So I Am Of "Below Average" Intelligence!

So the Daily Telegraph a UK daily reports on a PC World report on a survey that concludes Internet Explorer users have "below average" IQ. The study was conducted by a Vancouver based Psychometric Consulting company, AptiQuant.

The AptiQuant homepage has this to say about themselves - puff that chest up why don't you:

"At AptiQuant we help you select the right people. Our consultants help thousands of organizations worldwide make evaluations using scientifically validated psychometric tests. Use our personality and aptitude tests to objectively assess applicants and employees."

Now as an Internet Explorer user I am clearly a dumb *** so I really have no business commenting on this story but, you know me, I feel an irresistible urge to do just that.

So point number one:

Despite being a dumb *** I find fault [sight unseen] in whatever mathematical methodology was the basis for the conclusion that IE users have "below average" intelligence. While its market share has seen declines IE is still the dominant browser. If the majority of people use it then are we saying the MAJORITY of people have "below average" intelligence - seems like that makes no sense unless they used one of the less meaningful mathematical definitions of average of which there are many. To simple little me however it seems well - simple. The majority of people are probably average and smaller numbers are above and below average.

Moving on:

The results were derived from having people do intelligence tests online and then analyzing what browsers they used to do the tests. So here's the deal - I figure for the most part the people who take intelligence tests are likely to be the ones who are quite intelligent and want to prove it to themselves. Mr. Average ain't sitting there answering obscure questions [and I have taken such tests - the questions are often very obscure] just so he can find out what he already knew - he is Mr. Average. So the study is flawed. Any study that is to base its conclusions on what the "average" is must of necessity have a sample base of average people. This study clearly did not.

Yes there is more:

The study postulates that since IE is preinstalled on most PC's that the less intelligent among us don't change and the more intelligent do. Now I have tried other browsers, there is frankly little difference unless you are a cutting edge web developer trying to find ways to kill our bandwidth even more. So the question is why would changing to another browser be an indication of intelligence. In fact I would go so far as to hypothesize that the opposite is actually true and that changing to another browser is actually the indication of below average intelligence. What's the old saying" "If it ain't broke don't fix it!"

And finally:

Thankfully with my restaurant management days being a dim and distant memory [why in the heck would anyone choose to do that job] I no longer do any hiring. If I did I sure as heck would not use AptiQuant to do my Psychometric Consulting since they have proven with this study that they are of "less than average" intelligence - and in any case what on earth is wrong with the traditional interview?