alt Hacker NewsTwo 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.
>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.