If you're weak at maths does that mean your thick?

I suppose it all stems from school. The 17 or so % that undertook the honours course were believed to be the paragon of intelligence. In a way it was probably one of the easiest classes for a teacher to take. About 15-20 who were on the ball and could easily be drilled for a predictable paper. That's changed radically now. They have to understand it now ( teachers too :pac:)

What is intelligence?

No, really, what is it?

A high IQ generally means you're good at IQ tests. Is having common sense intelligence, even if you can't read a technical paper? Is being able to interpret a technical paper full of data intelligence if you don't have the sense to come in out of the rain? If you can mentally calculate 12% VAT onto 2/6, are you brighter than someone who didn't recognise 2/6 being old English currency and tried to divide 2 by 6 (yeah, sorry, trick question :P)? Or if you can work out the percentage difference between 956 and 784 without using a calculator, but consistently confuse "your" and "you're" are you smart or dumb or what? Are native English speakers who aren't pushed to learn a second language in the same way that, say, Scandinavian or Continental children are less intelligent than the latter groups because they subsequently typically find it much harder to learn another language fluently?

Nah, being good at maths doesn't make you strictly speaking intelligent any more than being good at languages or having excellent spacial awareness. It's just different skills. Are dyslexics or dyscalculaics or people with autism stupid because they're missing certain tools for solving problems that most other people have? I'm a dyscalculaic scientist, which is rather like being a dyslexic writer.

Tbh, I think "intelligence" is very much linked to curiosity. If you're curious, you're more likely to want to learn and training yourself to learn is training your mental faculties. "Intelligence" tends to be judged by what you can prove you understand, and just like any other skill, you can train yourself to understand many topics just by understanding how you best learn and being interested in the topic. A second aspect is focus. Like Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter books. She was no natural genius, but she had focus and drive beyond most kids her age in the early books and so appeared extremely intelligent by dint of sheer hard work. I've also known a people who can wipe the floor with me in terms of pure brainpower, but they're a bit mentally lazy because they weren't pushed to have to really work at a topic to understand it and so they struggle when they come up against something objectively difficult to understand.

JamboMac wrote: »

IQ test's test your problem solving ability and its a lot of pattern recognition, where as someone who gets a high grade in history or english just remembered a lot of information. IQ tests you can't study for, things like rubix cube and so on because you need to see a couple of moves ahead to reason out a movement. Their are many people with great grades who can memorise a lot of info for a day and then basically dump it.

You'd be surprised, tbh. It's a game and you can learn to be good at it. The pattern recognitions tests are just a skill and you can learn the knacks of them instinctively after doing similar ones a few times, much as you can learn to be good at solving rubix cubes. There are a few people who can pick up a mixed up rubix cube for the first time and solve it in seventeen seconds, but there are a lot more people who can pick up a mixed up rubix cube and solve it in seventeen seconds having played many times with rubix cubes before. The pattern may be new, the underlying rules are the same and now they're instinctive. (Although if you're colour-blind, you're still screwed)

And on the topic of getting a high grade in history or English, it's often not just remembering a lot of information. Mostly, questions that are testing what you -understand- rather than what you just -know- will ask you to explain the links between X, Y and Z, not just the date it happened. Obviously it does help to know what the question is talking about, ofc!

Questions for English papers won't ask you ..say who Emily Dickenson was (well, not at a high level anyway), but they'd be more likely to ask you how the period she lived in shaped her writing through her career, and then you have to pull together and synthesise information from various sources that you remember and be able to create a coherent argument from them. This won't neccessarily have been covered directly in texts you read, the true test is can you reason with them.

Two different sorts of intelligence going there, but I don't know that either is particularly "more" intelligent than the other.

yesto24 wrote: »

What do you mean bad at maths?
I would consider end of primary school the absolute benchmark for who is thick.
If you can't complete a primary School book you are thick.
I hold this opinion for English, maths, history, geography and whatever other subjects. Not only that, I consider anyone who can't give a ball a half decent kick or throw a dart or use a snooker cue.
Now I am not talking about PhD level or professional sports level. I am talking about a level of being able to interact with people in any situation.
On that point I would also consider rude people thick as well.

Well, I can't use it as a snooker cue, but I could probably beat your ass in a spear fight with it. Does that count? :P