Searching for Intelligence
I really recommend reading this article -- http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/story/0,20797,18440148-5003425,00.html
Its kind of related to chess but its mainly on Josh Waitzkin who actually had a Hollywood film made on him. Its very readable and un-technical on all counts and i think it captures many esscences of the Chess PLAYER. Very candid and down to earth, it kind of shows that chess mastery is as obsessive as any other sport. (By the way, i still defend chess as a sport, but to argue with me about this requires face to face confrontation. If you dont think so however, you are definitely not alone. hahaha)
With regards to Binet and his IQ tests however, i just want to clarify that there is NO SIGNIFICANT relationship between intelligence and chess. This comes not from personal bigotry but from research into my psychology report last year as well as personal interest. First of all, lets not get into the inherent problems with IQ testing. Its true that slightly more people who are ' intelligent' play chess, but it could well be a coincidental correlation to the sound of something like: people who do better at math sums and word logic PREFER to play chess than rugby.
More importantly, further replications of this idea has shown no statistical significance between the relative strength of chess players and their overall intelligence. I mean this as a PURE stats way. Not significant as in CANNOT reject the null hypothesis. It just kind of irritates me how people who do not really know anything about chess love to say "WA, you play chess, you must be so smart man!" or imply something to that effect.
This is like saying a tall person is going to be SO good at basketball, or a big -sized person has a flair for rugby. It might be true, but the links are dicey at best. Which is why people should read the article above and know a little more about poor misunderstood chess players.
Its kind of related to chess but its mainly on Josh Waitzkin who actually had a Hollywood film made on him. Its very readable and un-technical on all counts and i think it captures many esscences of the Chess PLAYER. Very candid and down to earth, it kind of shows that chess mastery is as obsessive as any other sport. (By the way, i still defend chess as a sport, but to argue with me about this requires face to face confrontation. If you dont think so however, you are definitely not alone. hahaha)
With regards to Binet and his IQ tests however, i just want to clarify that there is NO SIGNIFICANT relationship between intelligence and chess. This comes not from personal bigotry but from research into my psychology report last year as well as personal interest. First of all, lets not get into the inherent problems with IQ testing. Its true that slightly more people who are ' intelligent' play chess, but it could well be a coincidental correlation to the sound of something like: people who do better at math sums and word logic PREFER to play chess than rugby.
More importantly, further replications of this idea has shown no statistical significance between the relative strength of chess players and their overall intelligence. I mean this as a PURE stats way. Not significant as in CANNOT reject the null hypothesis. It just kind of irritates me how people who do not really know anything about chess love to say "WA, you play chess, you must be so smart man!" or imply something to that effect.
This is like saying a tall person is going to be SO good at basketball, or a big -sized person has a flair for rugby. It might be true, but the links are dicey at best. Which is why people should read the article above and know a little more about poor misunderstood chess players.
posted by efarmer at 9:29:00 AM
2 Comments:
poor misunderstood chess players. Poor unfortunate souls!
I'm rambling. Excuse me while I escape to my own blog to ramble...
agreed, even tall people are not so good at basketball smtimes. It's just the proportion and alot of other factors. ;p
hhaha, i never assumed u were smart- just very oblivious when you're playing chess. bleh.
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