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A certain amount of familiarity with those questions also colors it, with the bat/ball question in particularly being almost a cliché.

And IQ tests are fairly meaningful, and also limited, in roughly the same way measuring a person's height is a useful way to understand how large they are.

The first one is a practice question for the NYS GREs. So...I figured that one out about ten years ago (took me 15 seconds to work it out). Third one took about ten seconds, followed by a “duh” from me, and the second one I had to think about for a minute and went “wow, duh” yet again.

These aren’t actually hard tests, they’re more about patience and realizing the first answer isn’t always right.

Whirlwind wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I've seen far too many book smart people with little to no common sense. A good example of this was when I was asked to help some med students at Tulane move an upright piano.
I got to their house and they loaded it up into the back of my truck, and without tying it down or securing it, said they were ready to go.
I asked how they expected to be safe with a loose piano when I went around corners and was told by one of them that weighed, maybe 140, that he would hold it.
Luckily for them I had a bunch of rope behind my seat and we tied the thing down, but I halfway wanted to let them try it their way just to see the education they would have gotten and how many corners I would have taken before they asked for a rope.

Here you are confusing 'intelligence' with 'experience'.

They just had the experience of loading the whole piano into the truck. I probably wouldn't be able to draw a 100% correct force diagram but even without having experienced a loose piano while driving I wouldn't assume that holding it is a useful option. Maybe I just have some instinctive wary of a heavy piano, that one manages to load on a truck, and where the truck has enough power to move the whole thing. That just doesn't sound like a situation where me holding onto stuff would work out okay.

Maybe those piano people have watched too many of those videos where somebody transports way too big stuff in way too small cars? That could create odd expectations.

timetowaste85 wrote:These aren’t actually hard tests, they’re more about patience and realizing the first answer isn’t always right.

The questions are phrased to lure you into easy but wrong guesses instead of thinking about it. It's more psychology than mathematics.

 Polonius wrote:

And IQ tests are fairly meaningful, and also limited, in roughly the same way measuring a person's height is a useful way to understand how large they are.

Except just height isn't a good measure of how heavy someone is because its missing a variable. Someone could be 6.5ft tall and thin as a rail. Or they could be as wide as they are tall.

Its one reason why BMI is kind of useless to indicate obesity because it doesn't distinguish between a pound of fat or a pound of muscle. Most body builders are, according to the BMI, obese because they weigh more than someone of their height should, even though they're clearly healthy and not in anyway actually obese.

Yes, that's true.

However you could combine BMI with body fat percentage (from a different test) and height, and be able to select people who correlated with being large, strong and fit, purely from their stats. But you still might select someone with undetected early stage cancer, or a wide range of serious allergies or some other health problem.

Intelligence testing is a bit like that. You can take a set of tests, and the results correlate generally with the ability to do abstract thinking. It doesn't guarantee people will be good at any specific job.

Thats what I said.

You might use BMI or an IQ test in combination with other stuff to get actual results, but in and of themselves they are worthless.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

And IQ tests are fairly meaningful, and also limited, in roughly the same way measuring a person's height is a useful way to understand how large they are.

Except just height isn't a good measure of how heavy someone is because its missing a variable.

That was the entire point.

I wonder how much memory is affected on a larger scale by frequent exposure to real life economic stress, violence in media, pornography, abusive environment, various kind of toxic stress in childhood, etc.

 Vulcan wrote:
Or difference in education, too. A college professor from 1910 would seriously struggle with a lot of concepts that the modern college freshman takes for granted. A factory worker from 1910 would be sunk without a trace.

Also culture. If you aren't of the same culture or segment of society as the author, you aren't going to innately grasp the unconscious references, and thus perform relatively poorly.


Of course, it's important to reference what the Intelligence Quotient test was designed for anyway, and what it actually meant. It's an expression of Apparent Age (based on test results) divided by the Actual Age of the test taker. If a ten year old takes a test gets results expected for a ten year old, his IQ is 100. If he performs the same at 20, his IQ his 50. It is entirely expected that the results would go down with time (though results would also go up, yielding a far less stark measure than my example), as it was intended for identifying gifted or struggling children.


In the modern version, all the test does is measure how well you take tests. That isn't a particularly useful life skill.

 Grey Templar wrote:


Its one reason why BMI is kind of useless to indicate obesity because it doesn't distinguish between a pound of fat or a pound of muscle. Most body builders are, according to the BMI, obese because they weigh more than someone of their height should, even though they're clearly healthy and not in anyway actually obese.

Though bodybuilders tend not to be that healthy, let alone 'clearly healthy.' They don't have obesity related health problems, but they tend toward a lot of stress, strain and fracture problems which is also unhealthy, just in a different way.

