Which country has produced the most geniuses?

Scotland

Deutschland

probably China.

You know, ancient civilization, huge population...

only rival would probably be India.

Tough to say. I dont think you can name one country. Continent; Europe clearly

Britain

Greece

Italy

Germany

Etc

Tadpole wrote:

Tough to say. I dont think you can name one country. Continent; Europe clearly

Britain

Greece

Italy

Germany

Etc

I'd have to disagree with all of that.

Europe, as a continent, spent more time in the valleys of progress than the Eastern Asian or Islamic cultures (all have had their peaks and valleys).

Britain has had a tiny population compared to the larger nations throughout history; their population didn't explode until the colonial era, though I suppose if you include the population of their colonial Empire they had an enormous population for a couple centuries. But being relatively isolated for the bulk of history, I'm not sure they'd be anywhere near the same league as the historic leaders.

Greece certainly had a very successful period during the classical era, and if you include the nations that conquered them had some other successful periods as well. But, compared to other historic nations they also haven't had a significant population for the bulk of history.

Italy was key to the European Renaissance, and earlier in the Roman Empire. Per-capita, with the history we know of, they probably stack up pretty well... but does their population allow for them to have produced anywhere near the same number of geniuses as larger historic nations?

Germany as a nation didn't come together until the last couple centuries. Do you include all the minor states in the HRE before (and if so, do you include all the European nations in the EU now as one nation?), because before that and the Roman Empire before that, history suggests they were tribes that weren't very advanced at all.

France and Spain would be similar to Germany, except it (roughly) formed out centuries ahead of Germany.

China vs USA according to this study;

This claim can actually be tested very easily. Others have done it, e.g. Brian Dickerson: The perils of repeating political nonsense and came to the conclusion that the claim was wrong.

You just need the chance a random person from a large group has a genius level IQ, then multiply it with the number of people in China and compare the result with the number of people in the USA. The IQ follows a Gaussian distribution where 100 is the mean by definition and a standard deviation (SD) of 15 (after Wechsler) or 16 (after Stanford-Binet). (sources: [1], [2]). The rarity of a particular IQ can be calculated easily and are listed by [1]. This numbers give the percentage of people with an IQ equal or lower than the given IQ and the rarity of this occurring.

The main question actually is what an genius level IQ is. According to [3] it is 140 or higher ("Genius or near genius") while [4] states it as at least 160. The rarity of such an IQ is 1/261 (with a SD of 15) or 1/161 (SD=16) for an IQ of 140 and 1/31,560 (SD=15) or 1/11,307 (SD=16) for an IQ of 160 [2].

The population of USA for 2012 is about 313,221,000 according to the U.S. Census Bureau [5]. The population of China for 2011 is about 1,370,537,000 [6]. Taking the lowest rarity of 1/161 from above then there are about 1,370,537,000/161 = about 8,513,000 geniuses in China, which is significant less then the 313,221,000 Americans. If you take the 15 SD value of 1/261 then you get only about 5,251,000 Chinese geniuses. With the 160 IQ points, which are more realistic [7] to indicate a real genius, the numbers are even much less (about 43,400 or 12,100). Note that 1,370,537,000/313,221,000 = 4.375, so in order for this claim to be true actually one of every four (or say five) Chinese would need to be a Genius. Even without the numbers above, it can be easily understood that this is not the case.

North Africa, Asia, Southern Europe, and the Middle East. Some of the many geniuses from this region invented algebra, trigonometry, first to investigate speed of sound and light, developed magnetic compass, the wheel, latitude/longitude, measured length of a degree, first pioneers of human medicine and disesase, first navigational and geographic charts, grafting of plants, irrigation, light reflection/optics.

China engineers geniuses;

http://www.policymic.com/articles/30111/chinese-labs-are-engineering-genius-babies-should-the-u-s-follow-suit

Reading comprehension is important. Also, it's generally a good idea to link to an article when you quote from it.

But I'm not sure what that quote is really supposed to say... that there is an extremely high chance that, today, there are fewer geniuses in China than there are people in the USA? That would seem rather obvious - I don't even have to crunch any numbers to figure that out.

At any rate, in case your point was that America has had more geniuses throughout history than China, I'll have to again disagree for obvious reasons.

You're a genius^

Africa if you consider running a form of genius.

Wow what awful math. If you use the very simple and very inaccurate math that you have used you would actually find that China has exactly 4.375 times more geniuses than America (I got this from the ratio that you inaccurately stated gives some other measure.) Regardless, IQ is only a normal distribution when it comes to general sets from the population. We are specifically looking at anomalies, however, so the mathematics behind it becomes very different.

Then there is the ambiguity of the notion of the history of man. Regardless, certainly the history of man does not mean the number of geniuses that currently exist. If you look at the number of people who are arguably a lot like "Will Hunting" from "Good Will Hunting" then Europe is hands down the winner. Europe has produced far more great mathematicians than any other region.

Nonetheless, this is probably just because Europe, during the greatest times of mathematical development (excluding the last few hundred years) was the most affluent and educated region in the world and had far greater influence than any other region as well. Certainly we could not have expected the people (or person, maybe) of Africa in the 1700s who had the innate intellect to achieve mathematical breakthroughs similar to Euler to have achieved those breakthroughs because in all probability it was extremely hard for such people to gain access to mathematical texts and knowledgable instructors, let alone have the resources to produce as many works as Euler did.

Regardless of anything I've just said. The question is really rather vague lol...

New England

Raymond Reddington wrote:

I am talking about those "Good Will Hunting" types of people. People who are levels above everyone else in terms of intellect.

So which country has produced the most geniuses throughout the history of man?

If you're talking just straight up genius defined as non-existential or synesthesia typified mental approaches: I'd guess India or people descended from the Old Celtic nobility simply based on the non-centralization and spiritual focus of these cultures. In terms of "fountain of Rimini" geniuses like Da Vinci, Newton, Fermat, or Einstein etc. these are so rare that it isn't really possible to make any conjectures as to their being related to any sort of regional background. Most of them look like Vulcans though. Newton claimed to be Hebrew, but so did much of European nobility back then.

Work it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Chemistry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_Physics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_Physiology_or_Medicine

You can forget Literature and Peace - awarding the Peace Prize to Obama confirmed that as an irrelevant and politically motivated award

The country with the most Apple stores will have the most geniuses, clearly.

China

Ethiopia

Kenya

Running is all in the head.

*Cough* The Social Network *cough*