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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 6845522" data-attributes="member: 16814">Your point is incorrect.  You might as well say that Maxperson's assertion cannot be true assuming unicorns fart rainbows.  The two things have exactly that much in common.No, because IQs are not really normally distributed.  They cannot be, because a normal distribution requires certain things be true of its data that are not true for the IQ data.  Normal distributions require that the data have a mean and a standard deviation and ordinal data have no such values (and cannot).  Yes, you can take all the numbers in an ordinal data set and do the math that you would to find a mean and standard deviation, and this math gives you answers, but those answers are flat out bullpoop.  This is because, again, ordinal data does not have a defined distance between data points.  The difference between 1 and 2 can be different than between 2 and 3, and 3 and 4, and 4 and .....  If the distance between data points is unknowable, then a mean of that data is meaningless (heh, see what I did there?).  If the mean is meaningless, you have no anchor to find standard deviation (which is a measure of variance where is itself unknowable due to the unknown amount of variance between points, so a general statement of variance is impossible).The ONLY use the stats of IQ has is to compare points within the set.  IQ only makes sense in terms of discussing other IQ scores. It's normal distribution is a knowing falsehood that maintains some use so long as it's understood it's should be used only to loosely evaluate the IQ data itself -- it is not appropriate for comparison to any other data set or distribution, and fails to provide any useful conclusion when so compared.  So if you compare IQ's distribution to 3d6's, then the result is as valid as comparing IQ to unicorn farts.TL;DR:  IQ's stats are improper, so it doesn't matter if you compare it to 3d6 or unicorn farts -- the outcome is the same.</blockquote>

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