Learnin' and IQ

From Tyler Cowen, one of my favourite polymaths:

Children who have more schooling may see their IQ improve, Norwegian researchers have found.

I need to dig into the details, but the effect seems improbably large.

Using data on men born between 1950 and 1958, the researchers looked at the level of schooling by age 30. They also looked at IQ scores of the men when they were 19.

“The size of the effect was quite large,” she said. Comparing IQ scores before and after the education reform, the average increased by 0.6 points, which correlated with an increase in IQ of 3.7 points for an addition year of schooling, Galloway said.

Let's see, between 1933, when Feynman's IQ was tested in school, and 1948, when his big contributions hit publication, Feynman had something like ten years of intense school and 3 years of super school at Los Alamos - could work out to an additional 48 IQ points, bringing his adult IQ up to a respectable 173;-)

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