In this post, I propose to add some data to John Cate’s comments (see below). First, it’s important to explain that the term “genius IQ” should be taken to mean “a sufficiently high IQ to offer genius potential,” because a high IQ is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for genius. That is, the term “genius” is generally attributed to intellectual achievement rather than intellectual ability. This distinction is important in light of the information in the following excerpt from my recent book Intelligence: Where we Were, Where we Are, & Where we’re Going.
How Prevalent is Cognitive Giftedness Across Cultures?
Just as Olympic games provide us with a rough assessment of athletic proclivities across cultures, so too mathematics olympiads can be used to survey cognitive giftedness across countries. Since the international mathematics competitions include a wide representation of nations, their test results can shed light on the global distribution of mathematically fertile cultures. Figure 34.3 displays the nation whose team stood first in the IMO Competition (International Mathematics Olympiad) each year between 1985 and 2018.
We see that in this 34-year period, the Chinese team came first 18 times, Russia (including the USSR) 5 times, the USA 5 times, Romania 3 times, South Korea twice, and Bulgaria and Iran once each. (The total number of wins is 35, because the USA and USSR tied for first in 1986.) In 2018, more than 100 countries entered teams into the IMO, yet we see that China has dominated, while Russia, and the United States are strong, and Romania and South Korea are close behind. The Chinese domination might be explained by sheer population numbers, i.e., a royal flush of cognitive capabilities is more likely to occur at least once in a population of 1 billion than in a population of 1 million. It might also be explained by the existence of a culture that values and nurtures mathematical achievement. For example, on the 2018 US team, James Lin scored a perfect paper, while Andrew Gu, Vincent Huang, Michael Ren and Mihir Anand Singhal all won gold medals and Adam Ardeishar won a silver–most of the team composed of second or third-generation immigrants from cultures that value mathematics.The coach of the US team was Professor Po-Shen Loh who is the son of immigrant parents from Singapore.
These results suggest not only that the Asians have millions of highly intelligent people, but also that their culture respects mathematical achievement and creates an environment in which genius can flourish. In that book from which the above excerpt was taken, we present the results of the PISA studies revealing that the high performance of the Asians on mathematics olympiads is also reflected in the performance of the typical high school students in these countries. A deeper look into giftedness will be presented later this week.
The Post above was presented to support with some data, John Cate’s (Freelance Public Relations Specialist, Mount Airy, NC) response to the question above as reported on the Quora space titled “Intelligence and IQ.” Is it true that there are more people with Genius IQ in China than there are people in the United States? This was actually Mark Zuckerberg’s first line in the movie The Social Network.
Mr. Cates stated, “I would be shocked if a country with 1.35 billion people didn’t have more people with genius IQ than a country of 0.33 billion people. The US has one-fourth the population of China. Of course it is going to have fewer genius-IQ people! That was nothing but a stupid attention-getting comment that works with people who are lacking in critical thinking skills. China has more total geniuses than the United States for certain, but it doesn’t have more geniuses than the entire population of the USA.”
