Jonathan's Corner
(Search & Sitemap)
> Writing >
Essays >
The Hayward Nonstandard Test: An Interesting Failure
Previous
1
2
3
Next
Printer-Friendly Version
In recent years, I published what I then (and now) consider an interesting test. It was meant to look for indirect signs of profound giftedness. I wrote it with the hope that it would circumvent the ceiling of standard model tests, and I wouldn't have been surprised if it showed a floor above some other tests' ceilings. Let me cite the questions before continuing:
Describe who you are, how you see the world, and what your inner world is like.
Describe your most impressive and distinctive achievements.
Describe your most impressive and distinctive failures.
Describe what you hope/wish/want/intend to accomplish with your life. What do you believe you will accomplish?
What is your educational background? Include out of classroom learning you consider appropriate.
What is (are) your domain(s) of desired excellence? What is your work there? What have you achieved? What failures have you experienced?
Have you ever had management problems or been fired? If so, describe each time.
Describe any unusual or distinctive characteristics of your childhood physiology and physique.
What mental health diagnoses and misdiagnoses have been considered for you (that you are comfortable divulging)? Elaborate if desired; if there is information you'd prefer to omit, please say so.
What are your interests?
On a scale of -1.0 to 1.0, rate yourself on the dimensions of the Myers-Briggs test: E(-1) to I(1), S(-1) to N(1), T(-1) to F(1), P(-1) to J(1). Elaborate if desired.
There are a few ways to take the Myers-Briggs test, one of the cheapest of which is to check out e.g. Kiersey's Please Understand Me II from the library; the Kiersey web site has assorted information online.
What is one of your favorite books? Why? Elaborate.
Provide a sample of your best writing.
What is one of your most cherished of your creations? Explain. If feasible, include a copy; if not, describe.
As a child or youth, what was one inconsistency you observed in the adult world that was painful?
Describe, with examples, your sense of humor.
Do you fit in (yes/no/question does not admit a yes or no answer for you)? Explain.
Provide, and answer, one question that you believe will provide me with deep insight into your intelligence.
Write your own short intelligence test.
What else can you say to provide me with evidence of your intelligence?
Richard Feynmann's Cargo Cult Science address talks about the need to publicize failed experiments as well as successes. I am publishing results, not to claim a new success, but because in its failure it may be interesting. Someone else may find a refinement of the idea that works, or other lessons may be taken from its failure. This seems to be an interesting failure.
I received responses from four men, whom I will call Adam, Brandon, Charles, and David. I opened and read them at the same time to limit bias. Adam seemed gifted, around the top of the range of "optimum intelligence" where you have a definite advantage over others but aren't so different that it starts to really hurt. Brandon seemed just over the edge; I hesitated in comparing them and finally placed Brandon slightly above Adam. Charles showed signs of real giftedness; earlier in life he had effectively solved a problem that it originally took Euler to solve. Charles struck me as profoundly gifted. Finally, if Charles showed brilliant complexity, David showed a simplicity on the other side of complexity. ("I wouldn't give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I'd give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.") In my notes, I compared his communication to how Richard Feynman closed the O-ring debate: "Feynmann, after people enquiring into the Challenger disaster had spent days arguing whether it was too cold for the O-rings, took an O-ring, swirled it around in his icewater, and pinched it, snapping it." David struck me as not only profoundly gifted but at a higher plateau than Charles's dazzling performance. Trying to describe the spread, I said that if the lowest score were a 1 and the highest were an 8, then I would give Adam 1, Brandon 2, Charles 6, and David 8. (I guessed numbers at 150, 155, 165, and 185; I intentionally did not reconcile these two sets of numbers.) Then I opened their prior test scores.
Charles had scores of 140-151, which I regarded as ceiling scores which did not provide useful information beyond being ceiling scores. Adam, Brandon, and David had highest prior scores of 168, 172, and 174 respectively. (I am inclined to lend more credence to the higher scores as it is more plausible to say that someone properly rated around 170 hit his head on the ceiling and scored around 130 than someone properly rated at 130 accidently obtained a score around 170. I acknowledge that this could inflate my estimates.) After an hour or so of trying to convince myself I could interpret their scores so that they would say my test worked, I realised that my test found a significant difference where none was independently verified. Adam, Brandon, and David had highest scores well within measurement error of each other. Furthermore, Adam had consistently high scores: his lowest score was 156, while no one else had two scores above 155. Comparing with previous data, there was no positive correlation to prior test scores, and the person who looked best from previous scores was the person I'd ranked the lowest.
This does not necessarily mean my test is invalid. Four responses, three of which were within measurement error of each other, do not a norming make. Given that responses had appeared at a rate of about one per year, it's not clear how long it would take to obtain a basis for a solid anchor norming, and if I would still be alive when enough responses had been completed. I opened the responses more on an intuition than anything else, and what I have is not a norming but an understanding of why it might not have been helpful to wait for enough responses for a norming. Furthermore, the fact that previous test data does not distinguish between them does not mean that they are at the same level. All four normees are bright enough to get ceiling scores on standardized tests. That leaves open the possibility of significant differences between them, including the possibility that Charles and David are appreciably brighter than Adam and Brandon. However, I am speaking about what is possible and not about claims that my results support. My results do not say anything positive about my ability to discriminate between responses. If there is anything interesting obtained from my test, it is not between responses but the fact that people responded at all. My website, Jonathan's Corner (Search & Sitemap), averages between 500 and 1000 unique visitors per day, with an average of two people reading the test per day. Only four people responded in three years, with all of the normees being brilliant. That seems significant, and I'm not sure what all it means. Apart from that, no ability to discriminate usefully between scores has been established in the usual fashion.
I would like to briefly describe the responses I received, both to provide an overall picture and to describe what I would single out in my evaluation. Here and elsewhere in the evaluation, I am intentionally using vague and generic descriptions rather than ones that are detailed and specific. This impoverishes the writing and gives a less valuable analysis, but I want to be cautious about confidence, and I expect that some of the people reading this will be quite good at connecting dots.
Adam's response was three pages long, seemed candid (as did the others), and included achievements at state level. His responses answered the questions, but did not have the florid, ornate, wheels within wheels quality I associate with someone brilliant who is speaking on a topic he finds interesting. The content of his responses strikes me as reflecting more intelligence than the writing style: it was well-written, but did not reflect the "mental overflow" I was looking for. His list of interests was relatively short (twelve), and included a few items that do not specifically reflect intelligence. Several of his choices suggest noteworthy social maturity; this, combined with my losing track of how he opened his responses, led me to assume that he was more gifted than profoundly gifted.
Brandon's response was also three pages long, and showed the pain of the social disconnect which many profoundly gifted experience. His list of interests was also short, but the activities themselves more distinctively suggest high intelligence. His general approach, in particular to society and authority, shows many of the signature traits David Kiersey (Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence, Buffalo: Prometheus, 1998) describes in profiling the NT "rational" temperament. (Three out of the four normees were NTs, and all of them were strongly intuitive.) He also has an uncanny knack for guessing certain kinds of information--which is an anomaly that I'm not sure what to do with. The examples, however, did not leave me wanting attack the anomaly by pointing him to Thomas Gilovich's How We Know What Isn't So (New York: Free Press reprint, 1993). He showed a desire to use his mind to transform society that seems to be common among very bright people.
Jonathan's Corner
(Search & Sitemap)
> Writing >
Essays >
The Hayward Nonstandard Test: An Interesting Failure
Previous
1
2
3
Next
Printer-Friendly Version