Child Genius.. anyone watching

[Totallyfloaty35]

Its quite interesting, can't believe 5yrs have passed since previous show.

hocus, I still have 750,000 left

Michael's mum posted on the thread about the first series. I can't recall her name, Janelumley or something like that. She was responding to some negative stuff written about her family and came across as lovely, intelligent and articulate.

Which she would I suppose, being an Oxford Don.

I have 650,000 now. I bailed and put some on Pretty Polly!

Adam was the little boy with talent for maths, generally very intelligent.

Georgia was youngest member of mensa, she fell asleep during first IQ test.

nobodyisasomebody - talk to me about discrimination. 140 vs 145. Is that a real difference? And what about those "what is a lotus"-type questions? Curious about this. Tend to be sceptical about this sort of thing - about most psychometrics in fact. But I'd like to know more about it. Really know very little about different IQ tests.

It was Janelumley - and she was lovely! Although I don't think that is necessarily to be expected of an Oxford don. Intelligent yes...

but didn't they say Dante had 6A* and 5As at gcse - very good but hardly genius

I'm the parent of one of the original families and I agree that the IQ test used is very outdated but even so I didn't know my DC knew half the answers to those questions especially as DC was very young at the time. Some of the questions may have been learned but not from me!

We decided not to take part this time because we saw no benefit to doing it. In fact I did not want to do the the second series but DH and DC was desperate too. They saw sense third time round!

I thought Kieron and William's families were delightful.

Yes he did, fantastic grades. However, I know kids that did nearly as well and only revised for a couple of hours before each exam at state school.

I think that is an achievement, personally

But why should genius be dictated by GCSE results? Art boy is a genius but may only get one A* at GCSE (Art)

See, now you're just going to get us wondering who you are

Hope your DC is/are doing well.

Poor Peter and how short sighted is his father? [hsad]

oooh redsuede how exciting!

wracks brain for memories of other series...

Damn! Just lost all my money on William Hague! How are you doing whenskiesaregrey??

Let's just say, DC could have ended up like the Ahmed boys but thankfully his parent's aren't driven or intelligent enough to be bothered with that nonsense!

DC isn't achieving full potential but DC has a pretty good life and is quite happy to be a lazy sod remain under the radar at school. War hammer and blowing up mutants on the Wii is what DC lives for!

A huge difference FM. Once you get into the right tail end of the bell curve, although the numbers differ very slightly the children present very differently.

Gifted is top 2%. Above 130. But once you get to top 1% the difference between a couple of points is very noticable.

Ds took three different IQ tests. Each had verbal and non verbal part. Only a small part was knowledge type questions. A lot of it was stuff that tests innate ability and can't be taught. Puzzles, missing things in a picture, mazes, that sort of thing.

The questions themselves are a closely guarded secret to preserve test integrity. There are strict rules governing administering the test and the discontinuing rules are very precise too.

I practically had to take a course in statistics to understand how to interpret ds score, but nowadays you don't generally get the huge numbers because different tests are used that max out at about 160. The upper tails are compressed into the bell curve and mesured by standard deviations from the norm. The norm being 100.

my money is on strictly hocus...

oh yes, £175,000! If only it was real!

Redsuedes, thanks for coming on here. I did see the last programme but it was a while ago so don't know who's parent you are.

The genius slant wasn't necessarily academic but also gifts for art, chess etc.

Does anyone remember the 7up series, it wasn't about intelligence but just a general programme about class, initially, then that aspect of it just paled into insignficance, and they filmed the kids at 7,14,21,28,35,42 and 49 was so compelling. Some of them bowed out at 14 but came back into it again.

Oooh you clever thing! Right - must try harder this time...

Oh, I'm so fed up this is on C4 - is there a way for me to watch it online? I saw the last one and it was fascinating - and the guy who teaches the lad Old English is one of my teachers, too. He seemed like a really nice child and I wanted to know what happened with his little sister - did they mention her this time around?

bring it on hocus... (think we might need to take this elsewhere, distracting slightly from OP ;) ) I lost half my money on a male bee damn it!

Is what is being tested really able to be constrained into a single linear scale though? That is what I really don't get. I need to read something sympathetic to IQ testing perhaps. The last thing I read about it was Stephen J Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, and that really wasn't.

yes witches and i am a real believer in that whole bigger picture concept

children can almost be 'programmed' to achieve amazing things when young but many will simply slow start and then blossom later

personally i see the latter as having a more genreally positive outcome

it is so often the parents interest that is nurtured in the genius child ie music- maths etc etc

Tiger Woods is an example..

I loved 7Up. I started watching it at 28Up when they repeated all the previous series and never miss it now. The children are my age so particularly relevant to me. 2 years to go to 56Up! Wonder how Neil's doing....