1 post tagged “intelligence”

I've read two good articles recently.

The first is Malcolm Gladwell's piece on IQ and race.  This fits in nicely with the debate I've been having about talent, and whether people are born with certain gifts (more thoughts on that debate, and on Gladwell's piece, here).  The Gladwell piece is primarily about the Flynn Effect, which shows that IQ scores have been rising, across the board, over the last century.  To quote:

"And, if we go back even farther, the Flynn effect puts the average I.Q.s of the schoolchildren of 1900 at around 70, which is to suggest, bizarrely, that a century ago the United States was populated largely by people who today would be considered mentally retarded."

The second piece is a NYT profile of Roland Fryer, a 27 year old African-American who grew up dirt poor in Florida.  After embarking on a criminal career in his early teens, Fryer had two close brushes with the law.  He is now an economics professor at Harvard and a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard (sometimes called "Harvard's Harvard").  His research focuses on race and intelligence (and is, in this way, linked to Gladwell).  Fryer's goal as an economist: to create a unified theory of Black America.  The profile is written by Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics fame.