How different are various IQ levels to each other, ie 100 vs 110,...?

In My Humble Opinion
81

I very much doubt it. When I took the MCAT, having done a massive amount of prep work, I was surprised by how little it tested pre-determined content and how much it required you to read and interpret passages and figure out what the question was really asking.

Then there are the USMLE step exams, which, though they are testing certain core knowledge, famously use questions requiring multi-step reasoning. For example, they don’t just ask “what is the treatment of choice for disease X?” They describe a patient with a constellation of symptoms, then ask “what is the mechanism of action of the treatment of choice for this condition?”

82

Yeah, I don’t think it’s super likely, I just think it’s not totally impossible.

83

You can have a very “fast-processing” brain, and be good at all kinds of mathematical/logical problem solving, and yet be wildly lacking in the social graces and people skills that help in job interviews.

84

Which was the point my professor was making…to not ascribe too high an importance to a test score.

85

I was dashing out the door after I wrote this, and I meant to return to it. For the record, I’ve had some psychology courses dealing with testing issues (standard deviations, etc.) so it’s not alien to me, but it’s been awhile.

It doesn’t surprise me that someone very young could get a high score. Some kids grow like crazy when they’re at a certain age, then poof! Some are delayed but it happens later. So if she peaked really early and had some luck…but did she sustain learning as time went by?

I had heard there was controversy about her score, but as my quote says, it’s now deemed unreliable. That said, I would point out that others have been rated at/over 200:

  • Ainan Celeste Cawley (IQ score of 263)
  • William James Sidis (IQ score of 250-300)
  • Terence Tao (IQ score between 225 and 230)
  • Marilyn Vos Savant (IQ score of 228)
  • Christopher Hirata (IQ score of 225)
  • Kim Ung-Yong (IQ score of 210)
  • Edith Stern (IQ score over 200)
  • Christopher Michael Langan (IQ score between 190 and 210)

Source

Goethe is another one that shows up in those lists, and of course they’re estimating.

In a way, they’re such outliers (even if true) that they don’t much move the curve—remarkable, but it’s like putting one drop of bright food coloring in a swimming pool of other scores.

Suppose you recorded the weight of each gold nugget miners were finding. You’re plotting them and you’re finding some big ones with a full ounce, others that are tiny. For years that goes on and a nice curve is forming Then someone finds the Welcome Stranger, a 72kg monster.

Bizarre outliers do exist…how many standard deviations above mean/median/mode would that be?

A couple of other items…IIRC the professor told us that the normal curve isn’t a true bell. There are lumps on the left side, i.e. there are more mentally deficient people than you’d think. Man-made problems like lead paint or fetal alcohol syndrome, or genetic problems like down syndrome, etc. etc. etc. bring those numbers up a bit higher than the equation for a normal curve would predict.

Also, I found this description, which may be helpful to give a qualitative feel for some of the numbers:

With the introduction of the intelligence test, developed > by Binet in France, and brought to this country by Goddard, it > became an accepted practice to relate these three terms to specific I.Q. scores *—idiot for those scoring below 25, imbecile > 25 to 50, and moron 50-70/75. Later on the terms “severe,” “moderate,” and “mild” replaced those terms, but conceptually no change occurred.

Source

I’m on the side of those who say you won’t find many if any people with 90 IQ becoming a doctor through hard work. I’m not saying they can’t learn, but I don’t think they could keep pace with the quantity or quality of work required from medical school.

86

Further thoughts on this. You can get into med school without taking the MCAT, right? It’s less common, but it’s probably the sort of route a lower-IQ person would take. I’ve certainly met hardworking accomplished people who “don’t test well”, and in my experience many of them have taken somewhat nontraditional routes to their success. Some of “don’t test well” is test anxiety, but I’m sure some of it is lower ability on the sorts of fast-thinking that IQ tests test for as well.

Both of those question forms seem well-suited to memorization by someone with a very good memory and don’t actually require fast-reasoning skills to answer correctly.

There are lots of examples of people who have brain injuries accomplishing dramatic recoveries by compensating with other methods. A low IQ isn’t the same thing as a brain injury, but it seems possible that someone with one could still be a capable doctor by compensating with other mental abilities.

87

Not in the USA you can’t. Now, there are immigrant physicians who never took the MCAT.

Which is a component of intelligence.

Look, this message board is populated by people with above-average intelligence. Given the stratification of today’s society, most such people only interact at a meaningful level with people of similar intelligence. Many white-collar professionals with advanced degrees would be shocked at how many people out there–including what you would probably see as “normal” people, whom you might strike up a superficial conversation with in the supermarket checkout lane about how the local sports team is doing this season–are basically completely incapable of understanding the second type of question.

Check out this series of screenshotted posts that have been making the rounds. I’m sure some people here will dismiss the source, but they really are a good summary given how little most intelligent people know about intelligence differences. You’re saying you think it’s possible for someone to be a doctor when they’re bordering on the range of people who can’t understand the question “how would you have felt yesterday evening if you hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch?”

88

Another thing that may add to the discussion…

SAT, ACT, and others are not IQ tests; they’re achievement tests. But we can get a ball park estimate of what score you would make given a particular IQ.

Let’s say your IQ is 90. Average is 100. 100-90=10. The standard deviation of an IQ test is about 15. 10/15=0.667. The MCAT average is 500. The standard deviation is about 10.5. Multiply that by .667 and you get 7. You’d guess this person would score about 500-7=493 on an MCAT. I googled whether 493 was a good score. Apparently 493 puts the person in the 29th percentile, meaning (s)he outperformed 29% of the competition, but consequently 71% of the population scored higher. That doesn’t sound promising for getting into medical school.

