Fair enough

I’m going to double down and say that on a real life test, this would likely represent a typo. In such case, I think you could successfully defend a 25% answer while a 60% answer is just right out the window, straight to jail.

Entertaining response but I disagree.

I’m going to say that unless you’re allowed to select more than one answer, the correct answer is 25%. That’s either a or d.

By doing something other than guessing randomly (seeing that 1 in 4 is 25% and that this answer appears twice), you now have a 50% chance of getting the answer correct. However, that doesn’t change the premise that 1 in 4 answers is correct. It’s still 25%, a or d.

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The surface area of the box is about 135 inches. If this surface area were spread over a sphere, it would have a diameter of about 6.5 inches and a volume of nearly 150 cubic inches (nearly twice the volume of the uninflated box!). 150 cubic inches of osmium weighs about 120lbs.

So, indeed you could exceed the weight limit of the box by ballooning it out and filling it with something that’s at least 7/12ths as dense as osmium (or a little more dense than lead).

It’s just about to pass the event horizon of your black hole. I hope you don’t blast me with some Hawking radiation.

The problem is that most people who have casual conversations about quantum physics are just jerking each other off. They’re trying to impress each other by being able to describe ideas that other people came up with.

It’s kind of like when a parent thinks that their kid is a genius for being able to use an ipad. The talented people were the UI designers of the iPad, not the kid.

The time machine guy is at least trying to be funny.

Yeah but supplements are fun and sometimes delicious. Running is neither.

Maybe they were just asking what the crazy bump is. I think its just supposed to be the crest of her pelvis.

Isn’t this basically how the first batch of Teflon was created?

Another way to remember is that < is like a squished L, for “Less than”

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Look, I’m saying the same thing that I also found on Wikipedia. You just put the scores in order and then you fit them to a normal curve. This is what it means to scale them ordinally and then fit this to a normal distribution.

Its clear that we aren’t going to agree on any of this, so I’m going to stop replying.

Additonally, you seem to incorrectly think that an IQ of 0 would mean zero intelligence when I have explained exactly what an IQ of zero would mean.

I’m not saying intelligence is a normal distribution. I’m saying that IQ scores are a normal distribution.

The metric, IQ is a normal distribution because that’s how the metric is defined.

I’d like to hear your explanation how an IQ of above 200 is possible and what that would actually mean.

Its only possible if there are about 10x more humans. With a population of around 80 billion, the smartest one person would have a z score of roughly 6.6 and an IQ of roughly 200. This is calculated from a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, which is how it’s defined.

Here’s a reference from Wikipedia for you, which, itself, references many scientific journals:

" IQ scales are ordinally scaled.[81][82][83][84][85] The raw score of the norming sample is usually (rank order) transformed to a normal distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15.[3] While one standard deviation is 15 points, and two SDs are 30 points, and so on, this does not imply that mental ability is linearly related to IQ, such that IQ 50 would mean half the cognitive ability of IQ 100. In particular, IQ points are not percentage points "

So, as I’ve been saying, you just put everyone’s test scores in order from worst to best, calculate the z score of the person you’re interested in, multiply by the SD (15) and add the mean.

It is also the case that for populations over 80 billion, you can have negative IQ scores, using the same logic that was used for a person with an IQ of >=200.

I think the confusion is that IQ is not an objective measurement. It’s subjective.

Its not like say, height, where you can have a normal distribution and then a statistical outlier.

The IQ point isnt a constant, tangeable unit of measure, like an inch. Intelligence isn’t something you can put a ruler up to and say, oh that’s weird, this person has an IQ of 300 and is a statistical outlier.

IQ is defined statistically. You use some method of claiming that each person has a certain ranking of intelligence. Then you use a defined mean and SD to determine what IQ value that corresponds to, in the context of everyone else in the population.

You provided a link to reader’s digest. It’s not the most credible reference.

A negative IQ score and an IQ score above 200 would be possible with larger populations.

I have to disagree.

IQ as a measure of intelligence doesn’t work that way. The number can’t just get higher and higher because a person is really smart. A supreme, godlike intelligence doesn’t have an IQ of say, a million.

IQ has a statistical definition and although intelligence may not follow a perfect normal distribution, IQ Score does.

If there are about 8 billion humans, then 1 of them is “the smartest” in some way. 1/8,000,000,000 is 1.2x10^-10, this has a z score of 6.33.

The current smartest person will have an IQ of (6.33x15)+100=195. No one has an IQ of 200. This isn’t because a person can’t be any smarter, it’s because this is how IQ is defined. If a pure, perfect, godlike intelligence exists in our current human population, their IQ is 195.

I understand that you’re saying there are more incredible geniuses than full on retards.

However, IQ scores are a normal distribution with an arbitrarily defined mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.

So, IQ scores of 0 or 200 are both 6.6 standard deviations from the mean. If IQ is truly a normal distribution, you’d expect the number of people with IQ scores <= 0 and the number with scores >= 200 to be exactly the same, simply because this is how the scores are defined.

If you try to look up what proportion of the population falls outside 6.6 standard deviations, the z-tables don’t go out this far. It’s essentially 0% (0/100) but how many is it out of 8 billion?

Contrary to popular belief, we’re all profoundly stupid. Even the smartest among us spend enormous effort in their struggle to comprehend our surroundings.

OK, I thought this was a study that was actually performed (and just happened to be written by a snarky author) until I got to the part about the effort scores. This is some high quality absurdity.