Voss wrote:
Of course, it's important to reference what the Intelligence Quotient test was designed for anyway, and what it actually meant. It's an expression of Apparent Age (based on test results) divided by the Actual Age of the test taker. If a ten year old takes a test gets results expected for a ten year old, his IQ is 100. If he performs the same at 20, his IQ his 50. It is entirely expected that the results would go down with time (though results would also go up, yielding a far less stark measure than my example), as it was intended for identifying gifted or struggling children.

So, many cognitive and neuropsychological tests for children will provide an apparent age, but the Wechsler tests (either for children or adults) are normalized to a bell curve, not to age. So, 100 is median, 115 is one standard deviation above, 85 is one standard deviation below, etc. This maps with the classic definition of intellectual disability as being two standard deviations below the mean, or under 70. (Although modern practitioners will also look into adaptive functioning, as many people with IQ scores in the 60s are high funcitoning and not intellectually disabled)

FWIW, the opposite of that is also used as a guidepost for gifted individuals, with 130 being the IQ threshold for things like Mensa.

In the modern version, all the test does is measure how well you take tests. That isn't a particularly useful life skill.

First off, being good at taking tests is a valuable life skill for many professions, so don't knock it.

Second, IQ tests have value, especially when professionally administered. They measure raw ability in things like verbal reasoning, processing speed, memory, etc. They're key to diagnosing things like learning disabilities, due to a gap between intellectual ability and academic achievement. They don't measure everything of value, and they don't rule your destiny (I've known miserably unemployed geniuses and average millionaires). But... you aren't going to meet a lot of PhDs with IQ scores under 110, or skilled tradesmen with IQ scores under 80.

OTOH, you will find a depressing number of people with high IQs working menial jobs.

Once I left College, it has been all downhill!

Going was the problem in the first place.

 BuFFo wrote:

Once I left College, it has been all downhill!

Going was the problem in the first place.

Only cause employers are hell bent on hiring "experienced people only!" All entry level position nowadays do not pay nearly enough of a living wage. Or some of them do, but they're hiring lawyers, who have paid $100,000 for their degrees, and are starting on a $40,000 salary. They'll pay it off in their 40s. If they don't buy a house until they're 50. I've been lucky in that i live in NYC, and demand for higher degree jobs are actually pretty high. I was hired straight out of part time paid internship.

Edit: My dad bought a house in his early 30s upstate, and we were living in Midtown Manhattan, with rent at only $900 for a 2 bedroom. $40,000 30 years ago and $40,000 now is so absolutely insane. No one has ever imagined in their wildest dreams how different it was going to be, not even the most veteran of economic analysts.

Eh.

Abstract is something I’m good at. I can generally fill in the blanks when needed.

But applying smarts to say, my car that died yesterday (RIP Car you ar in hevven wiv da angles and Lady Di), nope. Just not gonna happen. Not without a manual and several hours and vehicles to study. Bloke that helped me? Genius when it comes to motors. Yes, I bought him a pint!

And this is why schools need to balance their syllabus. How many more kids would get maths if shown how it applies? Rather than purely abstract sums, use real life examples. Such as the load for electricity and data, and how to best share it. In terms of ‘resistant materials’, show, don’t tell.

Everyone is a genius at something. And the wider we cast the educational net, the fewer kids will drop out or switch off.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

And this is why schools need to balance their syllabus. How many more kids would get maths if shown how it applies? Rather than purely abstract sums, use real life examples. Such as the load for electricity and data, and how to best share it. In terms of ‘resistant materials’, show, don’t tell.

And it needs to be more than a theory of "Train A leaves station 1 at 2:30pm and travels at 40 miles and hour etc..." which is not only abstract but also rather daft because most students are going to go "but I don't do that, I just look at the arrival times board!"

Ergo its got to not just be practical, but the teacher needs to be able to show how its practical. If need be bring the car engine into the classroom to show how the maths works on it. I think school is trapped with too many teachers who either fell into teaching or wanted to be teachers and thus don't really inspire their students with the wide range of skills and jobs and practical applications of what they are learning.

Practical and applicable to modern life I guess is what we’re both getting at

And believe, it’s not the teachers at fault. It’s the syllabus. For us in the U.K., it’s kind of half arsed academia or nowt. Me, I did alright with that, but could’ve been challenged more. For those with different educational gifts and leanings, it was all but impenetrable.

For instance? Physics just did not land for me. Like, at all. Yet I’m still aware of what Physics actually is, why it matters, and why ever increasing out understanding is bloody important for the future of our species. Ditto biology and chemistry.

Now granted, one of my teachers turned out to be a (now convicted) person you really don’t want your daughters around. Ever. And he wasn’t much cop at it. But the same syllabus by different teachers yielded the same ‘huh’ result in me.

