Victoria, I have disagree with you on the idea that the IQ spread among quizbowlers is fairly large. Zeroth off, I would venture that the average intelligence of a college-bound 18-year-old is higher than the average intelligence of a non-college-bound 18-year-old. Of course in this day and age, with too many kids being shipped off to college because they or their parents think it is the thing to do, that gap has decreased. First off, to be interested in something such as quizbowl requires a certain intellectual leaning. Second off, to be good at something like this, even though it only requires a surface-level intelligence, requires a certain degree of intelligence. I would venture that if an IQ test were taken among the people at a tournament, very few would score below 100. My IQ has usually be measured around 140-155, depending on which of the three-minute IQ tests I'm taking :P In fact, I'd probably put the average IQ of a quizbowler, especially at the college level, at about 130, with a stdev of about 15 or so. The quick-recall aspect of the game diminishes and the deductive reasoning (ok, let's think of a female opera singer born in Greece ... ok, let's think of a World War I battle that involved a massive Italian retreat ...) aspect of the game vastly increases. Let's face it. Some aspects of intelligence cannot be measured in a game/competitive format. I view this competition as a mostly harmless little dog-and-pony show for smart kids, much as beauty pageants are mostly harmless little dog-and-pony show for pretty kids. Nothing to get all riled up about ... until we see parents who clearly abuse this, much as we have pageanthead mothers who get bent out of shape if their darling finishes 3rd or 4th. Because let's face it, any kid who gets into Hopkins at age 13 has to be fairly smart. "For 10 points, design a nuclear reactor." "For 10 points, provide an analysis of the Gospel of Matthew, mentioning areas obtained from Q, the Gospel of Mark and unique sources." "For a bonus 30 points, indicate which areas of the Gospel of Matthew indicate that its intended audience was the Jewish community." "For 30 points, indicate why Longstreet was more cognizant of the changes in modern warfare than Lee or Grant." Anyone that can answer these questions (and I can only give a decent answer to the fourth off of the top of my head) is intelligent in my book. But they may or may not be able to answer quizbowling questions about that. OK in the end I have to agree with Nathan, although using slightly different points ... basically, although smart people may not necessarily have high GPAs or PPGs, not many non-smart people have high GPAs or PPGs (except if you're majoring in your college's officially designated slack major. At Randolph-Macon they were psychology if you were female, business/econ if you were male and sociology for both genders. I was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa with some of the most inane and idiotic people I've ever met, while some friends of mine who were CS majors got a 2.2 GPA and are pulling in 2x as much as these others.) Shawn Pickrell
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:43 AM EST EST