I’m not displaying a very high IQ here, am I? :smack:
It was a test that I took. There were two sections (averaged together, I think) and the highest number there was 150. I hear people talking about IQ’s here a lot, and I want to know which one I took and what the number really means.
It was a real test, administered by a real psychologist. If there’s nothing that matches that description, I’ve probably misunderstood.
The Why Bird writes:
> Also worth noting, that every different IQ test has a slightly different scale.
> Mensa alone has several versions, some which top out at 130, others which go
> up to about 170. So theoretically, a person tested on one scale as 160 could
> actually be lower than a person that tests 130 on another.
If one takes an I.Q. test which tops out at 130 and one scores the highest possible score on it, that score should properly be reported as “130 or above.” If one takes an I.Q. test which tops out at 170 and one score 160, that score should be reported as 160. So if the scores are reported correctly, there will be no contradiction between the two tests. Of course, far more often the scores are remembered wrongly by the person who took the test, and even more often the tests are just worthless.
> That’s not even getting into internet IQ tests, which I suspect are what a lot of
> people get their score from. I once got a score of 212 on an internet test. Yet
> some days I add up my time-sheets wrong at work. Does this mean I get to
> claim I am a super-genius? No. It means the test is bollocks.
A score of 212 would mean that you are seven and a half standard deviations above the mean. That means that you would have the highest I.Q. score among a group of 10 trillion people. If the human race someday develops interstellar space travel and sometime in the future has spread out to where it is living on 1,000 different planets in our galaxy, each of which has 10 billion people on it, you will still be the smartest person in the galaxy. I guess that test is indeed predicting that you are a super-genius. You will develop faster-than-light travel and extend everyone’s life-span, including your own, so that you can live long enough to still be the smartest person at the point when the galactic population of humans reaches 10 trillion. Of course, eventually the human race will expand to other galaxies. At that point there will be more than 10 trillion people. I suggest that in your role as intergalactic dictator you insist that everyone take an I.Q. test. Have anyone who scores more than 212 eliminated. You can’t trust those super-super-geniuses.
This place is awesome.
Awww shucks, thanks!
It’s that kind of thinking I’ll be needing in Generals for my inter-stellar obedience enforcement squad. Interested?
Watch out! Marilyn Vos Savant is only 12 points away!
Yes I added an extra zero by accident. Thanks.
This doesn’t match any IQ test I’m familiar with, not that I’m a big expert on the subject. But the most common IQ tests in the US are the Weschler tests (WISC for children, WAIS for adults) and the Stanford-Binet. All of these tests have more than two sections, and none top out at 150. I believe the Stanford-Binet is considered accurate up to about 164 and the Weschler tests up to about 160.
There isn’t a ceiling on IQ tests in the same sense that there is for the SAT, where there’s a fixed “perfect score” and no one could possibly score higher no matter how smart they were. IQ scores are based on how well an individual performs compared to the general population. It is in theory possible to score a 187 on the Stanford-Binet, but measuring such a score accurately would require the test to be normed using a sample population about the same size as the entire US population. A score above 194 would require the test to be normed using more people than are currently alive on Earth. So practically speaking these tests cannot measure intelligence past a certain point.
The jokes that I made were not science based jokes at all…pretty much common knowledge based in fact. So not so silly at all.
Then that’s not what I’m talking about. I was more referring to, for example, the XKCD comic with the equation.
So, as an aside here - is there any place that correlates the different IQ measurements and tests to some kind of unified scale?
I was tested in Kindergarten - so 1983-1984 timeframe - by a professional and clocked in at 154. So what’s that translate to in modern terms? Or is it so long ago that it’s become irrelevant? (granting the dubious relevance of IQ tests to begin with…)
Order of magnitude error… Hmm… chart says minus 2 IQ points…
I once worked with a guy who took an online IQ test and was all proud that he’s scored 130. He wouldn’t shut up about it, and when I told him that an online IQ test probably wasn’t the most reliable source, he got mad and told me I was just jealous. So I asked him for the site, and took the test myself. I called him over to look at my result: 180. I told him that he now either needed to acknowledge me as a genius, or admit that it’s an invalid test. He never brought it up again.
I’ve seen the intelligence/humor rift before. 30 points sounds kind of low to me tho. Also, an IQ comparison is only relevant for two people with similar backgrounds. A person from a totally difference environment, education, etc isn’t going to get the same jokes I would, much less find them funny. In that case other differences more than overshadow the IQ rift.
There’s a nice table at the IQ Comparison Site that can be used to compare Stanford-Binet and Weschler scores. It shows what percentile a particular score represents on either scale. For either one (or really any other common, legitimate IQ test) then 100 will be the same, but since the Stanford-Binet and Weschler use slightly different standard deviations then much higher or lower scores won’t match up perfectly. It isn’t a huge difference, though – a Weschler 140 is about a 142 or 143 on the Stanford-Binet.
*There’s no real way to know what that score means unless you know which test you took. What would be more important than the number of years that have passed would be your age at the time. I’m told that tests given to young children don’t as accurately predict adult IQ scores as those administered to older children. The most accurate way to determine an adult’s IQ score would of course be to have them take an IQ test as an adult.