The UK Syllabus has become very political both from the government end and the school end. Government wants higher passing rates to make it look good whilst schools want the very same as it defines their budgets, attention and general ability to get students and teachers. State is tricky, but private is really hot on the league tables to the point where they want to offload under performing students a bit too much on "special needs" rather than actually focusing on teaching them (because its easier to weed out weaker students and just attract smart ones to start with).

I'd wager if the league tables went away it might do a lot of good in general for helping schools focus on teaching their students rather than gaming the system.


I also dislike how the syllabus system basically breaks if you go beyond the core text book learning. Because of how its marked students are expected to parrot specific answers to specific questions (which is being reinforced now with more multiple choice exams) ; however any student that learns more than the text book or researches outside of that book, or any teacher that encourages it ; all of that can result in a lower mark because they give answers (that might be more up to date and correct) that are not in the mark scheme.

Then they expect you to go to uni and flip that entire 15 or so years of teaching on its head

I’d agree with that.

League Tables are ultimately flawed anyway. Basically. The schools that got lucky when they were first introduced just kept on improving. Those less so? Only gone one way.

And that can be down to any number of factors, ineffective leadership, group of hard core dill weed students disrupting as much as possible, single bad teacher screwing over multiple classes.


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Though it might help if the Education Secretary actually had to come from a relevant profession.

I.e......NOT MICHAEL GOVE.

I encouraged my daughter to do International Baccalaureate instead of A Levels partly because the UK system is so politically driven, while IB is organised by a multi-national organisation which is pretty apolitical. I also think it's a better curriculum, offering a more broad-based education like Scottish Highers.

To got back to the Maths issue, though, lots of basic maths already is taught using real world examples, from "take one apple away from a bag of five, and how many left" to the questions about two trains on opposing tracks st different speeds and departure times.

It doesn't seem to help. In fact when you go back to those intelligence testing problems I mentioned previously, people tend to get them wrong precisely because they seem like real world problems, when they need to be analysed abstractly.

I think that maths becomes abstract very quickly when you get beyond the basics. Even something like calculating the area of a circle can't be done without an irrational number. What about differential equations, probability, and statistics? Lots of this stuff is very abstract and counter-intuitive.

Having said all that, I think it's important for everyone to be taught up to a reasonable level which at least allows them to critically evaluate things. In statistics, for instance, if you don't understand how the appearance of a chart can be altered by selection of the scales, you're probably getting conned every time you open a newspaper.

 Overread wrote:

And it needs to be more than a theory of "Train A leaves station 1 at 2:30pm and travels at 40 miles and hour etc..." which is not only abstract but also rather daft because most students are going to go "but I don't do that, I just look at the arrival times board!"

Ya know, reading this bit I suddenly thought of how there's probably only one crew of people in the world that actually do this (albeit a bit differently). . . and that's Jezza, Hamster, and Captain Slow. Usually it took the form of, "if clarkson leaves London in a POOWWWWWAful Lamborghini, James May is driving a boat, and Hamster is using public transport, who will arrive in Edinburgh first" type nonsense. . . but still. it's that idiotic algebra question acted out in real life

 Overread wrote:
And it needs to be more than a theory of "Train A leaves station 1 at 2:30pm and travels at 40 miles and hour etc..." which is not only abstract but also rather daft because most students are going to go "but I don't do that, I just look at the arrival times board!"

Ergo its got to not just be practical, but the teacher needs to be able to show how its practical. If need be bring the car engine into the classroom to show how the maths works on it. I think school is trapped with too many teachers who either fell into teaching or wanted to be teachers and thus don't really inspire their students with the wide range of skills and jobs and practical applications of what they are learning.

The problem with this idea is that for a lot of math (and science, etc) you just can't do anything practical with it until you slog through 15+ years of theory. You aren't going to get a meaningful math lesson out of bringing a car engine in, at least not for the level of teaching where the students don't already know exactly why they're taking the class, because those students aren't going to be able to understand anything beyond the most superficial analysis of it. They aren't going to have the years of calculus, thermodynamics, etc, to go beyond "the burny stuff goes here and it makes this thing turn". And at that point why are you wasting time on presenting the wikipedia article for "car engine" when you have important material to cover?

The algebra questions about trains may seem ridiculous, but who cares about whether it's trains on tracks or buses or whatever. It's just a set of nouns so you can state the problem in sentence form instead of presenting an equation to solve. The point is being able to identify what known and unknown information is involved, and how the pieces relate to each other. You are never going to solve that exact problem in the real world, but if you ever want to go anywhere in science/engineering/etc you're going to need the skills it teaches. If you want to be a minimum-wage retail worker who actually does need to solve bus schedules regularly, well, feel free to ignore the math problems because they aren't fun enough.

The whole point of algebra is that it uses abstract variables, unlike simple arithmetic.

