Incredible work. The most surprising thing is that the top spots were occupied by people with Jewish descent. Heck, I didn’t even know there was a Jewish population in Argentina. Two questions. First, do you think your data supports the idea a larger standard deviation for males on iq tests and intelligence in general. Second, if I am not wrong the test was normed on the Argentinian population( I have just now seen that it was normed on the Chilean population my question still apply). If so, wouldn’t it be bad thing to compare the iq of the average student graduate of the USA and the iq of your sample of student as they have taken tests that were normed differently. Also I am interested in running the same experience in my university. It is considered the worst university for engineering in my region. It would be interesting to see if the students score reflects its reputation.
100 is always the median in a normal distribution. I wasn't comparing it to the US IQ.
There is no good data specific to Argentina. Lynn's number is just an estimation, it is unwise to take it at face value.
The best I got is the data on Chile, which is a bordering country with a similar socioeconomic and educational level; they score 7 points lower than the US. I used those WAIS-IV norms.
This has nothing to do with the US. The mean IQ in Argentina is around ~87, because that's roughly the intelligence level Argentinians display relative to the English. The mean in England, which the IQ scale is normalised to, and from which other populations are compared, is assigned a numerical value of 100. IQ has to have an arbitrary mean, because we have yet to come up with an absolute scale of intelligence starting at 0.
If you want to renormalise IQ to an Argentinian scale, then Argentinian mean IQ would be 100; but the English mean IQ would be 113 — and what you're talking about wouldn't exactly be "IQ" as everyone understands it, since you've normalised it to a different population.
We could drop the numbers completely, and instead use z-score relative to the English population. So Argentina would be negative 0.866 standard deviations relative to the English benchmark.
Okay, so you're the same guy from Reddit. I share the response I gave you on there for the Substack audience:
"That's not accurate.
The current scoring method for all IQ tests is the 'deviation IQ'. In this method, an IQ score of 100 means that the test-takers performance on the test is at the median level of performance in the sample of test-takers of about the same age as was used to norm the test.
I have the Chilean, Spanish, and Mexican versions of the WAIS-IV manual of administration and scoring (which provide the norms).
None of them states what you just wrote with high certainty. All of them place the mean at 100 even though they are 7 to 10 points lower relative to the US. They adjust by just lowering the threshold."
Incredible work. The most surprising thing is that the top spots were occupied by people with Jewish descent. Heck, I didn’t even know there was a Jewish population in Argentina. Two questions. First, do you think your data supports the idea a larger standard deviation for males on iq tests and intelligence in general. Second, if I am not wrong the test was normed on the Argentinian population( I have just now seen that it was normed on the Chilean population my question still apply). If so, wouldn’t it be bad thing to compare the iq of the average student graduate of the USA and the iq of your sample of student as they have taken tests that were normed differently. Also I am interested in running the same experience in my university. It is considered the worst university for engineering in my region. It would be interesting to see if the students score reflects its reputation.
> An average person in Argentina scores 100
No they don't. The mean IQ in Argentina is ~87 according to Lynn: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country
100 is always the median in a normal distribution. I wasn't comparing it to the US IQ.
There is no good data specific to Argentina. Lynn's number is just an estimation, it is unwise to take it at face value.
The best I got is the data on Chile, which is a bordering country with a similar socioeconomic and educational level; they score 7 points lower than the US. I used those WAIS-IV norms.
This has nothing to do with the US. The mean IQ in Argentina is around ~87, because that's roughly the intelligence level Argentinians display relative to the English. The mean in England, which the IQ scale is normalised to, and from which other populations are compared, is assigned a numerical value of 100. IQ has to have an arbitrary mean, because we have yet to come up with an absolute scale of intelligence starting at 0.
If you want to renormalise IQ to an Argentinian scale, then Argentinian mean IQ would be 100; but the English mean IQ would be 113 — and what you're talking about wouldn't exactly be "IQ" as everyone understands it, since you've normalised it to a different population.
We could drop the numbers completely, and instead use z-score relative to the English population. So Argentina would be negative 0.866 standard deviations relative to the English benchmark.
Okay, so you're the same guy from Reddit. I share the response I gave you on there for the Substack audience:
"That's not accurate.
The current scoring method for all IQ tests is the 'deviation IQ'. In this method, an IQ score of 100 means that the test-takers performance on the test is at the median level of performance in the sample of test-takers of about the same age as was used to norm the test.
[[Reference](https://3lib.net/book/2551537/aca84b), pp. 31–32]
I have the Chilean, Spanish, and Mexican versions of the WAIS-IV manual of administration and scoring (which provide the norms).
None of them states what you just wrote with high certainty. All of them place the mean at 100 even though they are 7 to 10 points lower relative to the US. They adjust by just lowering the threshold."
I don't understand why you keep arguing. I already told you that I'm not comparing the Argentinian population to international ones.
Yeah, at the end in the "complete data report".