Howard Gardner at Harvard University suggests that people have not
one, but multiple intelligences.
(http://www.pz.harvard.edu/sumit/MISUMIT.HTM)

What percent of people are each intelligence? Am primarily interested
in US population. If you find the answer on the web it must be from a
reputable site eg affiliated with a university or research group.

Oddly, I was doing research last night on another question about
memory and happened on to Mr. Gardner's theory.  What are the odds? 
I'll leave the link here, too.

http://www.pz.harvard.edu/WhatsNew/sciart.htm

Regards,
V

Hi, gantonick.

I'd just taken Mr. Gardner's book back to the library, so I'll throw
up another comment.

One of Gardner's key points was that we all have all of these
intelligences in varying measures, and possibly more which have not
yet been adequately researched or defined.  Given the current division
in the field, I would be deeply surprised if anyone has yet attempted
to analyse a statistically meaningful segment of the population in
order to "sort by dominant intelligence".  Just deciding how to go
about doing this will undoubtedly occupy many more years' scholarly
debate.

If one of my colleagues is able to turn up any attempts in that
direction, I would certainly be inclined to regard the resulting data
as speculative and preliminary.

I haven't the time to research this myself at the moment, but I wanted
to throw up this caveat for you as a starting point.

I'm not an expert in this area, but have a nodding acquaintance with
Gardner's theories from my teacher training days.

It strikes me as simplistic to say that one person *is*
logical-mathematical and another *is* linguistic. The model is one of
co-dependence of the intelligences - most people will have all, or
most of them. One or more intelligences may be dominant in particular
people, while others may be blunter. Dominance of different
intelligences may also change across the course of a person's mental
development (i.e their whole life).

It's hard to see how any quantative survey would work - quite aside
from the logistical problems of testing different intelligences (since
some are clearly more responsive to testing than others), it seems
unlikely to me that any data would be accurate or useful.

Just my two cents. I dare say that such data may exist - though I've
been unable to find it as yet online - but I'd take it with a hefty
pinch of salt if I were you.

I have to agree with grimace. I have done a great deal of reading on
Gardner's theories and there is no such thing as saying that a person
is "of a certain intelligence." Intelligences are not "personality
types" they are competencies and we all have components of all of them
to a certain degree.

I urge you to read Howard Gardner's own words rather than the popular
interpretations of it. The entire theory is often misunderstood. His
essay "Reflections on Multiple Intelligences; Myths and Messages" is
quite insightful.

http://www.byu.edu/pe/blakemore/reflections.html

http://www.pz.harvard.edu/Default.htm

-K~  
Google Answers Researcher

thanks for the initial comments.. I studied directly with Gardner and
know he believes people tend to have some intelligences more than
others. "Leading Minds" gives leading styles based on each.. Ghandi, I
think, had high "interpersonal" int.

Since GArdner's work is becoming more popular in schools, I imagine
someone has kept a tally somewhere of the breakout they're finding.

http://www.abacon.com/lefton/flinks.html

http://www.igs.net/~cmorris/ocetf.html
http://www.21learn.org/arch/articles/articlebyauth.html
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:rtGMThZWEG8C:www.edu.helsinki.fi/learningspace/research_finland.doc+%22multiple+intelligence%22+%22adults%22+%22gardner%22+%22statistics%22+%22recent%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Search criteria:
multiple intelligence+adults+gardner+statistics+recent
multiple intelligence+misuse

thanks, voila, for the great links - some good stuff about Gardner
theory and application. still no percent breakout, though..

roger.  just sending postcards from the road.
http://ericacve.org/docgen.asp?tbl=tia&ID=130
http://www.angelfire.com/oh/themidasnews/contents.html
I imagine a questionnaire something like this may have been involved:
http://snow.utoronto.ca/Learn2/mod3/miinventory.html

could I also recommend a book to you?  "Learning How to Learn" Indries Shah

search criteria:  multiple intelligence+profiling

Great links, voila. I e-mailed the creator of what seems to be the
most widely-used MI test. We'll see what he says.

this is all I have so far:
http://www.mindtools.com/mnemlsty.html

Hi G,

I sure hope you've gotten your hands on this information by now.  I've
worked this question off and on and I see they've added two more
intelligences -- naturalistic and existential -- so I'm afraid those
stats might be obsolete had I even found them.  I did want to leave a
few more links that looked very interesting in case anyone else is
following this discussion.  Thanks always for the stimulating
questions!

http://www.eduscapes.com/tap/topic68.htm
http://www.mitest.com/gdgraph7.htm
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/w1-resources.html
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/pages/listlearningju1.html
http://www.ascd.org/framebooks.html
http://surfaquarium.com/im.htm
http://www.gardnerschool.org

Come back soon,
V

V -

you're the greatest! thanks for the informative links.

- G

Backatcha, G.  I find all my intelligences function optimally from a beach on Maui.

Existentially,
V