Here’s the difference in my own understanding in secondary school.

With Algebra, it as clearly explained the letters are just stand ins. We know they’re a number, but not which.

With English essays? Nobody told us the word count was a limit, not a target.

And man, I wish they allowed peeps to read fun books.

My comment on the car engine was a little tongue in cheek (since the average teachers desk likely hasn't room for a car engine); but it was more about showing the students where what they are learning can be taken as a career option. And its not just about focusing on cars or any other single subject, its about showing the students that what they are learning is powerful, important and can carry them further than the end of year examination. Sure some students will already know where they are going, others (most) won't have a clue. Both groups can have their own reason for considering any core subject "pointless". It's just one avenue of inspiration for students and I think teachers should have a more active understanding of where the skills they teach can be taken in the world.



Grotsnik I think what really kills English classes isn't just the choice of books to read, its the heavy over analysis that goes on that kills them. When you're reading into every line, comment, colour choice etc.... I think that really kills otherwise half decent books. I also think that many older-style books are thrown at students when the only ones that will enjoy or get them are those who have read more and thus have a wider mental vocabulary and a better grasp of different writing styles. Shakespear isn't just boring, but its also really hard to get into for many and I think that part of that is because they haven't read much and thus its very hard to get their head around such tricky writing structure and style.

Of course the same can be said of any subject - more is better - and that at some point the inspiration must come from the student themselves (you can lead a horse to water and all that).

You've made some good points.

I don't know what it's like today, but when I was at school we didn't start any serious analysis of texts until O-Level. At prep school in the late 60s, early 70s we read aloud the recommended books in class, or read at home, and did some discussion on them. I remember these included King Solomon's Mines (1885), The Hobbit (1937), Animal Farm (1945), 1984 (1948), Lord of the Flies (1954) and others I don't remember.

I see these titles as an accessible selection of boy relatable fiction covering a suitable time period given it was about 1970. The purpose was to get youngsters into the habit of reading and thinking about literature, and it worked for me.

I can't remember doing Shakespeare or anything earlier than King Solomon's Mines until O-Levels. (When I encountered the desperately boring Tess of the D'Urbervilles.)

However I disagree that Shakespeare is boring. Shakespeare's plays contain all kinds of interesting plots, ranging from comedy to tragedy, with the historical plays mixing the genres. The problem with Shakespeare is the difficulty of reading a playscript compared to a normal novel, and even more, the difficulty of reading the language. Once you get your ear in, though, it becomes obvious why Shakespeare is still regarded as once of the pillars of world literature.

I know from my daughter's education that a lot more attention is now paid to the development of creative writing, and this requires reading well-written stuff.

Of course as you've mentioned, you can't compel children to have an interest in anything, and it's difficult to get people to bother with things they are not interested in.

Shakespear does tend to come out at GCSE level (old Olevel as far as I'm aware); however my view is that up until that point they don't build up enough to it so when it hits its a heavy slap in the face for many. Of course we make it through the experience, many getting decent to good grades; but it doesn't instil a love of the literature in most. Instead it tends to have the opposite effect on most who are not already very keen readers.

I'd wager if they teased more of that style of writing and encouraged more general wider reading at younger ages, there'd be a greater retention and at least respect creep in. I'd also say that one major failing of reading Shakespear is that it's a script not a book; it wasn't designed to be read, but instead acted. This, in a major sense, robs part of the experience because a play (like a film) is made to have actors and vision put life into the words.

Books I had for GCSE?

MacBeth. The cheeriest of all plays.
Buddy - it’s grim up north. His Mam’s left, and his Dad is a drunk
Empty World - OH NOES PLAGUE WIPE OUT MAN!
Z for Zacharish - OH NOES NUCLEAR WAR WIPE OUT MAN!!!

What I was reading?

Pratchett. And latterly, some of the original, pre-Black Library novels.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Books I had for GCSE?

MacBeth. The cheeriest of all plays.
..........
What I was reading?
Pratchett. And latterly, some of the original, pre-Black Library novels.

I had just read Wyrd Sisters before having to do MacBeth in school.
I am sure that affected my report, but made the work a bit easier to get though.

I like reading. I did not enjoy having to read Madame a ovary in school. At all.

Everyone can find a book they don't like.

The problem is to find enough books that people do like to get them reading and keep them reading so that they have the chance to develop critical faculties instead of being turned off the whole thing.

I believe some good work has been done with graphic novel adaptations of Shakespeare.

(I remember learning Latin and French partly from Asterix books, because they are fun and you can cross read with the English version.)


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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Macbeth-Graphic-Novel-Original-Unabridged/dp/1906332037/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540211866&sr=8-1&keywords=macbeth+graphic+novel

Just offer a variety of approved books. Let the students have their picks.