Chad IQ
Quote of the day: If John Kerry is elected, he will become the first President who can deliver both the State of the Union address and the rebuttal. –Jay Leno
In The Case of the Uncounted Ballots, La Griffe du Lion “evaluates the minimum IQ needed to cast a proper ballot for every voting system used in Florida” and uses it to predict who would have won the election, had the difficulty of punching chads or otherwise casting a ballot been removed.
[Update: according to iSteve, the IQ by state data does not come from the book cited and therefore the whole thing is presumably a hoax - see the comments.] For a national view, check out this chart of average IQ, average income, and 2000 election results by state - thanks to Matthew Yglesias by way of Gene Expression for the link. (Also from Gene Expression comes the intriguing idea that homosexuality is a meme.) Most of that data is also available from American Assembler in a prettier format. The data for IQ by state comes from IQ and the Wealth of Nations [the American Assembler has retracted this claim] so I assume it’s legit, but I’m still amazed that the average IQ by state can vary by almost two standard deviations. [End hoax. The rest is real.]
According to Richard Lynn, the average IQ in the US is 98. Unfortunately, his country list is in alphabetical order. I’d sort them for you, but this blog category is devoted to weird science, not political incorrectness.
[Update] I couldn’t resist. Here are the average IQ numbers for 185 countries, sorted by IQ. The data is copyright 2000, 2001, 2002 by R. Lynn and is reproduced here for educational purposes. Numbers marked with an asterisk are interpolated. The unordered list and citations for the non-interpolated data are available at R. Lynn’s site. Information on Raven’s Progressive Matrices (SPM and CPM) can be found at JCRavenLtd.com.
Hong Kong 107 Korea, South 106 Korea, North 105* Japan 105 Taiwan 104 Netherlands 102 Italy 102 Germany 102 Austria 102 Luxembourg 101* Switzerland 101 Sweden 101 United Kingdom 100 Singapore 100 New Zealand 100 China 100 Belgium 100 Spain 99 Poland 99 Hungary 99 Mongolia 98* Iceland 98* United States 98 Norway 98 France 98 Denmark 98 Australia 98 Lithuania 97* Latvia 97* Estonia 97* Finland 97 Czech Republic 97 Canada 97 Vietnam 96* Ukraine 96* Belarus 96* Uruguay 96 Slovakia 96 Russia 96 Argentina 96 Moldova 95* Malta 95* Slovenia 95 Portugal 95 Romania 94 Israel 94 Yugoslavia 93* Macedonia 93* Kazakhstan 93* Georgia 93* Chile 93* Armenia 93* Ireland 93 Bulgaria 93 Cyprus 92* Brunei 92* Malaysia 92 Greece 92 Costa Rica 91* Thailand 91 Albania 90* Turkey 90 Peru 90 Croatia 90 Laos 89* Cambodia 89* Suriname 89 Indonesia 89 Venezuela 88* Colombia 88 Uzbekistan 87* Turkmenistan 87* Tajikistan 87* Syria 87* Kyrgyzstan 87* Jordan 87* Azerbaijan 87* Tonga 87 Samoa (Western) 87 Mexico 87 Iraq 87 Brazil 87 Burma (Myanmar) 86* Philippines 86 Lebanon 86 Paraguay 85* Bolivia 85* Morocco 85 Cuba 85 Vanuatu 84* Tunisia 84* Solomon Islands 84* Papua New Guinea 84* Panama 84* Nicaragua 84* Micronesia 84* Libya 84* Kiribati 84* Honduras 84* Guyana 84* El Salvador 84* Dominican Republic 84* Algeria 84* Puerto Rico 84 Marshall Islands 84 Iran 84 Fiji 84 Yemen 83* United Arab Emirates 83* Saudi Arabia 83* Oman 83* Kuwait 83* Belize 83* Bahrain 83* Afghanistan 83* Egypt 83 Sri Lanka 81* Seychelles 81* Pakistan 81* Mauritius 81* Maldives 81* Bangladesh 81* India 81 Trinidad and Tobago 80* Ecuador 80 Madagascar 79* Comoros 79* Guatemala 79 Cape Verde 78* Bhutan 78* Bahamas 78* Qatar 78 Nepal 78 Barbados 78 Zambia 77 St.Vincent/Grenadine 75* St. Lucia 75* St. Kitts and Nevis 75* Grenada 75* Dominica 75* Antigua and Barbuda 75* Mauritania 73* Uganda 73 Congo (Braz) 73 Swaziland 72* Namibia 72* Mosambique 72* Lesotho 72* Haiti 72* Chad 72* Botswana 72* Tanzania 72 Sudan 72 South Africa 72 Kenya 72 Jamaica 72 Malawi 71* Cote d'Ivoire 71* Ghana 71 Rwanda 70* Cameroon 70* Burundi 70* Togo 69* Benin 69* Angola 69* Somalia 68* Mali 68* Eritrea 68* Djibouti 68* Central African Rep. 68* Niger 67* Nigeria 67 Gabon 66* Burkina Faso 66* Zimbabwe 66 Congo (Zaire) 65 Senegal 64* Liberia 64* Gambia 64* Sierra Leone 64 Guinea-Bissau 63* Guinea 63 Ethiopia 63 Sao Tome/Principe 59* Equatorial Guinea 59
May 8th, 2004 at 4:57 pm
You are right to be amazed.
