Re: Is IQ usefully predictive? (and not in this case)

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Sat Aug 25 2001 - 12:54:58 MDT


John Clark wrote:
>
> The man with the highest IQ ever may have been a fellow by name of
> William James Sidis (1898-1944). Sidis's IQ can only be approximately
> known even though he took many IQ tests, the tests were just not up to
> the task, he was off the charts. Abraham Sterling, director of New York
> City's Aptitude Testing Institute said " he easily had an IQ between 250
> and 300, I have never heard of anybody with such an IQ. I would say
> that he was the most prodigious intellect of our entire generation".
>
> So what did this "prodigious intellect" accomplish in his 46 years?
> He wrote a book about streetcar transfers, that's about it.
> It seems high IQ and genius are not quite synonymous.

Depends on how complex your streetcar system is, though, don't you
think? Such a tome would be highly useful for queueing and switching
theory, eh?



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