(Data Plot) Average IQ Of Students By College Major And Gender Ratio

In a world . . . wrote:

At least when philosophy is studied properly, it is quantitative. So it is not really an outlier.

You just made a philosophical statement that is qualitative, exposing you philosophic illiteracy.

I majored in Philosophy at a liberal arts college where Philosophy was one of the most demanding majors. I liked it in part because of the approach/intellect of my classmates vs other majors.

I carry this preference with me in the work place. I will gladly sacrifice the most remunerative jobs for those in which I have the opportunity to work with people I consider to be, "smart".

Wfginjkkk wrote:

In a world . . . wrote:

At least when philosophy is studied properly, it is quantitative. So it is not really an outlier.

You just made a philosophical statement that is qualitative, exposing you philosophic illiteracy.

4runner wrote:

I suspect that Philosophy is up there because of the demographics of the students who take it.

A Philosophy major is the ultimate sign of wealth. It is conspicuous consumption. Four years spent doing something that has little or no commercial value.

The same could be said of Art History, or English.

The study of philosophy is construed as some sort of intellectual foot-binding - a measure to make oneself entirely unemployable. Lots of people think it is a bizarre thing to study. But then again, Berkeley has a Rhetoric department, which I never really understood.

Lots of Philosophy majors on Wall Street, going to law school etc. It has its own rigour.

?? wrote:

This "analysis" is really no better than nonsense like "The Bell Curve." It's a thinly veiled attempt to connect a made-up, biased, and flawed intelligence construct to gender.

If you read the article and put a little bit of thought into it, you'd realize that it isn't actually a commentary on relative intelligence of the genders at all. While I understand that, for someone who is used to coloring inside the lines, the tilted dot graph makes it look like girls bad boys good, that isn't actually what it says. It just says that the majors that have a higher percentage of men also tend to have higher IQ. That could mean many things. One thing is COULD mean is that men are smarter, but it doesn't necessarily mean that. It could also simply mean that the smarter men do engineering, the dub men do nursing, and women are evenly distributed (or don't do engineering at all). Without knowing the relative sizes of the populations in the different fields, you can't conclude anything about men v women. In fact, women could easily be statistically smarter than men, and that data still be valid.

I think it is very pitiful that your first reaction to this is to jump on the "it's a sexist conspiracy" bandwagon. This is why we need more science and technical education in this country. Science and statistics are not sexist.

4runner wrote:

A Philosophy major is the ultimate sign of wealth. It is conspicuous consumption. Four years spent doing something that has little or no commercial value.

The demographics of the people who can afford to do that are probably very different from the demographics of people who study engineering.

not necessarily. How many poor->working class students or minorities (excluding Asians) do you see in STEM or CS?

lower-income kids (especially women) usually pick majors or programs that while more likely than Philosophy to directly translate into solid & relevant job placement... usually have much lower income potential & academic rigor than a typical STEM major. (think nursing, medical assistant professions, social work, athletic training, blue collar trades, etc.)

This is interesting but also obscures that most people with IQs under 100 are men. Especially when you get under 90. SO the lowest 1/3 of women still includes social work majors. The lower 1/3 of men are homeless or in SuperMax. Men and women have similar average IQs (at the group level) but the male distribution shows more extremity (in IQ and most everything else).

Gary Cohn wrote:

4runner wrote:

I suspect that Philosophy is up there because of the demographics of the students who take it.

A Philosophy major is the ultimate sign of wealth. It is conspicuous consumption. Four years spent doing something that has little or no commercial value.

The same could be said of Art History, or English.

The study of philosophy is construed as some sort of intellectual foot-binding - a measure to make oneself entirely unemployable. Lots of people think it is a bizarre thing to study. But then again, Berkeley has a Rhetoric department, which I never really understood.

Lots of Philosophy majors on Wall Street, going to law school etc. It has its own rigour.

To determine the conspicuousness of the consumption of a major, I think it would be appropriate to compare majors that are related by subject matter and skills/inclination.

For example, most engineers could very well have been physics majors, but may have chosen engineering because of the better career prospects. Likewise, most physicist could well have been engineers but chose physics notwithstanding the worsened career prospects.

However, I suspect that most people with the skills/inclination to study English did not consider either engineering or physics as an alternative. A better comparison would thus be something like English majors and Latin/Ancient Greek majors.

Unfortunately, there I not enough granularity in the original data.

blunt honesty wrote:

4runner wrote:

A Philosophy major is the ultimate sign of wealth. It is conspicuous consumption. Four years spent doing something that has little or no commercial value.

The demographics of the people who can afford to do that are probably very different from the demographics of people who study engineering.

not necessarily. How many poor->working class students or minorities (excluding Asians) do you see in STEM or CS?

lower-income kids (especially women) usually pick majors or programs that while more likely than Philosophy to directly translate into solid & relevant job placement... usually have much lower income potential & academic rigor than a typical STEM major. (think nursing, medical assistant professions, social work, athletic training, blue collar trades, etc.)

In my admittedly anecdotal experience, most engineering majors come from relatively humble backgrounds. For example, the Asians that you understand are disproportionately represented in STEM or CS are often the children of immigrants and willing to do the hard work that engineering requires. Even the native-born engineers are the sort of kids who grew up repairing their own cars. The wealthy are more likely to major in things like marketing.

Otherwise, as best I understand, you and I appear to agree.

