John writes:
Robert,
This is very interesting. I’ve always kind of assumed the answer to be yes. Did you or anyone in your family attempt to go far in math?
Not really. I bombed hard in Algebra 2, and I never could pass Geometry.
My brother was pre-med, but he could not get through Physics I believe.
My mother and father both had a very hard time with Algebra and Geometry.
My sister hated Algebra and Geometry, and she had a very hard time getting through Statistics.
Everyone in my family except my late father has a genius IQ, and my father was not stupid (IQ 129).
Throughout my childhood, I disliked reading and writing but could keep good grades because of proper grammar and mechanics. My math scores were always 99th percentile or 100 in school/classes despite hating homework and studying. My SAT was 800m/590v, which is the largest gap I’ve ever heard of. I played lots of video games, Magic the Gathering, did logic puzzles, etc, but I rarely read anything besides things like strategy guides.
I wonder why someone would have a large gap in abilities. Were they nudged one way at an early age, or did the brain develop much differently before that path?
How could someone have a high IQ but poor math ability? I don’t know what a “standard” IQ test looks like, but those Hoeflin ones, besides the vocabulary problems, seem to favor mathematical types.
I agree that any smart person, not to mention a genius, ought to be able to do basic math. But since when is Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry and Calculus basic math?
To me it is all very simple. The way I see it is an IQ test simply measures how smart you are. In a phrase, how fast your brain works. I see it as a test of pure processing speed. And indeed, IQ correlates well with reaction time and how efficiently the brain uses glucose. It also correlates fairly well with brain size on MRI. High IQ people are just smarter.
They have faster brains, bigger brains and brains that work more efficiently. When you meet a high IQ person, it is usually quite obvious very quickly that you are dealing with someone who is very smart. Sometimes their eyes seem to move around very fast, and often their heads seem to move in small ways too.
They often blink a lot and move their heads a bit – that is because they are thinking very fast. They nod their heads a lot because they understand your sentence right away or before you even finished it, they finish your sentences for you, on and on. Also their emotional reactions are very fast. They react emotionally or give you nonverbal feedback to whatever you said or did almost as fast as you said or did it.
They are ahead of you.
You sometimes get the impression that the person in front of you is some sort of a mainframe or Cray computer buzzing away.
Slow people are just slow. They don’t get it. They don’t get jokes. They don’t get all sorts of things. You always have to be explaining what you meant to them. They don’t get it right away and they certainly are not ahead of you.
Now it makes perfect sense to me that very fast, smart and efficient brains might have strengths and weaknesses. One very fast and efficient brain may be very heavily loaded towards verbal and relatively weak in mathematics. Another may be superb at mathematics but relatively poor in verbal skills. Some very fast brains may be excellent at art or music and maybe not even so good at verbal or math, although excellent musicians and artists are often good at other things, especially verbal skills.
There is also a sort of a mechanical brain which is excellent in visuospatial skills. I have seen the statistics on IQ by profession and you would be stunned how many auto mechanics have IQ’s of over 130.
Why would a very fast and efficient brain be excellent at everything? I can barely draw a stick figure. I can’t play two notes on a guitar. I flunked out of high school Geometry. And I have a genius IQ.
