What is your I.Q?

[Helmutye]

IQ tests were actually developed way back in 1910, as a means to help scientists diagnose and quantify mental retardation. It was designed to measure mental deficiency, not necessarily to detect who is a bigger genius. Modern IQ tests use slightly different methods and statistical processes, but because we still today don't really understand what intelligence is (if it is really anything more than a concept we invented that has no real basis in reality), let alone back in 1910, IQ tests are probably nothing more than doing math problems for profit. But it's really surprising how weird and competitive people get about them. They can probably detect if you have some mental handicaps, but if you're trying to compare IQs of 176 and 194 you are just wasting time and effort, because the test loses all validity above 145, and it is questionable whether it means anything even at that point.

But regardless of this, I bet an awful lot of you who go on to have kids will shell out big bucks on stupid education gimmicks to give your kids a boost to their IQs! Resist the temptation! It's like throwing your money down a well.

 

[Spacelord]

It's not bullshit if it's actually done right. A Stanford-Binet test for instance is pretty reliable. But good luck finding one for free (around here the set costs about 300 dollars).

And yes: people use it to brag. Which is never flattering.

EDIT

Spoiler: spoilerd for brevity

IQ tests were actually developed way back in 1910, as a means to help scientists diagnose and quantify mental retardation. It was designed to measure mental deficiency, not necessarily to detect who is a bigger genius. Modern IQ tests use slightly different methods and statistical processes, but because we still today don't really understand what intelligence is (if it is really anything more than a concept we invented that has no real basis in reality), let alone back in 1910, IQ tests are probably nothing more than doing math problems for profit. But it's really surprising how weird and competitive people get about them. They can probably detect if you have some mental handicaps, but if you're trying to compare IQs of 176 and 194 you are just wasting time and effort, because the test loses all validity above 145, and it is questionable whether it means anything even at that point.

But regardless of this, I bet an awful lot of you who go on to have kids will shell out big bucks on stupid education gimmicks to give your kids a boost to their IQs! Resist the temptation! It's like throwing your money down a well.

This. Forget I said anything, this guy knows what he's talking about.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I was 155, but I think I've lost a lot through age (and booze and headbanging etc.)

 

[Ildecia]

last time i cared enough to take a test it was 180; but as alot of people have said already; Intelligence is subjective and I.Q. is a bad representation of such

 

[Feste the Jester]

Never took one. My oldest brother took it and got around the high 130. Afterwards, he stopped caring because he knew he had brains and alomost failed school.

 

[Treblaine]

IQ tests are only good for diagnosing retardation from a low score, a high IQ score alone is not indicative of high intelligence. I'm about 130 and I am struggling in school because I have a terrible memory and attention span.

While you are correct that IQ tests are good for diagnosing retardation, they are also good for diagnosing various mental conditions - and to exclude certain mental conditions, as there is often a positive or negative correlation between a certain score and a certain diagnosis.

If you have 130 Wechsler, that puts you in the top 2%. And your description is a textbook case. You are a product of a failed educational system - you'd be surprised how many intelligent people share your characteristics. A high IQ does not guarantee academic stardom. It only increases your statistical likelihood of achieving it. However, because the educational system in pretty much every country in the world is directed towards the general populace - quite logical really - it will be incredibly poor for tending to the needs of the extreme minority, such as yourself. Lack of intellectual stimulation has caused you to develop a disinterest for study, because said studies were already below your capacity when you began with them. As time went by, your disinterest caused you to fall behind the rest of the group and end up in a self-perpetuating circle of destructive disinterest.

I'm not sure where you're from, but I advise looking up your national Mensa branch and reading up on the Gifted Children Programme. It explains what I just said rather more elaborately and does a better job at giving you a general idea of the concept.

Well my teacher is always telling me to stop asking difficult questions and to just stay on topic.

 

[DeaPGalaxy]

IQ means as little as... something that means little...
But for the sake of the topic, I checked on an online guide and I've an IQ of 117 which is above average. Though I've done IQ tests where I've gotten over 130 (Which is gifted) but really, it's a load of nonsense as it depends on the questions and they're no indication to your intelligence.

 

[Cherry Cola]

Such a huge snip it hurts my eyes!

That was a very informative post, I must say.

