[lbo-talk] It's the IQ, stupid

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Tue Aug 31 07:28:48 PDT 2004


Miles Jackson wrote:


> Do you mean the SAT? As you might expect, SAT is strongly
> correlated with IQ score (they both measure the same kind of
> academic smarts). For both men and women, SAT (like IQ) is a
> reasonable predictor of academic achievement.

I believe that "academic smarts" also tends to correlate with the number of TV sets or the number of bathrooms in the familiy home. All the correlations in the world can't, it seems to me, establish the existence of _g_, and separated from that claim, IQ scores become just one of a complex of (I suspect) thousands of correlations. They obviously not only correlate but do indicate "test-taking ability," but are not an indication of the _reasons_ for test-taking ability, only for the bare empirical fact.

Carrol



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