Talk:William James Sidis

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Vendergood was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 13 September 2010 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into William James Sidis. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

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A fact from William James Sidis appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 15 April 2004. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that William James Sidis, an eccentric—and once world-famous—genius, entered Harvard University in 1909 at the age of 12?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2004/April.

Wikipedia

His parents' methods

"raised in a particular manner" ... "their methods of parenting" ... "Sidis's manner of upbringing": excruciatingly vague phrases paired with noisy apologetics for that which is not stated. Enough teasing! Just what were his parents' methods? Did they beat him? Ground him? What? 67.180.143.89 (talk) 05:52, 29 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah this article has some vagueness about it. Jjazz76 (talk) 18:39, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

IQ Score

IQ is a ranking score, that states the ratio of people that a smarter than you

an IQ of 100 have a frequency of 1:2, meaning that 1 in 2 persons will have a higher G-factor (generalized intelligence) than that individual.

an IQ of 130 have a frequency of 1:50 (Mensa level)

an IQ of 180 have a frequency of 1:20 million

an IQ of 200 have a frequency of 1:75 billion

an IQ of 210 have a frequency of 1:9 trillion

an IQ of 220 is hard to calculate as you reach the numerical maxima of double precision computation

In other words.. No, 250 is just not possible and would be in the ballpark of 1:observable universe given all planets in it were inhabited as densely as earth. 84.238.46.248 (talk) 23:23, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, these articles about individual savants on Wikipedia and other places are always full of improbable and ridiculous claims. There also seems to be COIs sometimes even on long dead subjects. You almost have to treat it as a pseudoscientific field. This isn't to say though that modern research on human intelligence isn't legitimate. — THORNFIELD HALL^(Talk) 07:11, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah - got to agree with. Sidis is interesting because he is well documented and went to Harvard. But I added the part about his grades because he did decent, but not fantastic, while there. Jjazz76 (talk) 03:38, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, it's nonsensical. Like claiming someone lived to a thousand or they're 50 feet tall. There's no good evidence (obviously given the sensational claim) for it other than his family members claiming as such. Is there any scholarly treatment of this? All that I see are junk articles that at best reference this Wiki page. Mathlogsci (talk) 23:10, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wallace's biography is as scholarly as it gets. The book and the article also explain that it's likely that Sidis's mother warped him scoring 254th on a civil test to mean that he had an IQ of 254.

However, Wallace's book is suspect at times. Take The Book of Vendergood, which it uses as a direct source, yet I can't find any evidence that it even existed or survived until the 1980s when the biography was written. There's also a contradiction: the book claims that Vendergood was simpler than Esperanto, yet its articles were more complex than Japanese verbs. Julen Artano (talk) 16:38, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Amount of detail in Writing and Research section

The amount of detail in this section feels like it gives "authority" to his ideas - especially the "found notes" section. Perhaps this would be best deleted unless any of it is peer-reviewed literature or summaries of peer-reviewed literature? I'm honestly not sure what the standard is for inclusion in these sections. 2601:1C2:1600:22E0:1426:54D7:F14B:679 (talk) 02:08, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]