AIQ: Testing Players' Athletic Intelligence
The New York Times Magazine published an article about AIQ (Athletic Intelligence Quotient).
NFL & NBA teams, as well as the University of Michigan, use AIQ to test a player’s different mental capacities for their sport.
Highlights:
• Instead of a single-score IQ test (useless), it’s 10 tests that capture the mix of playing intelligences, like info retrieval (instantly recalling an offense's tendency from tape) and spatial relations (runner seeing a hole about to open).
• Teams can use it to address flaws in a player’s game — “intelligence” isn’t fixed for life — or decide strengths overcome flaws.
• AIQ reduces variables, like whether a receiver’s good because of talent, a coach’s system, or a good QB.
• It doesn’t just recognize stars — Saquon Barkley scored high but everyone knew he was good — it identifies lesser known players who are likely to start in their rookie years and have longer careers.
It seems this approach would have pushed Tom Brady higher in the draft
September 4th, 2020 at 10:35 AM ^
I thought I'd attached the link but don't see it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/magazine/athletic-intelligence.html
September 4th, 2020 at 12:00 PM ^
logged in just to up vote you for a quality post. Thanks for a link to a good read.
September 4th, 2020 at 10:40 AM ^
Interesting, sports related content. We should do this more often.
September 4th, 2020 at 10:48 AM ^
This content is like when your partner in an an incredibly toxic and damaging relationship does something nice for you out of the the blue and that manipulates you into sticking around a little longer.
September 4th, 2020 at 12:15 PM ^
My apologies.
September 4th, 2020 at 1:27 PM ^
It’s not you, it’s me.
September 4th, 2020 at 10:42 AM ^
Very intriguing concept, but seems difficult to quantify.
September 4th, 2020 at 11:36 AM ^
That was my thought as well. Seems related to the concept of Situational Awareness, which Pilots talk about a great deal. Basically, the ability to assess a situation and then define the correct action from that assessment. Comes with experience and can be taught, although there are some people who just "get it" right from the start.
It's super important, but hard as hell to quantify and seems like it might be confirming a prior assessment more than anything else, but it's at least new angle.
September 4th, 2020 at 11:51 AM ^
Similarly, in a medical trainee, you can often see whether they have "clinical judgement" or not (different from colleagiality, character, knowledge base). I've often wondered if we could measure it better, which might be the first step to finding a way to "train" it.
September 4th, 2020 at 12:19 PM ^
I had the same thought but pro teams and Michigan see enough value to use it.
Though the article doesn't answer all questions, it does indicate how the test quantifies things that have application to the real world, i.e., actually playing.
September 4th, 2020 at 10:44 AM ^
Something directly related to Michigan sports, what a wierd post.
Thank you, seems like old times.
September 4th, 2020 at 10:52 AM ^
Seems like a neat tool to have in the toolbox. Things that are difficult to quantitatively measure will always see outliers, but especially at the college level this seems like it would be quite useful.
September 4th, 2020 at 10:54 AM ^
How would Bobby “The Water Boy” Boucher have scored? Wouldn’t he have answered everything with “mama says” and “the devil,” scored terribly, and then go out and have a 19 sack game???
September 4th, 2020 at 11:06 AM ^
The real question: Was he a 3 or 4 Starz recruit?
September 4th, 2020 at 11:08 AM ^
Red Beaulieu does not approve
September 4th, 2020 at 11:09 AM ^
...it identifies lesser known players who are likely to start in their rookie years and have longer careers.
Ronnie Bell? Mike Hart? Devin Bush?
September 4th, 2020 at 12:20 PM ^
I should have written what the article does, "longer pro careers."
September 4th, 2020 at 11:10 AM ^
Michigan lacrosse was beginning to use this the last year JP was coaching. Not sure if they still are or if other programs are, but a pretty cool concept.
September 4th, 2020 at 11:16 AM ^
I'd love to know my AIQ. I'm barely athletic, so it's interesting. Just like someone could take an IQ test for a rough estimate of their IQ, I hope this becomes mainstream and we can take an "online" version. Maybe I'm more athletic than I give myself credit for.