The “average IQ by state” list is a hoax.
See www.iSteve.com for details on the fabrication, and for a table of legitimate data on smarts by state.
May 8th, 2004 at 5:02 pm
Also, it’s better to use Lynn’s list of 73 countries for which he has actual IQ data. His bigger list of 185 includes those 73, plus guesstimates for 112 others wher he used an average of adjacent states — thus, there are no published studies of the IQ of Burma, so he just took the average of the IQ for India and Thailand.
My review of Lynn & Vanhanen’s book at http://www.vdare.com/sailer/wealth_of_nations.htm is very useful for anyone who wants to understand better the issues revolving around this important book.
May 9th, 2004 at 12:00 am
Thanks for the correction. I was more interested in the IQ data than either the electoral outcomes or the average incomes. It’s clear from the list of nations that 85 (the Mississippi hoax value) is not an impossible average IQ for a racially mixed population, since Morocco and Cuba share that distinction, and are still over a standard deviation above the countries at the bottom of the list.
I suppose that with careful study of La Griffe du Lion I could turn your set of test scores for 8th graders into estimated IQ scores, but in their current state they don’t tell me much - and this was all for fun. That’s why I included the interpolated data for the 112 untested countries (and said so).
August 28th, 2005 at 10:08 pm
I am brazilian. I took an american test and got 129. A Portuguese one and scored 132. We all must know that no matter the differences among national populations, this is an absolute IQ score. It is not fair to make comparisons based on this list. People from different background differ and the tests must differ taking in account their culture. So we must consider that a relative score is used based on tests applicable to all those countries in which the average iq is always 100. The average iq in Brazil is 87. So I found out that my real iq must be 140 since the average in USA is 98 and Portugal is 95. 132 + 8 (difference between Brazil and Portugal) equals 140. 129 + 11 (the difference betwen Brazilianand american scores) equals 140. 140 in percentiles sigma 15 means 99,6. I have been testes in intellectual competitions and always got the 99,6 percentile in the rank, among other competitors, so at school. coincidence or another way to investigate one’s real iq?
August 29th, 2005 at 11:11 pm
I’m not sure your math is applicable, and the relation between your scores in competitions and an actual IQ score would depend on the nature of the competitions. IQ is always measured relative to a population, which make it fuzzier than it needs to be. There are ways now to get an absolute figure, though not with standard IQ tests.
February 13th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
A quick question:
Isn’t 60 the level for mild retardation? If so, then arent most people of some countries mildly retarded? I don’t think that that could be true, so maybe I have wrong information…….
February 15th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
I don’t know the exact level that counts as retardation in the US, but whatever it is, it is normed, so to say, against whites of European extraction, in whom such low IQ scores are often caused or accompanied by more pervasively debilitating conditions such as trisomy-21 (Down’s syndrome). In other populations, IQs at that level are not predominantly caused or accompanied by the same complicating factors, and people with low IQs are quite able to get along socially, especially in environments that don’t demand a lot of intellectual skills.