Noesis
The Journal of the Mega Society
 
Issue #180        March 2006
 
 
 
Contents
About the Mega Society/Copyright Notice
 
 
 
  2
 
Editorial
 
Kevin Langdon
 
  3

Second Report on Online Testing

 
Dean Inada
 
  4

The Colored Rains of Kerala: An Exploration
  of Possible Causal Mechanisms

Ian Goddard

 
  9

God

 
Kevin Langdon
 
19

(Pel)lucid Dreaming

 
John Ostendorf
 
22

Autobiography

 
Richard May
 
23

The Colonies

 
Richard May
 
24

Vista

 
Richard May
 
24

In Praise of Stupidity

 
Richard May
 
24

 

 

 

About the Mega Society

The Mega Society was founded by Dr. Ronald K. Hoeflin in 1982. The 606 Society (6 in 106), founded by Christopher Harding, was incorporated into the new society and those with IQ scores on the Langdon Adult Intelligence Test (LAIT) of 173 or more were also invited to join. (The LAIT qualifying score was subsequently raised to 175; official scoring of the LAIT terminated at the end of 1993, after the test was compromised). A number of different tests were accepted by 606 and during the first few years of Mega’s existence. Later, the LAIT and Dr. Hoeflin’s Mega Test became the sole official entrance tests, by vote of the membership. Later, Dr. Hoeflin’s Titan Test was added. (The Mega was also compromised, so scores after 1994 are currently not accepted; the Mega and Titan cutoff is now 43—but either the LAIT cutoff or the cutoff on Dr. Hoeflin’s tests will need to be changed, as they are not equivalent.)

Mega publishes this irregularly-timed journal. The society also has a (low-traffic) members-only e-mail list. Mega members, please contact the Editor to be added to the list.

For more background on Mega, please refer to Darryl Miyaguchi’s “A Short (and Bloody) History of the High-IQ Societies,”

http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/history.html

and the official Mega Society page,

http://www.megasociety.org/

Noesis, the journal of the Mega Society, #180, March 2006.

Noesis is the journal of the Mega Society, an organization whose members are selected by means of high-range intelligence tests. Jeff Ward, 13155 Wimberly Square #284, San Diego, CA 92128, is Administrator of the Mega Society. Inquiries regarding membership should be directed to him at the address above or:

ward-jeff@san.rr.com

 Opinions expressed in these pages are those of individuals, not of Noesis or the Mega Society.

Copyright © 2006 by the Mega Society. All rights reserved. Copyright for each individual contribution is retained by the author unless otherwise indicated.

 

 

 

Editorial

Kevin Langdon

 

 

This issue is late because we haven’t been getting enough submissions lately.

 

Candidates for the 2006 election for Mega Society officers were solicited in the previous issue of Noesis. Only the incumbent officers have responded and all have expressed an interest in seeking reelection. Therefore, these candidates being unopposed,  I declare each reelected:

 

Administrator

Jeff Ward

Editor

Kevin Langdon

Internet Officer

Chris Cole

 

In this issue we have some interesting articles.

 

Dean Inada has provided a second report on the online testing project that he has been conducting with Chris Cole. Work of this kind is necessary given the general unavailability of good new high-range tests.

 

Ian Goddard’s essay herein, “Possible Causal Mechanism of Kerala’s Red Rain,” is an expanded version of one of the articles on his interesting and eclectic website:

 

http://www.iangoddard.net/

 

The next issue of Noesis will be a special issue on Biblical Scholarship. I already have a number of interesting and thought-provoking articles on hand, but further submissions are invited and encouraged. My article, “God,” in this issue, one of a continuing series of autobiographical notes, is published at this time to get you thinking about this subject. The deadline for this issue will be April 30.

 

We have links to members’ websites on our home page, but Ron Hoeflin’s former website is no longer up and that leaves only my site. Members, please supply URLs for your Web presences.

 

I am grateful, as always, to the contributors of material for this issue. And, as always, I request more high-quality submissions for subsequent issues.

 

 

Cover: A pattern generated with “Spires,” a routine in HallucinationsTM, by Kevin Langdon. Copyright © 2006 by Polymath Systems. All rights reserved.