Or if you’re inclined, take the opposite approach. I knew a guy who scored 35 on his ACT. The mean is 20, so he was 15 above that. Standard deviation is 5, so 15/5 means he’s three standard deviations above average. 15 on an IQ test for SD x 3 =45…+100 makes his total IQ 145. Today he’s a researcher, president of a college, and probably writing the Great American Novel; I wouldn’t be surprised if his IQ is higher than 145. He’s the smartest person I’ve ever personally known.

89

These could only be possible I.Q. scores if they are using the old definition of I.Q. by which a person’s I.Q. is their mental age divided by their actual age. It can’t possibly be the current definition by which it’s where the person is on the normal curve of everyone tested by a given I.Q. test. Generally, they could only be between 40 and 160, given that the I.Q. test has probably only been given to several hundred thousand people. Theoretically a person could have an I.Q. between 0 and 200 if it were possible to rate the I.Q. of every human being who has ever lived. A score of 300 for the normal curve definition would require gazillions of universes to be filled with gazillions of human beings for gazillions of years for there to be enough people to give someone a score that high. Ignore any claims for someone to have a score above 160. That is either a mistake or a lie by the standards of careful testing.

90

I do not, but I also don’t believe that’s an accurate characterization of what 90 IQ means. Perhaps I am mistaken. Here’s my reasoning.

According to google, the standard deviation for IQ is about 15 and the mean is 100. According to a normal curve calculator I found, that puts 25.2% of the population at or below 90 IQ. Your link says that 95% of people at or below 90 can’t handle the quoted question. That would mean about 24% of people couldn’t.

That sounds absurd to me. Off by an order of magnitude. Perhaps I am wrong? Are my calculations wrong? Do you think that 24% of humanity couldn’t answer that question?

Perhaps we should look for something a little more authoritative than screenshots of 4chan for our sources here.

In my searches, I came across this article, which includes a selection of letters from people who are ashamed at having low IQ test scores. Here’s one of them:

Now, this could just be someone taking the piss, or maybe they took a nonsense test or made some other dumb error that made their score not representative. But this does not look like something written by someone who would struggle with “how would you have felt if you didn’t eat?”

That article also includes a chart of IQ ranges by profession, and the doctor 10th percentile is comfortably above 100. Not surprisingly, a hypothetical 90-IQ doctor would be a real long shot if possible at all.

91

I keep seeing clickbait articles or advertisement for apps saying, “If you answer 9 out of 10, your IQ is at least 150” and that sort of thing. Oh, BS.

When I was studying testing, the WISC-R (the C is children) and WAIS-R (A is adult) were the gold standard.

It is currently in its fourth edition ( WAIS-IV ) released in 2008 by Pearson, and is the most widely used IQ test, for both adults and older adolescents, in the world.

Also, I found this:

The general public tends to misunderstand the kinds of IQ tests that are administered by psychologists to children or adults who are referred for evaluation. Such referrals are for a diversity of reasons such as suspected brain damage, learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities (mental retardation), behavioral disorders, or intellectual giftedness. The tests are clinical instruments that are administered one-on-one for an hour and a half or two and can only be given by professionals (usually psychologists) who have a high degree of supervised training in intellectual assessment. I believe that most people tend to hear the words IQ test and think of the kind of paper-and-pencil IQ tests that they took in school. Such group-administered IQ tests are still commonly used, but not for making important real-life decisions.

92

Just an aditional question, if you allow: does that mean that my impression I got better at IQ tests with practice was an illusion?

93

To be more exact, for there to exist someone with an I.Q. of 300 (which is 20 standard deviations from the mean), there would have to be something like 7 followed by 176 zeros people who ever existed for one of them to have an I.Q. of 300. That’s more than the square of the number of atoms in the observable universe.

94

Which specific IQ tests were you taking under what circumstances.

The point being made, as I understand it, includes that there are lots of so called IQ tests out there …

95

What kind of tests have you been taking?

Formal, individual IQ tests like the Wechsler series noted above, are seldom given to the same individual multiple times, but when they are, there should be a year or more gap to minimize practice effects from taking the assessment previously.

96

I assume that the vast majority of nonsense “IQ” tests are intended to be ego stoking, so I put a bit more credence in the possibility that Mr. 83 took something more legitimate.

97

I took many on-line, I also bought some books with exercises in them (where improving depends on how seriously you clock your time, for instance, so I may have cheated, consciously or not), I also made the exercises in several books that are reported to help you prepare for the EPSO test (that is the European Personal Selection Office from the European Parliament and the European Commission - which is crap, IMHO)… none of those were made with the help of a professional, so the results are subjective. But when I had to sit for the EPSO exam, I aced it, whatever that is worth.
I also helped a psychology student when I was a student myself (that is almost 40 years ago) sitting for several tests for him as part of her practical program (I was her guinea pig, so to speak). And that is where I started having the impression that practice helpes to improve the scores. Just that knowing what is coming may reduce test anxiety, if nothing else.
You see, that is all very unsystematic. But I just did it for fun, so there is that.

98

It’s kind of like crossword puzzles. A fair portion of their difficulty is wrapped up in parsing the clues correctly. If you do a bunch of them you start to see the patterns and understand the clue structure. You get better at the kind of thinking that is specific to performing that task. It doesn’t mean you’re getting smarter.

If you’re taking a bunch of these tests in very short order, especially self-administered, I’d absolutely expect you to get better at them over time - even if they’re legitimate IQ tests. Most of the ones you took, especially online, almost certainly were not.

That really is all that matters. After a careful review of your behavior, my diagnosis is that you’re a big ol’ nerd. :smiley:

99

I’ll take that as a compliment, thank you very much.
Of course I did not get smarter, I stated that in my first post. I am just wondering whether I got better at them or I just imagined it.

100

It was given in the same spirit.