September 4th, 2020 at 12:27 PM ^
The author of the article did take the test(s) and learned, not surprisingly, that he'd be lousy on the field or the court, but did have some strengths, like creativity that COULD apply in games.
Two of the things I especially appreciated about the article — and AIQ:
• as most of us know intuitively, "intelligence" is many things, and not simply a single number.
• "intelligence" in its various manifestations isn't fixed but capable of improvement.
September 4th, 2020 at 11:27 AM ^
Processing speed seems really important. I'll bet there are a few guys who'd smoke the Wonderlic but be a step slow under "live fire." The reverse is probably also true (thinking of someone like Joe Montana).
September 4th, 2020 at 12:26 PM ^
Yeah, especially for QBs it's really processing speed under pressure and mental courage. At least from the jump from college to the Pros. It's that extra second you had in college that you don't have in the pros. Having this is what gives athletes confidence. In a QB it means you can go through several reads and stand in the pocket. As a RB you can quickly determine when to cut and then accelerate, etc.
September 4th, 2020 at 12:29 PM ^
The article addresses that. It points out the Wonderlic IS a single score, making it less usable for real-world applications in games.
September 4th, 2020 at 11:34 AM ^
Wonder if there are different tests for difference positions? Seems more important for a QB than say an OL. Pretty cool though, I like it.
September 4th, 2020 at 12:32 PM ^
That's why it's important the test(s) look at different mental capacities, because different positions and sports require different thought processing.
To borrow an example from the article, a player might have low "knowledge acquisition" (learning the playbook) but make up for it with strengths in other parts of intelligence.
September 4th, 2020 at 12:01 PM ^
There's a fascinating book called "Thinking Fast and Slow." Basically, there's the contemplative "slow brain" thinking (like mathematics) and more reactive "quick-brain" thinking, like seeing a linebacker lean slightly to one direction and instantly knowing which receiver will be open and where. "Quick-brain" thinking can process loads of information quickly, but tends to be less accurate than "slow-brain" thinking. Needless to say, athletes can train their quick-brain thinking to incredible levels.
This seems to be measuring more "quick-brain" intelligence, as opposed to "slow-brain" intelligence that is more commonly identified on traditional IQ tests.
I wonder how you test for it, given you're measuring processes that occur more quickly than it takes to think a single word.
September 4th, 2020 at 12:06 PM ^
Such a great book. The first half was fascinating and a quick read. The second half felt like a math/statistics textbook and took me a couple years to finish going a few pages a time. Really drove home how ingrained a lot of the risk/reward calculations we do every day are.
Another fantastic read is "Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions." Did a great job of explaining some of the "gut feeling" type decisions that people make. When they've seen a situation 10,000 times they just know when something is off even if they can't articulate what. The examples in the book were firefighters, military commanders, etc. but I could definitely see it applying to reading a defense or deciding when to pull up or drive to the basket.
September 4th, 2020 at 12:39 PM ^
Thanks for the tip on the book.
As I understand it, the questions on the 10 parts of the test dig deep, indicating how any particular player's brain works in game action. That seems a disconnect, taking a test on a tablet and playing the highest speed, but the results show the connection. Remember, mind and body aren't separate things, they're simply metaphors our mindbody uses to make sense of what feels different.
September 4th, 2020 at 12:39 PM ^
I've read where Tom Brady's AIQ is insane.
Your first point about recall: He can recognize defense patterns/tendencies from teams going back to 2002 etc.
September 4th, 2020 at 12:48 PM ^
There must be a strong correlation. Like baseball players who remember every pitch for an at-bat months or years earlier, or a receiver line up, looking at the defense, and instantly knowing which of his three possible routes has the greatest likelihood of success. (That's an example from the article, of the Bears beating the Lions last fall.)
September 4th, 2020 at 1:17 PM ^
Yeah, I remember LeBron James a year or two ago could walk reporters through entire minutes-long sequences of plays like he was watching it live. It's crazy how some guys can just process information in that way.
September 4th, 2020 at 4:35 PM ^
Thanks for the reminder, BronxBlue, that anecdote about LeBron was the example I meant to use.