 

 

Second Report on Online Testing

Dean Inada


Introduction

This is the second status report on this online testing site: www.mental-testing.com.  A description of the basic operation of the site can be found in the first report at www.megasociety.org/noesis/177.htm#FirstReport.

The test has received a good review by the independent test ranking Web site www.iqte.st, ranking second of the sites they have reviewed. We have 3764 new test takers since the first report.


Corrections and Refinements

We discovered a bug in the hangman questions, so we had to reset those answers.  This means that everyone who has previously answered the questions is allowed to answer the questions again.

In the questions that ask which of five words is not in the same category as the other four we noticed that some words were frequently missed when they were offered as an answer.

In a made up example, suppose that for one question we picked four random words from

arm
ear
eye
gum

hip
jaw
leg
lip

ora
rib
toe

which were meant to form a group, and one random word from

bye
cay
fey
gat
gel
gyp
haw
ilk
kea
lei

mho
neb
nix
nub
obi
ohm
ova
oxy
phi
pox

taw
tog
tom
tux
yaw
yin
zap
zed

which was meant to be the answer.

We generate reports listing the correct answers divided by the total answers, which might look like this (again these are made-up numbers simply for illustration).

wrong answers

ora

2087/5602

rib

1003/5782

jaw

770/5628

gum

661/5629

lip

474/5676

toe

462/5688

leg

460/5756

ear

428/5649

hip

416/5701

arm

345/5652

eye

229/5825

missed alternative answers

ova

191/281

gyp

144/251

mho

116/247

yaw

113/264

nub

111/261

taw

107/252

fey

105/251

kea

106/254

oxy

112/270

cay

108/261

haw

98/237

pox

110/287

zed

102/268

gat

98/268

neb

91/250

obi

104/288

ohm

95/270

zap

97/290

tog

88/267

ilk

79/242

nix

80/251

tux

89/281

yin

82/262

lei

80/256

gel

78/250

bye

79/254

phi

77/256

 

We eliminate any answer that was missed more than half the times it was offered, like “ova” and “gyp.” We might also decide that “ora” is too obscure, and eliminate that too.


New Features

We added a new feature by which people may request to be notified by email when new questions are added to the test.


Recent Statistics

            50610 registrants, 37209 participants, 979 tests completed

Problem

Answered

% Answered

% Correct

% Partial credit

A

6649

62

4

0

B

2475

57

22

0

C

15077

81

6

0

D

7568

65

9

0

E

17995

82

57

0

F

19778

90

73

0

G

17451

89

66

0

H

19048

93

68

0

I

20008

88

72

0

J

16689

89

65

0

K

19583

92

77

0

L

19911

91

70

0

M

24654

91

67

0

N

22880

91

74

0

O

3293

79

5

0

P

12000

75

13

0

Q

7645

87

5

9

R

1768

88

8

12

S

12930

88

8

0

T

5459

35

11

0

 

%Answered is number of people who were asked a question/number of people who answered that question. The more difficult questions are less likely to be asked unless the persons performance on other questions indicates that they may have a good chance of answering that question, or we have run out of easy questions to ask that person.

%Correct is correct answers/answers.

 

Graphs of Question Statistics

The quality of a test item is determined by the shape of the curve of the probability of getting a correct answer as a function of test taker intelligence.  A good test item will have a sigmoid curve, starting at zero and suddenly increasing to one at some threshold, with no wiggles.  Wiggles represent alternative answers that occur to people at higher intelligence levels.  For example, problem 25 on the Mega Test has wiggles, whereas problem 1 has a low threshold with no wiggles and problem 36 has a high threshold with no wiggles:

http://www.megasociety.org/noesis/156/di_to_cc.html

In a multiple choice question, the probability may not start out at zero, because there is a residual chance of guessing the right answer.  This does not affect the Bayesian estimation of a test taker’s rank, because the mathematics automatically subtracts out the probability of guessing the right answer.

In the following graphs the lower blue line is the probability of getting a correct answer as a function of a test taker’s estimated rank, the upper red line is the probability of attempting the question as a function of a test taker’s estimated rank, and a middle grey line in two of the graphs is the probability of getting a correct or partial credit answer as a function of a test taker’s estimated rank.  The letter labels on each graph correspond to the row label in the above report of statistics.

 

 

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

 

I

 

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S