How many people who get high grades are merely hard-working rather than gifted? Read More »
Highly intelligent people often immerse themselves so deeply into their research that they spend little time with people outside their domain, thereby limiting their exposure to the world at large. For example, those who have grown up in protected environments, without exposure to bullies and aggressive people, sometimes become pacifists, believing that a refusal to …
Are the highly intelligent sometimes naïve about life in general? Read More »
The short answer to your question is the following: If there is a non-significant correlation between two variables, it means that they are essentially independent, i.e., knowing the value of one variable does not provide any information about the other variable. For example, knowing the height of an adult does not provide any information about …
What is the difference between a non-significant correlation and a small correlation? Read More »
People at opposite ends of the intelligence spectrum suffer difficulties that come from their distance from normality. The world is designed for people of normal or average IQ. The graph below shows that those of IQ less than 85 constitute only 16% of the population as do those of IQ greater than 115. Both groups …
Who suffers the most difficulties: the intellectually-challenged or the gifted? Read More »
Have you ever been bombarded by a young child between ages 4 and 7 with an incessant succession of questions beginning with “why?” Children at this age have an irrepressible curiosity that stimulates their learning. It is an evolved characteristic of most higher order species that enables the young to learn what they need to …
The term “pseudo” comes from the Greek word, “pseudes” (ψευδής) which means “false.” So, a pseudo-intellectual is someone who falsely presents himself (or herself) as an intellectual. A person who is called a “pseudo-intellectual” is accused of masquerading as someone who is much more intelligent than they really are. Typically, a pseudo-intellectual is a person …
What’s the Difference between a pseudo-intellectual and an Intellectual? Read More »
