Another Anonymous poll.
The forum describes itself as
“Straight Dope Message Board Your direct line to thousands of the smartest…”
So naturally I was curious… Just for fun, even accepting scores from online tests if you never did a real one (most people haven’t). If you have multiple scores, select the average.
I voted “Under 80.”
I like people to be impressed with how much I can do with so little under the hood.
(Note that I am not a fan of Scott Adams, but he was spot-on sometimes).
I suspect I had one when I was young, but I have no idea.
I listed “never tested it” but I seem to recall doing a few free online tests back in the early 90s and my friends and I noticed that everyone consistently scored 122.
I had an IQ test that was not technically official because it was administered by a PhD student in clinical psychology. I did it as a favor.
If IQ can be a reliable predictor of academic success, I’d say it was pretty accurate.
However, one of the things that brought down my overall score was my slow processing speed on the coding tasks (I ran into the same problems with timed math exams in school.) For tasks requiring working memory, I can be correct or I can be fast, but I can’t be both.
I later learned I have ADHD, which includes difficulties with working memory.
So I don’t think IQ tests give a totally fair shake to such folks.
Please take these results with an enormous grain of salt. The odds of them being accurate are vanishingly small. I think people are screwing with you.
The SDMB is the Lake Woebegon of message boards.
It says you joined 1 day ago, already started several topics, (seems to me like mainly reddit type questions), and polls.
How did you find this site? Why did you decide to post here?
I used to do them for fun while working night audit. I’ve gotten everything from 108 to 147.
I will say I’m terrible at 3 dimensional thinking. All those “How does this look from above?” questions murder me.
If you don’t like a thread it’s best not to comment on it. It kinda gives it more visibility when you do that.
Ignore it and it goes away
I didn’t give an opinion one way or another, I just asked questions.
I took an IQ test 40 years ago and scored 143. Being so far away from school, and no longer being used to taking tests, I have no doubt I’d score much lower today.
I took a Mensa test once and it put me above 140 (don’t remember exact number).
Of course Mensa has a vested interested in telling me that I’m super-duper smart. On the other hand, I’ve seen through their plan so I must be as smart as they claim. Or… wait a second…
Was it an online test or the in-person proctored version?
In-person, taken in a hotel conference room type thing. This was back in the late 90s.
I searched the board here since I remembered myself talking about it (I joined but my experience was brief since they met over an hour away) and I guess it was either a 146 or 148. Enough to join, anyway.
Gotcha. I had done that in-person proctored test too, but in 2012.
By then, Mensa didn’t provide a direct IQ test score anymore, they only told me my performance test raw score (i.e., “you got ____ number of questions correct, you qualify and hereby are offered admission”) but not the IQ itself, probably because different IQ tests scale to different numbers - Stanford Binet may say you are 129, Wonderlic may say you are 142, etc.
I remember they gave me a score and my mom still had my results from “Is your child gifted” testing back in early elementary school and they were very similar. So it might have been the same brand test both times. Or not and I just did better on one than the other (or early age testing is different, etc) and it was just coincidence that they matched.
Anyway, I take it all with a grain of salt and it’s not as though I think about it aside from threads like this one.
How did you find this site? Why did you decide to post here?
I thought you’d get the message when I ignored your prying questions that they wouldn’t get answered. Frankly don’t like the tone and completely Off topic that I won’t justify them with a response
It basically amounts to “Why are you here”, like you’re in some exclusive club and I’ve socially engineered or hacked my way in it… and now you have to interrogate this person to figure out what’s going on lol
Site couldn’t be more public, it’s just not popular
How does Mensa word its rejection letter? I hope they let you down gently. And, offer membership to Densa.