On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 22:03:39 GMT, (Henri H.
Arsenault) wrote:

Unless I missed it

You did, but it bears repeating.

, no one here seems to be aware of the study on
chess and intelligence published in the August issue of Scientific
American. The article is available on the web.

In sum, it has been shown that there is no correlation between IQ
tests and chess ability. A whole bunch of othe experimentally proven
results regarding chess and intelligence can be found in the
article.The bottom line is that dedication and hard work are the main
factors regarding chess mastership.

So instead of speculating, go read the article to get the facts and
then discuss it here...

Henri

I referred to this myself a couple of times, but I don't think the "IQ
determines Chess skill" crowd is really interested in evidence.

On 19 Oct 2006 17:33:58 -0700, "Nick" wrote:

Henri H. Arsenault wrote:

Unlike Henri H. Arsenault, some writers in rec.games.chess.*
do *not* regard the 'Scientific American' article, 'The Expert Mind',
as representing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth about the nature of chess mastery.

No one I know of has ever claimed it does or is. However, the article
actually presents evidence, which is what really has Nick in a knot
since he has none to offer for his own case.

On 19 Oct 2006 21:08:26 -0700, wrote:

Nick wrote:

Ed made a claim about some book that it is "pseudoscience". But you
don't expect him to substantiate his claim.

You see that's how folks like Nick typically work. They make outrageous
claims and when someone rational points out they have provided no
evidence for their claims they attack that person for not providing
evidence that they haven't provided evidence. And so it goes.

I think I'll just slap "Nick" in the old ignore file. He has nothing
interesting to say on the evidence of what he has said so far.

On 19 Oct 2006 21:55:45 -0700, wrote:

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_intelligence"

Some researchers believe an analogous genetic phenomenon is occurring
today in Silicon Valley and other tech centers where large numbers of
young software developers are clustered. A side effect may be a
relatively large number of children who tend toward autism.

Of course, discussing this usually raises the ire of the hysterical PC
crowd, one example of which Nick describes in another post in this
thread.

Chess One wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...

Chess One wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...

Sanny wrote:

Computer will always play with same IQ Level.


Why? You don't believe in progress and in self-learning programs?


So if a person gets higher ratings in Chess it is clear idea he is
more
intelligent, Has better brains than those who fail to win.


I must have a very low IQ because I don't see any logic in the above
derivation.

Me to. I must have even lower IQ.

There is no correlation between chess and IQ (that is not a sociology*).


I assure you that you are wrong. If you take any group of top
performers in any intellectual activity - be it chess, math, science,
poetry, management, law, etc - their IQ score will be several standard
deviations above 100.

This may be so! But there is no inherent //causality//,


Of course there is no causality. But there is almost never causality in
such issues. This is all a matter of conditional
expectations/probabilities.

Intelligence is an incredibly high-dimensional phenomenon:

Person A may be more talented than person B at math, but person B may
be more talented than person A at law.

More narrowly, person A may be more talented than person B at math, but
person B may be more talented than person A at physics.

Even more narrowly, mathematician A may be more talented than
mathematician B at algebra, but mathematician B may be more talented
than mathematician A at topology.

Even more narrowly, mathematician A may be more talented than
mathematician B at algebraic topology, but mathematician B may be more
talented than mathematician A at differential topology.

No facets of intelligence are perfectly correlated with each other.
Thus there is no causality.

IQ tests are intellectually demanding activities. So is math. So is
chess. So is law. Thus, abilities towards each of them will be
positively correlated with each other. And very significantly so. But
not perfectly.


unless you know of
some study which I do not - except the sociological factor I mentioned which
might relate to degrees of introversion and tendencies to play indoor games
instead of playing football. Its also true that your statement does not
contain exceptions. [see end-note]


What statement? That the abilities towards taking IQ tests and towards
chess are posiitvely correlated? This is a statistical statement. By
definition, statistics contain exceptions. Lots of them. But it's the
averages that count.


Maybe the best study of all is by de Groot who concluded that he could not
state that those people attracted to chess developed their skill as a result
of playing chess in such a way that they would not have developed their
skills otherwise.

