Hitchen's razor applies here: a claim without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. GP should show their work first before I waste my energy shadow boxing quasi-science
Since you sound geniunely curious: a number of former colonies of Britain utilise high school examination boards overseen by prestigious British universities, stats on the results are routinely published. I'll leave the details as an exercise to the reader, or when provided with respectable sources that state the contrary.
Unless most of the population takes these exams you have only identified generally, it’s not going to reflect the average person. All that good performance by a small number of students would tell us is that smart people exist, which I already know, but not how many stupid people exist, which is what will affect average numbers either on exams or median income. So the evidence you claim exists would not even be capable of supporting your argument.
> Unless most of the population takes these exams you have only identified generally, it’s not going to reflect the average person
Is the sample size of "all final-year high-schoolers in a country" big enough for you?
> So the evidence you claim exists would not even be capable of supporting your argument.
What makes you think that?
Also - I will not be playing defence here: the burden of proof is on the side that put forward the hypothesis, for which no evidence has been cited thus far. So much for wanting to have a "good faith" discussion
Note that I’m not defending the original claim you responded to, because I don’t think it’s using great data.
Test scores would work great only if almost everybody reached the final year of high school and took the test, or if it came with info about what proportion of the students took it, but it would only say anything about the region or country taking it, not directly about others. (What it could also do is help refute the applicability of historical third world IQ measurements in general, too. But only if you actually identify the exam and location by name.)
Well, please provide that source! I’ve never heard of that testing.