Interesting question. Complicating things are that men are more often geniuses (due to the XY vs. XX chromosone differences) and China selectively aborts females because of birth restrictions and the necessity of having sons for elder care. On the other hand, China has a history of poor literacy. If someone is a genius and works a field their whole life, does it matter that they gifted?
The plural of genius is genii
"So which country has produced the most geniuses throughout the history of man?" Answer: the old Dual Monarchy, Austria-Hungary.
West Virginia!
Duh
I know you're talking about geographic boundaries, but Jews (0.2% of world population) have won a total of 41% of all the Nobel Prizes in economics, 28% of medicine, 26% of Physics, 19% of Chemistry, 13% of Literature and 9% of all peace awards.
Hey guys, I think it's thread closed.
elephino wrote:
I know you're talking about geographic boundaries, but Jews (0.2% of world population) have won a total of 41% of all the Nobel Prizes in economics, 28% of medicine, 26% of Physics, 19% of Chemistry, 13% of Literature and 9% of all peace awards.
random3 wrote:
Interesting question. Complicating things are that men are more often geniuses (due to the XY vs. XX chromosone differences) and China selectively aborts females because of birth restrictions and the necessity of having sons for elder care. On the other hand, China has a history of poor literacy. If someone is a genius and works a field their whole life, does it matter that they gifted?
Seeing how China is an ancient civilization that was centuries ahead of Europeans, they almost definitely have had more geniuses.
Tadpole wrote:
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.
You-- and many others on this thread-- are also assuming that IQ is independent of things like nutrition and environment. It is not.