He also stated that only some people attempting chess actually succeed at it
to a certain level, whatever other success they have had in other fields of
endeavor.

Furthermore, he limited the transference of success at chess to other
fields, so that for example, whereas chess masters often have superb memory
of chess positions, far superior to non chess players [and weak chess
players!], this memorisation is only for legal or natural-looking positions,
and he measured memory of random piece placement on the board against all
groups, and the masters scored no better at that form of memorisation than
non-players.

I am amazed that intelligent people can dispute this obvious fact.
There must be some severe brain damage, caused by perverted political
correctness, that is responsible for such blindness to the obvious.

If you are stating that high IQs tend to succeed at /something/, then you
are correct.

But it is also true that high IQs are not the ONLY group to succeed to high
levels, and often leaders in society are 'B' students with no significant IQ
differentiation from their own sociological group.

It may be true that more people at genius level IQ play chess than other IQ
levels do [as said above, this is a sociological factor], but then we are
left with the relative factor of performance and what chess skill they have
[measured as rating]. There does not seem to be any prescriptive factor
involved, so as to say, 'IQ is a causal connection to chess skill',
otherwise how do we explain people of same age, education, and other
significant factors such as same time-exposure to chess, where the IQ110
player regularly beats the IQ150 player?

Phil Innes


IQ
measures primarily left-brain functions of literacy and numeracy in
sequencing, with some pattern recognition. Some people play chess like
that,
but also dominos like that or drive their car like that! Master chess
players utilise abstract spatial intelligence [right brain] and sequence
play based on that [left-brain] as an /integration/ [de Groot].

The pattern recognition in IQ tests is not even the same type as utilised
by
a chess player. IQ was almost entirely concrete spatial [Gardner] whereas
chess playing utilises abstract dynamic spatial.

Concrete spatial is about physcial forms, and would suit an artist or
even
design engineer. [Gardner]
Abstract dynamic is not dependent on any form [/nb/] and concerns
movement
of forces in 3space. [de Groot]

IQ tests are perfunctory measures of the ability to process information
in
sequences, but are poor at describing or even identifying what
information
is processed.

Phil Innes

*like for pale weedy types and also large lard-ones who stay indoors and
worry about things, swot books, play chess with imaginary friends, become
passionate about history of golfballs in Turkistan &c

Ed Seedhouse wrote:
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 22:03:39 GMT, (Henri H.
Arsenault) wrote:

Unless I missed it

You did, but it bears repeating.

, no one here seems to be aware of the study on
chess and intelligence published in the August issue of Scientific
American. The article is available on the web.

In sum, it has been shown that there is no correlation between IQ
tests and chess ability. A whole bunch of othe experimentally proven
results regarding chess and intelligence can be found in the
article.The bottom line is that dedication and hard work are the main
factors regarding chess mastership.

So instead of speculating, go read the article to get the facts and
then discuss it here...

Henri

I referred to this myself a couple of times, but I don't think the "IQ
determines Chess skill" crowd is really interested in evidence.


Just a minute ago, I finished reading a longwinded article on
a subset of Jews, purportedly of higher intelligence than all
others in the entire universe! (Just how and why it should occur
to anyone to break Jews into subsets was not explained, nor
were there any details about say, how they compared to rabid
albino Gypsies, or maybe long-haired hippie freaks with big
pimples, but then, I somehow doubt these groups had any pull
with the writer of that article.)

Anyway, that writer claimed these subset Jews dominated
chess bigtime, and the purported reason (judging from all the
hype about intelligence in his article) was superior intelligence,
supposedly well documented. Yet...we are told that the folks
at Scientific American have determined there is *no* correlation
between high IQ and chess ability. We have also been told
that not one chess master (grandmaster?) fails to have a high
IQ, that there is no such thing as a chess idiot-savant among
their ranks. Yes, we have been told many things, and when
even one of them is questioned, the pompous arise from their
sleep to advise us to read the books they have read, so we
will believe as they believe. For you see, it could never be
that these pompous experts are wrong, that maybe they had
an agenda, or maybe they *wanted* the results to be one
way or another. Or that they unwitingly contradict one another,
despite myriad claims to scientific evidence (which we may
request, but to no avail).

