[nartho]

Two things :

> The median IQ for mathematics PhD students probably hovers somewhere around 145

Does that mean the 145 figure is only a guess on your end ?

Second, as far as I know, an individual's IQ is not something set in stone, and can absolutely be improved with training. I remember reading (that's an anecdote so correct me if I'm wrong) that rewarding a good score with money was able to improve the outcome by up to 20 points. It doesn't sound absurd to me that someone with a slightly above average IQ could get close to 140 after 6, 7 years of high level math training.

[hiAndrewQuinn]

>Does that mean the 145 figure is only a guess on your end ?

EDIT: Mea maxima culpa, confusion crept in, my 145 number was supposed to be a much looser guess for actual working full time mathematicians. I miswrote this in the original post as applying to math PhD students, which are much lower. Closer to a 130 median.

ORIGINAL: It's not quite a guess, but I don't have precise data on this exact thing either. Previous studies in this field have consistently found a range of between 140 and 150, and you can probably find those with some Googling if you want to corroborate it yourself. I have a long cached memory of seeing a study where theoretical physics PhD students had an average IQ of 150, which also loosely supports this, since theoretical physics is almost its own form of pure mathematics.

>an individual's IQ is not something set in stone, and can absolutely be improved with training

Most psychological research I've seen says no such thing, unfortunately. Believe me, I would love for that to be the case - one extra point of IQ correlates to roughly $1000 extra income per year in the US, and so if your 20 point claim were really true we could potentially cause a double digit spike in GDP over the next few months just by implementing it in smart ways. But my baseline belief is that study is almost certainly an outlier in a sea of similar studies which support the null hypothesis.

[BeetleB]

Did a Google search, and the only actual, definitive thing I found was this:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5008436/#tbl1

Note that it's an IQ of 128 vs 125 for humanities. With the small sample size, it's basically noise. And given that this is Oxford, I would expect the average PhD student to have less than these numbers.

[nartho]

Maybe, but let say you're right. I still don't understand your suggestion of doing an IQ test before you decide to study math. If you can't go further than a masters, like you said there are still a lot of industries you can go too and have an interesting, lucrative job. And if you do succeed to finish your PhD then that's great news. There are no benefits that I can see in doing an IQ test like you suggested before you make your decision. If you love math and are good at it, chances are you're moderately smart at least. Might as well go as far as you can if that's what you want.