“130 IQ? Really? Predictably Irrational was the #23 selling book on Amazon in 2008. It is astronomically unlikely that every single person who read the book had IQ over 130. Some filter for intelligence is needed, sure. But not 1.5 standard deviations, single tailed! Or, more anecdotally: I know plenty of average (less than 1 s.d. above mean) people who like reading interesting things.”
I bet you don’t. Liking to read at all immediately makes someone non-average. The average USian reads four books per year ( source http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/21/AR2007082101045.html ), with 25% not reading at all. The same source says “The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey, more than all other categories. Popular fiction, histories, biographies and mysteries were all cited by about half, while one in five read romance novels. Every other genre including politics, poetry and classical literature were named by fewer than five percent of readers.”
I know that the mean adult in the UK buys 1.8 books per year (they read another three or four from the library or friends).
Assuming any kind of correlation between amount of books read and intelligence (which I think is a fair assumption) and taking ‘like to read’ as meaning reading more than one book a month, say, then assuming IQ can be a reasonable proxy for intelligence (an assumption I don’t share, but leave that for present) then while I can’t find the raw data for that poll, I bet that twelve books per year is a couple of standard deviations from the mean, and probably correlates with an intelligence a couple of standard deviations above the mean (especially when you talk about ‘interesting’ books, which on this forum I take to be more likely to mean, say, Godel, Escher, Bach than The DaVinci Code)
There’s probably a selection bias present there—you probably think of people as being closer to the mean than they really are, because in general people tend to associate with people with similar tastes whenever possible.
Yeah, there’s probably some selection bias, but not so much that I can’t compensate for it. I think you misinterpreted me, or I wasn’t clear enough—nobody is average in every way, so I would have to be really stupid to mean “average everything including book-reading habits” when I said average. So what did I mean when I said “average?” Well, what seemed like the obvious interpretation to me was that I meant “average-ish IQ.” As in “I know people within 1 standard deviation of average IQ who like reading interesting things, and it’s a bad plan to respond to someone else’s personal experience with ‘you must be lying or stupid.’” A better choice would have been “then you’re very unusual” or “but I don’t, and here are some numbers.”
I bet that twelve books per year is a couple of standard deviations from the mean, and probably correlates with an intelligence a couple of standard deviations above the mean
Standard deviations may not be the best way to think about this distribution. They’ll lead you to picture it as exponential decay even though it isn’t. Plus that 1.8 books/yr number may be stuck in your head, even though that was sales (I bought 0 books this year). The median for reading was 7 books/yr in your linked survey. So if 25% read 0 books, that means the spread is big, putting 12 only around the 3rd quartile. I.e. less than 1 standard deviation above the mean of a bell-curve.
‘interesting’ books, which on this forum I take to be more likely to mean, say, Godel, Escher, Bach than The DaVinci Code
Nah, they wouldn’t be able to handle GEB. My prototype was Predictably Irrational. I’d guess about 1⁄5 of the sequence posts are that level (if “fluent” usage of the internet is also assumed), and with some editing (perhaps by some sort of directed community effort) that number could be raised to 1⁄3 (and not assuming internet fluency), containing most of the important stuff. Which is still several books worth, iirc.
“130 IQ? Really? Predictably Irrational was the #23 selling book on Amazon in 2008. It is astronomically unlikely that every single person who read the book had IQ over 130. Some filter for intelligence is needed, sure. But not 1.5 standard deviations, single tailed! Or, more anecdotally: I know plenty of average (less than 1 s.d. above mean) people who like reading interesting things.”
I bet you don’t. Liking to read at all immediately makes someone non-average. The average USian reads four books per year ( source http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/21/AR2007082101045.html ), with 25% not reading at all. The same source says “The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey, more than all other categories. Popular fiction, histories, biographies and mysteries were all cited by about half, while one in five read romance novels. Every other genre including politics, poetry and classical literature were named by fewer than five percent of readers.”
I know that the mean adult in the UK buys 1.8 books per year (they read another three or four from the library or friends).
Assuming any kind of correlation between amount of books read and intelligence (which I think is a fair assumption) and taking ‘like to read’ as meaning reading more than one book a month, say, then assuming IQ can be a reasonable proxy for intelligence (an assumption I don’t share, but leave that for present) then while I can’t find the raw data for that poll, I bet that twelve books per year is a couple of standard deviations from the mean, and probably correlates with an intelligence a couple of standard deviations above the mean (especially when you talk about ‘interesting’ books, which on this forum I take to be more likely to mean, say, Godel, Escher, Bach than The DaVinci Code)
There’s probably a selection bias present there—you probably think of people as being closer to the mean than they really are, because in general people tend to associate with people with similar tastes whenever possible.
Yeah, there’s probably some selection bias, but not so much that I can’t compensate for it. I think you misinterpreted me, or I wasn’t clear enough—nobody is average in every way, so I would have to be really stupid to mean “average everything including book-reading habits” when I said average. So what did I mean when I said “average?” Well, what seemed like the obvious interpretation to me was that I meant “average-ish IQ.” As in “I know people within 1 standard deviation of average IQ who like reading interesting things, and it’s a bad plan to respond to someone else’s personal experience with ‘you must be lying or stupid.’” A better choice would have been “then you’re very unusual” or “but I don’t, and here are some numbers.”
Standard deviations may not be the best way to think about this distribution. They’ll lead you to picture it as exponential decay even though it isn’t. Plus that 1.8 books/yr number may be stuck in your head, even though that was sales (I bought 0 books this year). The median for reading was 7 books/yr in your linked survey. So if 25% read 0 books, that means the spread is big, putting 12 only around the 3rd quartile. I.e. less than 1 standard deviation above the mean of a bell-curve.
Nah, they wouldn’t be able to handle GEB. My prototype was Predictably Irrational. I’d guess about 1⁄5 of the sequence posts are that level (if “fluent” usage of the internet is also assumed), and with some editing (perhaps by some sort of directed community effort) that number could be raised to 1⁄3 (and not assuming internet fluency), containing most of the important stuff. Which is still several books worth, iirc.