It seems to me if you want to endorse the SA article, you
might quote a small portion which you support, in place of
pompous posturing. But make no mistake: this act entails
risk, for you commit to your endorsement and can no longer
hide behind the skirts of "science".

-- help bot

wrote:

...


Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_intelligence"

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Ah wannabee an ashkanazee, ah wannabee an ashkanazee, yip, yip..

michael adams wrote:
wrote:

..


Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_intelligence"

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Ah wannabee an ashkanazee, ah wannabee an ashkanazee, yip, yip..


If you are circumcised, you are halfway there.

But beware when visiting Bulgaria: they may videotape and then publish
your toilet visits.

Chess One wrote:
"Sanny" wrote in message
oups.com...

When I gave IQ Test when I was in School I got an IQ of "125". In that
I was asked What is capital of Australia. Where is Effile Tower
Situated, Where is Panama Canal etc.

Is true! For example I would have to guess Panama Canal was in Panama, if I
never went there to know by personal experience or never read geography. But
the question is not completely crazy, since what is being tested?

It could be logic, ie, Panama canal is named for the place, Panama.
It could be memory, if you remember where canal is.
But if you didn't read geography then its not always possible to answer this
type of question - ie, where is Lake Champlain? Because the Lake is named
for a person, not a place.

Therefore, is this part of IQ test a measure of geographical knowledge
remembered?

I don't see much point in using the original combined IQ test now. But
there is a point in considering scores in the separated tests that
cover mathermatical, linguistic, visuo-spatial reasoning etc. If people
know what their strengths are they can make better use of them.

I have yet to meet any strong chess player that didn't have powerful
innate pattern matching and abstract reasoning ability. And anecdotally
mathematicians are often also strong chess players (although aptitude
for mathematics in other strong chess players may not have been
translated into academic acheivement for a host of other reasons). eg

http://web.usna.navy.mil/~wdj/math_chess.htm

Other questions are self-inferential, either singly or as a group,

When was the War of 1812?
Who wrote Beethoven's 5th symphony.

If the "I" in IQ is taken to mean [is generally understood to mean]
'logical' intelligence [a left-brain process] then what you describe is not
a measure of that, but of memory alone [and which hemisphere is that?]. How
much of IQ testing is a measure of memory alone?

A good intelligence test should not depend signifacntly on memory.
Although it does have to rely on some basic foundations (like knowing
the alphabet, language, upto 4 letter words, logic and numbers and
numerical sequences).

The purest intelligence tests are the visuo-spatial symbol and pattern
matching tests.
Which one of these is the same but rotated ? etc. They are truly
language independent. Sudoku is another pure reasoning test.

But still there is a problem. In cultures that live in very harsh
environments (arctic or deserts) you can die if you make a mistake.
This can mean that someone stops at the first question where they
cannot see the answer - leading to massive cultural bias.

A corollary is that teaching students the exam technique of never to
spending more than a certain time on any question (and then go back to
tricky ones later) boosts scores.

For example, on IQ tests only one answer was permitted for the following:-

Complete the series: 2, 4, 8, ....

How many correct answers are there? Of all correct answers justify which one
you would choose to complete the series.

This is a classic. Anyone with common sense would choose what the
testers were obviously looking for, but common sense and IQ tend to be
anti-correlated. And in this case the sequence is far too short so that
there are multiple ambiguous answers all equally likely.

16 = 2^n and 14 = 2+n(n+1) are both very plausible testers answers.
Question is flawed.

Same with make two new 4 letter words from S( _ _ _ )L by putting a 3
letter word in the gap.

One problem for IQ tests is that they are only valid for a range of IQs
and if the test is used on someone with an IQ beyond anything the
testers expect (and no common sense) it gives a totally anomolous
score. I knew someone at university who was extremely dyslexic in
language but had a mathematical and logical reasoning IQ around the 260
mark. He also had a framed certificate showing that his IQ was 60
(since he always chose the non-obvious unintended phantom answers in
such tests).