Given your age at the time, you may have been given the Slosson Intelligence Test (SIT). This is sometimes used for young children because it doesn’t take very long to do. I had the SIT myself as a kindergartener in the '80s. Unlike the Weschler tests or the current Stanford-Binet, the SIT is scored using the ratio method rather than the deviation method. (The Stanford-Binet formerly used the ratio method too.) The ratio method assigns a child a “mental age” based on their performance – a child who performs as well as the average 10 year old has a mental age of 10, regardless of how old they really are – then divides the mental age by the child’s chronological age. Multiply that by 100 and you get their IQ. So if you did take the SIT at about age 6 and scored 154, that would mean you did about as well as the average 9 year old. But for obvious reasons this same method can’t be used for adults, and it wouldn’t necessarily produce consistent scores for the same child a few years later. If you knew that your score placed you in the nth percentile then you could use that to get a crude estimate of how well you might have performed on some other test. But with just the “154” and no test name there’s no way to translate it to a different test.
Incidentally, the ratio IQ scoring method is how some people have legitimately achieved extremely high IQ scores that would be impossible on tests that use the deviation method. A 6 year old who performed as well as the average 12 year old would be scored as a 200. This wouldn’t translate to anything near a 200 on the WISC though – looking at the chart linked above, a 200 on the WISC would mean you were 1 in 76 billion.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a psychologist or any sort of IQ test expert. The above is accurate to the best of my knowledge, but I can’t swear that I haven’t made any mistakes…especially since I’m on my lunch break and writing in a hurry! 
Using the scholarly resource of Wikipedia, I think it was the WAIS. And the WAIS does have two halves- verbal and performance.
That being said, I have a high IQ and a low EQ- book-smart, but comepletely clueless when it comes to the world and other people. I make stupid blunders all the time.
Thanks. I suspected that might be the case - but was hopeful that one might have been the standard favorite in vogue at the time. I was five or six at the time.
Are there any reliable free IQ tests one can do via the internet, or are they all pretty much puffery?
If someone is so super smart, shouldn’t they be able to adjust their humor to their lowly audience?
Missed the edit window.
The site linked has an SAT Score to IQ conversion page.
For SATs taken before April 1995, with scores over 1280, he directs to this : Pre-Recentering SAT to IQ Estimator
I had a 1530, which correlates to a 157-161 range, which corroborates the Kindergarten testing to some degree.
So my 3 year old daughter understanding and repeating the following jokes is a good sign?
“Hey, what are you eating under there?”
“Under where?”
“EwweWWewWW… you’re eating underwear?”
“You like chicken but, I like turkey, right?”
“Right”
“Ha ha… you like chicken butt!”
Well, Isaac’s IQ must have been about 170, and mine was tested at about 140 in the 1970s, so that would explain why I never enjoyed L&S. But extending the logic, a person with a 110 IQ might think Squiggy was a laff riot.
Watching the video linked:
“Why are you crying?”
“Because I’m so stupid…!”
“That’s no reason to cry…”
It takes a certain level of reasoning to realize he just agreed with her that she’s stupid; another level to realize that he’s so dumb (disconnected?) that he doesn’t realize what he did. Below a certain level of reasoning ability, the watcher would nto be able to connect the dots.
I suppose smarts is a way to figure out the full implications of something; humour is the ability to see the non-linear parts of the connections - the surprise.
Joke time:
How the various profesions determine that all odd numbers are prime:
Mathematician, “1 is prime: 1+2=3 is prime; 3+2=5 is prime; 5+2=7 is prime. Therefore, by induction, all odd numbers are prime.”
Physicist, “1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 - experimental error, 11 is prime - therefore all odd numbers are prime.”
Engineer, “1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, 11 is prime… all odd numbers are prime.”
Of course, the people with no sense of humor chime in with “But 1 isn’t prime…” I told that to a roomful at a party with several physics and math professors in it, and they laughed; my brother with the MA in engineering said “Hey, wait a minute…”
I took a test in high school and measured out at 130, which I thought was not too bad. But I know I’m not the brightest, nor the stupidest, and not quite the funniest…
I never met real dumb people until I droppped out of college and went to work in a blue-collar job. The problem is that some of them are so dense, they cannot connect the dots as mentioned above. The problem goes both ways. It’s not just that the lower-end people don’t get the jokes. The smart people get tired of talking to people who then fail to apply what they’ve been told. The difference is, if they are not too far apart, that the lower-end thinkers are not so dumb that they don’t see what’s happening. An IQ 70 may be well aware that he’s being talked down to, but knows everyone does it. An IQ 100 does not like being talked down to, because he can function as well as most of his peers; and he’s perceptive enough to know when he IS being condescended.
So I don’t think it’s the humor; that’s just part of a broader concersation. As mentioned in earlier posts, what interests people? What would they have in common. What appeals to us depends on what we think of as neat or cool; which is what gets us thinking, as puzzles, as stuff to ponder. The level of puzzle that interests someone depends on their reasoning ability.
OTOH, there is cultural stuff at work too. I have minimal interest in sports; I read science fiction; I like reading history, humour, and trivia like we find here. I would find it difficult to relate to someone who does not share at least one interest.
So like any other problem, humour and IQ is only a part of the answer. There are many other factors that go into a friendship.