However, I'm still remaining skeptical about this until I've heard from a few other sources. But from what I understand now, I.Q. tests and I.Q. in general isn't faulty.

It is only incredibly glorified and used as ego boosting by many. Not by scientists like you of course, but from people who don't know anything other than the fact that the i in I.Q. stands for intelligence and therefore high numbers mean high intelligence.

[sub]Really, they should have named it "Probability of success meter" instead of "Intelligence quotient". [/sub]

 

[quiet_samurai]

I.Q. only show how good you are at I.Q. tests, as they say.

I don't know, and I don't care. It's bullshit, and people just use it to brag.

This... it's comes in second after dick measuring contests.

 

[Donttazemehbro]

I took a test awhile ago, if i remember 140-143.

 

[Earthbound Engineer]

I've never had it tested. However, I am view myself as average, or possibly even below average in terms of intelligence. People that I know tend to disagree with me when I state that, to which my response typically is , "You don't necessarily have to be an intellectual to point out the stupidity of others, you simply need to be observant."

 

[Romblen]

Last time I had my IQ checked, it was 100, but that was 10-12 years ago.

 

[WolfMage]

OH MY FUCKING GOD PAGE STRETCH

Right, so, will you come down to Texas and explain that to the psychologist who administered the test both times?
Cause I would love for you to tell the woman who's been at this for over thirty years that she's wrong.
I'm not trying to be an ass, but honestly.
Anyway, congrats on being a genius. Hope it does you well in life.

 

[SimuLord]

High enough to be a hell of a fine argument against the validity of IQ tests.

EDIT: Also, Nomad, I don't have a Z table handy, but an IQ of 160 (four standard deviations above the mean) isn't THAT rare, is it? I ask because when I was four I took the Stanford-Binet test and scored 190. The mean of that test is 100 (as with all IQ tests) and the standard deviation is 16. So z=~5.63 for my score on that test. IIRC, that Z score translates to ~1/2,000,000 of a population.

Which in turn leads back to my original comment. I'm more intelligent than all but about 3,000 people in the entire world? I don't think so! I wasn't even the smartest kid in my kindergarten class (that would be my friend Elinor, whose tested IQ was 50 points below mine!) Either I'm an astoundingly gifted idiot savant who happens to have the perfect skill set for the Stanford-Binet IQ test or something is seriously wrong with that scale past the second standard deviation or so.

 

[MorsePacific]

I've gotten scores ranging from 120 to 148 before. There's no standardized IQ test, so using an Intelligence Quotient to measure your intelligence is just kind of useless. Each test has a different difficulty, and so the answers will always be skewed.

 

[SageRuffin]

Somewhere between 125 and 130. I forget the exact number.

 

[Winter Rat]

Varied between 115 and 130. Irrelevant as IQ tests are meaningless. I've seen high IQ scores on plenty of worthless people, and they only test one kind of "intelligence" ignoring the others.

To be honest, my concern is the opposite - that every time you're got at something, it's called intelligence. Like good eyesight being named "optical inteeligence" or a beuatiful voice being "audial intelligence" and so on. Also, I think we all have to admit that all other things being equal, it's better to have a high I.Q. than to have a low one.

You should read some psychology papers on intelligence. For infotainment wiki always helps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences
I suppose cetaris paribus its better to have a high IQ score, but I'm disputing whether it has any real meaning. The most common criticism is that it only proves that you're good at IQ tests. Which I am. Everybody says I'm "smart", but meaningful empirical measurement of this quality is very difficult to accomplish.

 

[Nomad]

High enough to be a hell of a fine argument against the validity of IQ tests.

EDIT: Also, Nomad, I don't have a Z table handy, but an IQ of 160 (four standard deviations above the mean) isn't THAT rare, is it? I ask because when I was four I took the Stanford-Binet test and scored 190. The mean of that test is 100 (as with all IQ tests) and the standard deviation is 16. So z=~5.63 for my score on that test. IIRC, that Z score translates to ~1/2,000,000 of a population.

Which in turn leads back to my original comment. I'm more intelligent than all but about 3,000 people in the entire world? I don't think so! I wasn't even the smartest kid in my kindergarten class (that would be my friend Elinor, whose tested IQ was 50 points below mine!) Either I'm an astoundingly gifted idiot savant who happens to have the perfect skill set for the Stanford-Binet IQ test or something is seriously wrong with that scale past the second standard deviation or so.

