"those who were in the 99.9 percentile � the profoundly gifted � were between three and five times more likely to go on to earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work. A high level of intellectual ability gives you an enormous real-world advantage."
I do not see that as a logical leap. It sounds to me like the profoundly gifted are much more likely to max out the educational possibilities available, (perhaps in an attempt to avoid the "real world"?).
I think a more interesting outcome variable might be innovation in their fields. PGs should be more highly represented in this category by virtue of their abilities to think differently than others, rather than their ability to complete more school. This may overlap to the variables they list, but not necessarily. Much of what is published in academia is significantly devoid of creative thought and still tends to reward following rather than choosing your own path for a significant portion of your career.
The quoted section in here is the key idea of the piece. And LNEsmom's commentary is the right color on it.
AS to the real world aspect. I work with about 500 software developers and there are only three people in the whole firm who can solve just about every problem put in front of them. I add in a few more people as they just do not get rattled and can calm people down so they can think as a team.
Everyone is very smart, but only a very tiny group provides the ideas that in a time crunch get everyone unstuck. And their ideas are very high quality. They also look ahead and try to design things that are easy to do and which have few unintended consequences and which satisfy many requirements, not just one.
AS one of these three, I know I see the world VERY differently. The hardest part is explaining the WHYs to people. Very often they just have to see it in action as they cannot visualize it. Another hard part of this is going through why something should NOT be done. People would rather eat that donut in front of them as you cannot convince them of the donut shop in the next room.
Longer term, the solution is to hire more PG/MG/HG people rather than "professionals."
