Ian Deary says:

‘Doing research on intelligence is fascinating, and also sometimes frustrating. Like being a meteorologist, when you tell someone you work on intelligence you find that they start telling you about your own topic. So, I think it is useful show people some real data that come from intelligence tests; opinions can then be founded on data, or at least one can query the data-gathering or its interpretations.

Without making assumptions about what intelligence tests measure or why people differ in their scores, I shall present some results and invite people’s reactions to them. I am still surprised by the fact that sitting down with one of these tests for three quarters of an hour or so and getting a score can have such far-reaching predictions, and cause so many arguments.

I haven’t decided on which ten things to present yet; there will be fewer if there is a lot of discussion, and more if people are quiet. Interruptions welcome.’

Ian Deary is Professor of Differential Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, and the Director of the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology. He is a world-expert in intelligence, is on the editorial board of the journal Intelligence, and is the author of Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction.