I feel like this must have been discussed before, but I think this would be an interesting experiment:

Assemble a group of people (say 50), and give them all the same 30 minute-1 hour introduction to go, then have them play a series of games against each other. Compare results to some other test generally thought to be a measure of some sort of "intelligence" (see disclaimer). Of course, there would be several variables to consider, and the number of games/size of board would matter.

It would be interesting to see whether (and to what extent) the results correlated, and then think about why or why not.

Anyone heard of this being done? I feel it must have been done before, perhaps with chess. I imagine it would work well with, particularly in the West, because almost no one has ever heard of it and the rules are pretty simple. There might be a cultural/demographic considerations in the teaching method, but, other than that, it isn't really language or background dependent.

Obligatory disclaimer: I know there are several definitions of intelligence, and they are often disputed, etc. My intention isn't to start such a debate, but rather to discuss an interesting idea.

I think you might want to have people solve problems instead of play each other, so you have a more absolute scale to compare against. If Alice beats Bob, that doesn't tell you much about how strong Alice is because you don't know how strong Bob is. But if Alice solves some tsumego, that has a definite "difficulty".

Or maybe a computer program that has an unchanging (& well known) strength?

I think you might want to have people solve problems instead of play each other, so you have a more absolute scale to compare against.

I feel like this must have been discussed before, but I think this would be an interesting experiment:

Assemble a group of people (say 50), and give them all the same 30 minute-1 hour introduction to go, then have them play a series of games against each other. Compare results to some other test generally thought to be a measure of some sort of "intelligence" (see disclaimer). Of course, there would be several variables to consider, and the number of games/size of board would matter.

It would be interesting to see whether (and to what extent) the results correlated, and then think about why or why not.

Anyone heard of this being done? I feel it must have been done before, perhaps with chess. I imagine it would work well with, particularly in the West, because almost no one has ever heard of it and the rules are pretty simple. There might be a cultural/demographic considerations in the teaching method, but, other than that, it isn't really language or background dependent.

Obligatory disclaimer: I know there are several definitions of intelligence, and they are often disputed, etc. My intention isn't to start such a debate, but rather to discuss an interesting idea.