Non-verbal IQ testing

[David Honig]

At 11:28 PM 10/17/01 -0000, Dr. Evil wrote:
>Every once in a while even cpunks need a little respite from ranting,
>and some refreshing topic which hasn't been beaten to a painful
>ad-hominem-death a thousand times already... so here's the topic.
>
>What methods are there for doing non-verbal, cross-cultural IQ tests?

This has "beaten to a painful
ad-hominem-death a thousand times already"
in other circles, however. Not that this 
prohibits the following rant: 

When I came to calif for grad school 
I encountered a very bright quasi-native (Puerto
Rican ethnically, though an Angelino, and now a Prof) who 
complained about the following on the SAT: 
	furnace:basement::blah:blah
as being geographically biassed towards cold-weather
folks (e.g., Princeton, NJ), as Californians
don't have basements and furnaces are in walls
or attics.

I was astounded that Calif's didn't have basements
(though their necessity if you have something called
a frost-line (brrr) has been explained here within
the last year) and instantly convinced, for the first time, 
of some geographical cultural bias[1]. 

However, this isn't enough of a problem to discredit so-called
"abstract" (e.g., geometric) tests, such as the Stanford-Binet
IQ,  or SATs, which I *do* think are largely valid[2].  Though it helps if 
you can figure out what the test-makers' point is; this is always a help.

In any case, Dr. E,  if you're still working on the 'exclude robots, include
humans' problem and thinking about IQ tests, well, wow.




----
[1] I now have a house in Calif, no basement,
furnace in the attic.  Hopefully the foundation will float when the local
clay "soil" liquefies next; our location wrt liquefaction isn't
too bad, compared to northern angelos.  

[2] The SAT attempts to predict college performance not actual
intelligence IIRC.  IIRC it does so reasonably well.
This too has been beaten to death.