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Whoever said that meant algorithms. Logarithms deal with exponents and their bases. Just thought I’d clarify.</p>
<p>the sat COULD measure intelligence if you eliminated all the individual variables: Test prep, anxiety, algorithms, etc etc</p>
<p>Brando: They don’t teach the algorithms in prep classes. Prep classes fail.</p>
<p>Brando: Math knowledge and FACTS can be learned, but the ability to reason mathematically are harder to learn.</p>
<p>What exactly are algorithms?</p>
<p>^ Basically things such as memorizing how to do a rubiks cube, remember a few things when a few things pop up that will prompt you with an answer:</p>
<p>For example, an SAT math question:</p>
<p>Charlie averages 50 mph on his round trip way to school, which was 50 miles from his house (I know it’s poorly phrased, and I know a lot of numbnuts will actually try to solve it, including me, lol). If he averaged 60 mph there, what was his average coming back?</p>
<p>An algorthim one could memorize is not to pick 40 mph, because based on the Princeton Review, it’s a “Joe Bloggs” answer.</p>
<p>Just as an anecdotal evidence (whether you guys agree or not, I’d just like to point out my observations) that people focused in humanities have a much much higher SAT score then those focused in other subjects. Those who had English as their first language also have a huge advantage (over people like me :P) </p>
<p>You only have to be average at math to get 750+ on the sat math section, while there are 2 other sections tailored towards English speakers. Error rate also is a great determining factor in the upper-end scores above the 99th percentile. I’m a person highly prone to errors and basically after 1st half of the test where i made no errors, i got tired and errors began to pop up. </p>
<p>Ultimately, though i agree that SATs do correlate with intelligence in a very weak degree, there are various other factors that determines one’s SAT performance.</p>
<p>mingchin17, I can see from your very first post that you obviously love to hear yourself talk, or in this case, read what you write. Come time when you apply for colleges, if you are a junior or younger, I would highly recommend tossing away this facade that you have created that you are omniscient and that everyone on College Confidential is obligated to eagerly await every word that you type, or else the admissions officers will see right through you. The fact of the matter is this: people that have high SAT scores tend to be smart, but smart people don’t always have high SAT scores.</p>
<p>A study by Julian Fernald, in the Institutional Research and Policy Studies at theUniversity of California – Santa Cruz, found that SAT I scores were the WEAKEST indicators of success in college (behind SAT II scores and high school GPA). Frankly, the most important factor in career and life success is work ethic, which is reflected in achievements and GPA. The phrase “brilliant but lazy” won’t get you anywhere.</p>
<p>^ Pot, meet kettle.</p>
<p>If the SATs measure intelligence, then how did I increase from a 2000 to a 2220 in like 5 months, without any prep? Did I suddenly get a lot more “intelligent”? Was I stupid when I got the 2000?</p>
<p>Also, saying you can get all A’s in high school by simply working hard is inaccurate. Take my honors Physics class for instance. I probably studied for like half an hour for each test, just going over a few key concepts. I got a flat A (no A+'s at my school) in the class (like 5-10% of the people in the class did). Then, there were a few people who did practice problems for like two days straight (20+ hours or so of studying)… and they got C’s an B’s in the class. There are many other classes where “diligently doing your homework”, and memorizing things is not enough to get the A. In APUSH for example, you can memorize all the facts you want, but when you have to write an in class DBQ with documents you have never seen before and incorporate them into your argument, it will take a reasonable amount of intelligence to build a coherant argument to prove your thesis under strictly timed conditions (in class DBQ’s amounted to roughly 25-30% of our grade). I could go on, but I think it is clear that certain honors/AP classes (not all) in high school do take more than just hard work to get A’s in.</p>
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<p>What part of correlation don’t you understand?</p>
<p>@Silverturtle:</p>
<p>Could you quote what you are referring to? I only read the OP’s initial post.</p>
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<p>I’m not referring to anything in particular. The point is semantic: if I were to say that the SAT “measures” intelligence, I would mean it in the sense that there is a strong correlation between intelligence and how well one does on the SAT. The fact that people can improve their SAT scores doesn’t negate the correlation.</p>
<p>Intelligence is a subjective idea. </p>
<p>/argument</p>
<p>@Silverturtle:</p>
<p>I see what you mean. Would you agree that once you are in a certain score range, someone who scores higher is not neccessarily “smarter” (by this I mean how well one performs in school; people can be "smart’ in many different ways) than the other. By this I mean that, 99% of the time, someone with a 2200 would clearly have higher scholastic aptitude than someone with an 1800, but someone with a 2300 may not neccessarily have higher aptitude than the person with the 2200?</p>
<p>One of the reasons I say this is due to the scaling system on the SAT. Take the Math section for example. Getting a 53 raw score can land you a 770, but getting a raw score of 40 rather than 41 will only result in your score dropping by 10 points.</p>
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<p>The whole idea of a strong correlation less than one is that nothing is necessarily true in any specific case. It is entirely possible, for example, that a 2300er is less intelligent (I’ll define intelligence as IQ, and use IQ test scores to define IQ) than a 1500er, but this is unlikely. Likewise, it is entirely possible that a 2300er is more intelligent than a given 2400er, but there is less than a 50% chance of this.</p>
<p>@OP-- Read about Eugenics much?</p>
<p>That was a jest by the way. I agree with what you are saying to certain extent. I believe that the SAT can only measure intelligence up to about the threshold of a 2100, then it’s a matter of meticulousness. This is only true, however, if the test taker took the test once. As Silverturtle has said, people (including him…I think) consistently score 2400s, however, I believe that someone who scores a 2100 can achieve a 2400 without prep, they just have to have the right “mindset”.</p>
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<p>Then why do hundreds of times more people score 2100-2390 than score 2400?</p>