Another favourite "obvious" series being

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, [31]

The encylopedia of series will give you a nice selection of other
alternatives to the "obvious" 32 that the test setter had almost
certainly intended. The solution would probably be unique if a term
beyond the unknown one was also provided. (2,4,8 gives far too many
alternatives)

http://www.research.att.com/~njas/se...2%2C4%2C8%2C16

I think spatial and math IQ probably does set an upper limit on chess
performance, and I strongly suspect that the age at which you first
start playing chess is also an important factor.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Chess One wrote:
"Sanny" wrote in message
oups.com...

When I gave IQ Test when I was in School I got an IQ of "125". In that
I was asked What is capital of Australia. Where is Effile Tower
Situated, Where is Panama Canal etc.

Is true! For example I would have to guess Panama Canal was in Panama, if I
never went there to know by personal experience or never read geography. But
the question is not completely crazy, since what is being tested?

It could be logic, ie, Panama canal is named for the place, Panama.
It could be memory, if you remember where canal is.
But if you didn't read geography then its not always possible to answer this
type of question - ie, where is Lake Champlain? Because the Lake is named
for a person, not a place.

Therefore, is this part of IQ test a measure of geographical knowledge
remembered?

I don't see much point in using the original combined IQ test now. But
there is a point in considering scores in the separated tests that
cover mathermatical, linguistic, visuo-spatial reasoning etc. If people
know what their strengths are they can make better use of them.

I have yet to meet any strong chess player that didn't have powerful
innate pattern matching and abstract reasoning ability. And anecdotally
mathematicians are often also strong chess players (although aptitude
for mathematics in other strong chess players may not have been
translated into academic acheivement for a host of other reasons). eg

http://web.usna.navy.mil/~wdj/math_chess.htm

Other questions are self-inferential, either singly or as a group,

When was the War of 1812?
Who wrote Beethoven's 5th symphony.

If the "I" in IQ is taken to mean [is generally understood to mean]
'logical' intelligence [a left-brain process] then what you describe is not
a measure of that, but of memory alone [and which hemisphere is that?]. How
much of IQ testing is a measure of memory alone?

A good intelligence test should not depend signifacntly on memory.
Although it does have to rely on some basic foundations (like knowing
the alphabet, language, upto 4 letter words, logic and numbers and
numerical sequences).

The purest intelligence tests are the visuo-spatial symbol and pattern
matching tests.
Which one of these is the same but rotated ? etc. They are truly
language independent. Sudoku is another pure reasoning test.

But still there is a problem. In cultures that live in very harsh
environments (arctic or deserts) you can die if you make a mistake.
This can mean that someone stops at the first question where they
cannot see the answer - leading to massive cultural bias.

A corollary is that teaching students the exam technique of never to
spending more than a certain time on any question (and then go back to
tricky ones later) boosts scores.

For example, on IQ tests only one answer was permitted for the following:-

Complete the series: 2, 4, 8, ....

How many correct answers are there? Of all correct answers justify which one
you would choose to complete the series.

This is a classic. Anyone with common sense would choose what the
testers were obviously looking for, but common sense and IQ tend to be
anti-correlated. And in this case the sequence is far too short so that
there are multiple ambiguous answers all equally likely.

16 = 2^n and 14 = 2+n(n+1) are both very plausible testers answers.
Question is flawed.

Same with make two new 4 letter words from S( _ _ _ )L by putting a 3
letter word in the gap.

One problem for IQ tests is that they are only valid for a range of IQs
and if the test is used on someone with an IQ beyond anything the
testers expect (and no common sense) it gives a totally anomolous
score. I knew someone at university who was extremely dyslexic in
language but had a mathematical and logical reasoning IQ around the 260
mark. He also had a framed certificate showing that his IQ was 60
(since he always chose the non-obvious unintended phantom answers in
such tests).

Another favourite "obvious" series being

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, [31]

The encylopedia of series will give you a nice selection of other
alternatives to the "obvious" 32 that the test setter had almost
certainly intended. The solution would probably be unique if a term
beyond the unknown one was also provided. (2,4,8 gives far too many
alternatives)

http://www.research.att.com/~njas/se...2%2C4%2C8%2C16

I think spatial and math IQ probably does set an upper limit on chess
performance, and I strongly suspect that the age at which you first
start playing chess is also an important factor.

Regards,
Martin Brown