On Feb 27, 11:12*am, George Plimpton wrote:


These are hilarious. *It's *always* hilarious when people overstate
their IQ so egregiously. *IQ is distributed as the normal distribution,
with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. *An IQ of 145 would
be three standard deviations above the mean. *Approximately 99.7% of
values of a normally distributed measure lie within three standard
deviations of the mean, leaving 0.3% of values at the two extreme tails.
* If gummer claimed an IQ of "only" 145, in other words, he would be
claiming to have an IQ greater than that of about 99.85% of humanity.
But *no*! *gummer, *always* extravagant in his lying, has to add *more*
than another full standard deviation to his IQ. *If he had been just
slightly less extravagant and claimed an IQ of "only" 160, he would be
exactly four sigmas above the mean, which mean an IQ surpassing that of
99.9968% of humanity.

gummer isn't alone. *I regularly see people bragging about their own IQ,
or that of someone close to them whom they typically like, as being in
that range. *These people are simply bone-ignorant of statistics. *It's
not that any one person couldn't be that intelligent, but far too many
people casually claim such an astronomical IQ, and exactly like gummer,
*nothing* about them suggests that it might be true.


My experience is very different. I almost never see anyone bragging
about their
IQ. And I do know a few really bright people. Most of the really
bright people do their best to keep their IQ hidden.

It is pretty much like walking on water. You do not want people
knowing that you can , because the next thing you know they want you
to walk across the lake and get another six pack or two.


Dan