Julian Newman

Julian Newman

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/video-amazing-pint-size-basketball-prodigy-11-article-1.1267616

Evgeny Kissin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gilNaeUsPNQ

Joshua Bell

http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/01/16/145191200/violinist-joshua-bell-french-impressions-yesterday-and-today

Chris Langan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7YVHIpJBLA

Intelligence Assessment: Brief History

Galton’s view of intelligence

Intelligence Assessment: Brief History

Binet’s view of intelligence

In intelligence there is a fundamental faculty, the alteration or the lack of which, is of the utmost importance for practical life. This faculty is judgment…

- Binet (1905)

Lewis Terman A strict hereditarian –

nature as the overwhelming determinant of all aspects of functioning, psychological and otherwise

Lewis Terman

Were culture and nature merely like a suit of clothes that the individual could don or doff virtually at will? Terman’s answer…was an emphatic no. Terman’s interest in geniuses was to demonstrate that their intellectual superiority was matched by their superiority in many other socially desirable attriburtes (Cravens, p. 184).

A strict hereditarian – nature as the overwhelming determinant of all aspects of functioning, psychological and otherwise

Lewis Terman

Were culture and nature merely like a suit of clothes that the individual could don or doff virtually at will? Terman’s answer…was an emphatic no. Terman’s interest in geniuses was to demonstrate that their intellectual superiority was matched by their superiority in many other socially desirable attributes (p. 184).

Genetic Studies of Genius; first longitudinal study

Tracked children with IQs in the “genius” range

Initial sample included 354 boys and 307 girls

Major conclusion: good things go together

Mr. Gladwell’s Take

Terman didn’t understand what a real outlier was, and that’s a mistake we continue to make to this day…

Mr. Gladwell’s Take

The relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point. Once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into an measureable real-world advantage (p. 79).

The Threshold Hypothesis

IQ

Succ

ess ?

The Threshold Hypothesis

“…take a look at the following list of where the last twenty-five Americans to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine got their undergraduate degrees…”