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IQ Estimates by College Major

From the US

http://www.statisticbrain.com/iq-estimates-by-intended-college-major/

Top 3

Physics & Astronomy
Philosophy
Mathematical Sciences

Philosophy ranked higher due to much better verbal reasoning.

What do people think? Any major surprises here.
Original post by skeptical_john
From the US

http://www.statisticbrain.com/iq-estimates-by-intended-college-major/

Top 3

Physics & Astronomy
Philosophy
Mathematical Sciences

Philosophy ranked higher due to much better verbal reasoning.

What do people think? Any major surprises here.


what do you suppose majors in the following subjects mean...

Secondary
Higher
Elementary

I think the writer has taken a table of SAT scores with subject headings and sub-headings and treated either as a heading and not proof read it... This doesn't strike me as careful work so I'm already pretty dubious about the whole thing tbh on the 'There's never just one cockroach in a kitchen' principle.
If you've ever tried to tackle philosophy in anything more than bitesize-youtube-clip-detail, you'll quickly see why Philosophy students are viciously intelligent, they have to be. It seems like a sad inditement on the state of society that a lot of them just end up as baristas... but as an economics student I don't deal much in normative judgments.
It would be interesting to see Medicine and Law in it, since Medicine and Law are post-graduate degrees in north america.
Reply 4
It's hard to judge a person by his major. I would say generally people who do physics or mathematics are ones who are good at Physics or Mathematics. if they weren't they'd be confused by the subjects and thus feel repelled by them. I imagine IQ tests are more of a measure of one's ability for mathematical reasoning, hence why those who do physics or mathematics are ones scoring highly on IQ tests. I would also imagine philosophy students as well as history students at the top institutions fairing quite well as these two subjects require good memory, reasoning and verbal skills.
Original post by Joinedup
what do you suppose majors in the following subjects mean...

Secondary
Higher
Elementary

I think the writer has taken a table of SAT scores with subject headings and sub-headings and treated either as a heading and not proof read it... This doesn't strike me as careful work so I'm already pretty dubious about the whole thing tbh on the 'There's never just one cockroach in a kitchen' principle.


These are different age ranges of education in the US system. Elementary is our primary so it would be a like primary teaching degree.

Original post by oShahpo
It's hard to judge a person by his major. I would say generally people who do physics or mathematics are ones who are good at Physics or Mathematics. if they weren't they'd be confused by the subjects and thus feel repelled by them. I imagine IQ tests are more of a measure of one's ability for mathematical reasoning, hence why those who do physics or mathematics are ones scoring highly on IQ tests. I would also imagine philosophy students as well as history students at the top institutions fairing quite well as these two subjects require good memory, reasoning and verbal skills.


If you look at the verbal SAT scores though that disproves physics students are only good at physics. They were only 30 points lower than English Lang students.Though is a bit more accurate for maths who were quite average on the verbal scores.
(edited 7 years ago)
Reply 6
Original post by skeptical_john
These are different age ranges of education in the US system. Elementary is our primary so it would be a like primary teaching degree.



If you look at the verbal SAT scores though that disproves physics students are only good at physics. They were only 30 points lower than English Lang students.Though is a bit more accurate for maths who were quite average on the verbal scores.

I didn't say physics students are only good at physics, what I said is that IQ tests test the ability to do physics and mathematics more than other abilities, hence why physics students perform better on IQ tests.
Original post by oShahpo
I didn't say physics students are only good at physics, what I said is that IQ tests test the ability to do physics and mathematics more than other abilities, hence why physics students perform better on IQ tests.


But they havnt taken IQ tests. They've done SATs which is about as good of test of a broad range of academic ability you can do. The IQ is just an estimate based on those scores. They've even rated Philosophy students higher than maths despite giving maths students a higher IQ. SO I think they've taken your reasoning into account.
SAT to IQ conversions tend to produce overinflated IQ scores. it is absurd to assume someone has an IQ of 123 because they have a verbal and quantitative SAT of 590 and 638 respectively. loads of people get scores in the 600+ range but only 10% of the entire population has an IQ above 120.

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