[Kabal]

(04-27-2013 10:16 PM)polymath Wrote:  

+2 std devs means you're in the 97.8th percentile, no? For reference, that percentile amounts to about a 2140 on the SAT. Pretty high, but not enough to be accepted into a top school off horsepower alone.

If you're black or latino, 2140 means you're a shoe-in at any school. If you're white or Asian, it indeed is the case that 2140 is insufficient for "horsepower alone" admission.

But indeed, +2 standard deviations in intelligence still isn't that smart. The average investment banking PPT&Excel-cranking analyst drone is probably around there.

In the hard sciences nowadays, +4 standard deviations may be what's needed to make significant contributions to the wealth of knowledge.