IQ: Intelligence Quotient
The great successes of modern science began when exact measurement was applied to human knowledge and understanding. When the predictions from a scientific theory were tested numerically, the accuracy of the theory could be checked and subsequently verified or disproven.
That is why mathematics plays such a large part in modern science. And when exact measurement and mathematical methods were used, a new truth emerged. It was found that there was no such thing as exactness.
Scientists could create a theory, be totally convinced of its truth, and then discover that the predictions arising from the theory tallied only approximately with the experimental results. Scientists had to be content with this.
They also learned something else-to be very suspicious of consistent errors. Many important advances in science arose from the refusal of scientists to ignore consistent errors. Inconsistent errors, random errors—those that showed no signs of a trend or tendency-could be accepted and ignored.
They were held to be meaningless. But repetitive, consistent errors often concealed errors in theory. Scientists began to develop a theory of errors, a set of mathematical rules that helped them to know what type and degree of error could be considered reasonably compatible with a theory and what sort of error. would oblige them to abandon the theory.
A later name for the theory of errors was probability theory. The new approach developed into an academic discipline known as statistics. We should look upon statistics as the measurement of uncertainty-an attempt to assess in numerical terms how sure or unsure we are of something.
To give a practical example, we conduct our lives and plan our actions on the basis of certain expectations, beliefs, or truths. When we say it is true that the sun rises every morning, we base our belief on the fact that it has been found to do so regularly.
But the truth of the statement the sun rises every morning is valid only for some latitudes. At the North Pole or the South Pole the truth would be that the sun rises every year.
For regions between the North and South Pole, the statement “the sun rises every morning would be only partly true. ‘here are periods at midsummer and midwinter when i either fails to rise or fails to set.
All these differences in the truth of the statement at different geographical locations lead, finally, to a much more exact and predictive theory by which sunrise and sunset at any place on the earth can be predicted with a great deal of accuracy.
In its simple way, this example shows the difference between prescientific truth and postscientific, or numerical, truth.
On the one hand, there is a Hat simple statement: The sun rises every day; on the other, there are a large number of seasonal sunrise and sunset tables tor as many different intervals of latitude.
However, even these tables are not absolutely accurate, and the exact moment of sunrise will be found to depend on other, more local, factors, such as the relative height above the sea level of the observer and the hills at his horizon.
Nonetheless, the tables are accurate enough for all practical purposes, and that, it turns out, is the most that we can usefully achieve in any science or art. Very often, when the purposes change, we need more accuracy so that as science develops, further theories are required.
You may be getting restless, asking what all this has to do with the science of mental measurement. Patience. t is vital that your understanding of this point is perfectly clear. Science shows us that we cannot expect to know all the facts. We are limited to making the best and most. practical guesses.
What is IQ? Intelligence Quotient
Intelligence is about information, and information is always encoded. We say that someone is smart if it has good information storage (memory) that is good at integrating new information with information already in store; both in simplifying, condensing, and assimilating information to use them more efficiently; and good at manipulating and handling information so as to generate solutions to problems.
We have previously defined it elsewhere and repeated it here: “Intelligence is the capacity in entities (living things or artifacts) to detect, encode, store, sort, and process the resulting signals in the universe and send them into the optimal pattern of instruction output. ” Optimal means delivering the most beneficial results for individual operations or intelligent groups.
More simply, intelligence is the process of using information for the benefit of individuals or systems.
While the Intelligence commonly abbreviated IQ is the ability of various kinds of intelligence such as brain, reasoning, planning, problem solving, abstract thinking, understanding ideas or ideas, language skills and learning.
Then how to measure one’s intelligence / IQ? The answer is using an IQ test (Intelligence Test) whose purpose is to know a person’s abilities in a total and logical frame of mind. Read more about IQ Test..