If you really took a valid IQ test, then the psychologist that tested you seriously needs to lose his license. Because that result is, again, impossible to get. That would seriously be gross malpractise.

Note that SD 16 will inflate the numbers more than SD 15, but not as grossly as SD 24 will.
IQ 190 SD 16 will mean you're one in 100 million.
Here's a nice chart [http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQtable.aspx].

Edit: As for IQ 160 Wechsler, it's not nearly as rare. But still pretty damn rare. Rare enough that creating a properly standardized test that measures that highly would need a control group of several hundred thousand people, which would cost a fortune. You can get a rough idea on that level by taking a so-called "High range"-IQ test. But those are not properly standardized, for obvious reasons. The thing that makes them semi-valid is that they're designed by professionals who can make educated approximations. You still have to remain very careful with trusting the results of a high range IQ test, though. Like someone said a few posts above here, IQ tests start losing their accuracy after ~135 Wechsler, and they become very unreliable past ~145.

Varied between 115 and 130. Irrelevant as IQ tests are meaningless. I've seen high IQ scores on plenty of worthless people, and they only test one kind of "intelligence" ignoring the others.

I doubt you've taken multiple standardized, supervised IQ tests. You've taken internet tests. Those are, again, not accurate.

You should read some psychology papers on intelligence. For infotainment wiki always helps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences
I suppose cetaris paribus its better to have a high IQ score, but I'm disputing whether it has any real meaning. The most common criticism is that it only proves that you're good at IQ tests. Which I am. Everybody says I'm "smart", but meaningful empirical measurement of this quality is very difficult to accomplish.

That is... seriously a pet peeve of mine. What Gardner did there was simply sloppy. He should've a term like "gifts" or "talents". He took the term "intelligence", which meant one thing, and attempted to transform the meaning into something else. Sort of what happened to "gay". It originally meant happy, but then someone thought it would be nice to go and change the meaning.

Saying you're musically intelligent is like saying you're visually verbal or bodily mathematical.

Intelligence is a subgroup of talent, not the other way around.

I agree that what you mention is the most common criticism, among laymen, towards IQ tests. But I also have to mention that there has been absolutely no valid argumentation to support that thesis. It just seems to be a "politically correct" thing to believe. I honestly don't know where this irrational disdain towards the concept of IQ comes from - my suspicion is that it's based on the tall poppy syndrome.

I've gotten scores ranging from 120 to 148 before. There's no standardized IQ test, so using an Intelligence Quotient to measure your intelligence is just kind of useless. Each test has a different difficulty, and so the answers will always be skewed.

That is simply not correct. There are multiple standardized IQ tests - it's just that none of them are to be found at the internet. Off the top of my head, I can mention WAIS, RAPM and FRT as properly standardized and accurate IQ tests. You can take the latter through your national Mensa branch if you're interested. But yes - unless you specify what test you took, and what scale it used, the number says little.

The difficulty of the tests are irrelevant. Because it's not a matter of how many questions you get right, the score is weighted according to the distribution of the test populace. If only 2% managed to get 3/40 correct answers on the test, then 3/40 correct answers will represent an IQ of 131 Wechsler. If 50% get 40/40 correct answers, then it's a low range IQ test and only measures up to the maximum of 100 Wechsler. The actual raw score is irrelevant - the weighted score is what matters.

 

[SimuLord]

I just told you what the psychologist told my mom. Whether or not the psychologist is an idiot...wait, never mind, those two terms are redundant. Reflexive property in mathematics, y'know.

Point of the matter is that the IQ test's variability (even among individual subjects over multiple tests), its rather narrow and foolhardy definition of "intelligence" (where an idiot savant like myself can score astoundingly well whilst simultaneously frequently being the dumbest person in a room), and the tendency of people to ascribe some sort of gods-given caste system placement to it makes me not just skeptical of it, but of the belief that the statement "The IQ test is a valid measure of intelligence" is a Type II statistical error: failure to reject a false hypothesis.

 

[Gadzooks]

--- Snippers ---

That was a post well worth some internet Kudos. Well informed and well written, thankyou.

I have never had an official test, but I've tried several internet versions. Typically the results are 130-144, but I in no way take these as an accurate reflection of my own IQ.