If you come from a less affluent background, you are more likely to pick a major that directly translates into economic potential (nursing, medical assistant professions, etc.) rather than something like philosophy or art history. You'd want a visible and certain return on investment.

However, I am not quite sure why you think that things like athletic training and blue collar trades are university degrees.

Brian wrote:

This is interesting but also obscures that most people with IQs under 100 are men. Especially when you get under 90. SO the lowest 1/3 of women still includes social work majors. The lower 1/3 of men are homeless or in SuperMax. Men and women have similar average IQs (at the group level) but the male distribution shows more extremity (in IQ and most everything else).

Actually, to me, it EMPHASIZED this point. College graduates are a majority female, meaning a larger percentage of the female population than the male population will be attending. This will likely skew the IQ of females closer to the mean (100) than for men. In other words, only the top IQ men go to college, where as the top woman and the more average women go to college.

Also, while the mean IQ of the male and female populations are basically identical, the male population's distribution is far more spread out. As you said, most people with IQs under 100 are men, but also, most people at the extreme high IQs are men as well. Really fascinating stuff.

People w the lowest IQs flock in droves to the profession of social work. They also happen to be the most dysfunctional and hence the most dangerous (and entirely incapable of admitting their deficiencies).

You and "formerly present" have some nice additions to this thread.The demographics of those chosing certain majors are a large factor, but then again the study just reports correlations and does not address reasons for the differences. I think you are right, a poor kid, isn't going to major in Philosophy.Formerly present explained how male intelligence has a higher standard deviation and is more represented at the extremes but the intelligence levels between males and females are the same.I have a few comments not expressed on this thread yet. Knowledgeable posters indicated how males and females average out to have the same IQ. This is true, but did you know that the IQ test was developed to get equal gender results? If an item skewed toward one gender it was discarded.Also certain highly popular majors skew toward the lower IQ range. However, those few who excell and go on to obtain advanced degrees in their subject area may be equal in intelligence to those with advanced degrees in undergraduate subjects that were associated with higher intelligence.

4runner wrote:

jjjjjjjjj wrote:

Note that philosophy (which he calls "the odd exception") is right up near the top of all majors in "IQ" (in fact, that is just by SAT score) and the only one that is non-quantitative.

I suspect that Philosophy is up there because of the demographics of the students who take it.

A Philosophy major is the ultimate sign of wealth. It is conspicuous consumption. Four years spent doing something that has little or no commercial value.

The demographics of the people who can afford to do that are probably very different from the demographics of people who study engineering.

Conundrum wrote:

...

I have a few comments not expressed on this thread yet. Knowledgeable posters indicated how males and females average out to have the same IQ. This is true, but did you know that the IQ test was developed to get equal gender results? If an item skewed toward one gender it was discarded.

Also certain highly popular majors skew toward the lower IQ range. However, those few who excell and go on to obtain advanced degrees in their subject area may be equal in intelligence to those with advanced degrees in undergraduate subjects that were associated with higher intelligence.

I do not understand this comment:

"did you know that the IQ test was developed to get equal gender results?"

Is there such a thing as THE IQ test? I thought that there were 18 zillion of these things put together by 12.5 zillion companies and individuals and that the correlation between them was marginal at best.

Derrida and the Frankfurt School, not to mention Heidegger and Husserl, require more octane than does STEM. The Phenomenology of Mind is much tougher than calculus or circuits.

Asking Stuff wrote:

I thought that there were 18 zillion of these things put together by 12.5 zillion companies and individuals and that the correlation between them was marginal at best.

Actually, there is a pretty strong correlation between different IQ tests. It's certainly not 1.00, but it's substantial. "Intelligence...tests...are among the most accurate (in technical terms, reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments."

runner who professes wrote:

Derrida and the Frankfurt School, not to mention Heidegger and Husserl, require more octane than does STEM. The Phenomenology of Mind is much tougher than calculus or circuits.

Philosophy IS about thinking.

runner who professes wrote:

Derrida and the Frankfurt School, not to mention Heidegger and Husserl, require more octane than does STEM. The Phenomenology of Mind is much tougher than calculus or circuits.

You are choosing high school and freshmen level STEM subjects and comparing them to some of the most difficult subjects in philosophy.

I should hope that they don't compare.

Look at something like the second semester of solid state physics before jumping to conclusions.

I have three bachelor's degrees and am working on a master's. My bachelor's are in biology, chemistry, and physiology. I have been reading a lot on psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience the last few years also and would consider myself fairly learned in those areas. Apparently 121 and 124 are average for biology and chemistry respectively, which seems about right to me since most of my peers seemed relatively smart but still a bit below me (my IQ is about 135-140, maybe a little higher). Most people I met in college who weren't STEM majors of some kind seemed borderline retarded to me, which would make sense if their IQs were ~30 points or more below mine. I have seen these sorts of charts before, so this one is really no surprise as it looks more or less the same as the GRE and MCAT vs major breakdowns.

One thing I do think is interesting is that people think women are going to take over the world because more are going to college than men. All more women in college means is that their humanities degree will be even more useless in the future than it is now. This seems obvious to me, but then I guess not everything is obvious to those with low IQs...

ha ha ha he he wrote:

People w the lowest IQs flock in droves to the profession of social work. They also happen to be the most dysfunctional and hence the most dangerous (and entirely incapable of admitting their deficiencies).

The dumb leading lost