I am surprised that 6% of 104 respondents so far have answered “under 80”, but none “80-99”. That is not what a normal distribution looks like.
The whole curve is not normal here, no matter where you put the median.
I used to be quite good at IQ tests: you can improve by practising. I once helped a psychology student with a series of tests he had to perform: I learned a lot. Then I asked him what the IQ-tests actually measure. He answered: They measure the skill of the subject at answering IQ-tests correctly. Not more, no less. Made sense to me.
Now, children, you’ve been assigned to reading groups, isn’t that fun? All the groups are equally good, so you should all be proud! The Gold group and the Silver group will meet in our regular classroom. The Brown group will meet in the basement.
Sure, but this thread is not a representative sample of society.
Indeed. I had taken an online IQ test that showed that I was within close-enough range of Mensa that then prompted/encouraged me to take the Mensa test itself. In fact, I actually scored higher on the Mensa (proctored, in-person) exam than I did on the online one.
Oh, so you were one of the … ups! Sorry!
never mind.
I like to think I’m smart but darn there are a lot of geniuses on this board. My official test, I was told, was 138.
My wife actually went through three days of lab testing as part of a study on high-functioning dyslexics. Accordingly to that, her IQ is apparently 161 (don’t remember which scale - this was 25-30 years ago). But she’s not on this board.
Or even of this board.
Have we ever done a poll on highest education level achieved here?
My WAG is we are skewed to higher than the general population to higher education and advanced degrees. Responses to that are going to have somewhat less selection bias.
Neither is mine, and she’s smarter than I am. I pity any fool who gets into a political argument with her.
I would guess that people who don’t know their score are inclined to skip the thread since they can’t answer anyway and many people who DO know their score here were tested because the school called them gifted or they wanted to see if they could join Mensa or some similar “high score” weighing event. So, yeah, the responses here likely aren’t reflective of anything meaningful.
A search reveals that educational level achieved was in a polls only thread:
In comparison national numbers as of 2018 according to US Census bureau by way of Wikipedia:
Educational attainment in the United States (2018)[5]|Education|Age 25 and over|Age 25-30|
| — | — | — |
|High school diploma or GED|89.80%|92.95%|
|Some college|61.28%|66.34%|
|Associate degree|45.16%|46.72%|
|Bachelor’s degree|34.98%|36.98%|
|Master’s degree|13.04%|9.01%|
|Professional degree|3.47%|2.02%|
|Doctorate|2.03%|1.12%|
So yes much more skewed to more highly educated than the general adult population, based on that sample anyway.
I was tested in High School. My IQ is 302.
If you guys were as smart as I am (and you are not), you would realize that you need to adjust those numbers for inflation.
When I was a young kid (early grade school, in the early 70s) my school did IQ tests for a bunch of kids in my class–and sent out the results to the parents of everyone who took it. Like, I mean, every set of parents got the whole list. Which, of course, they’d never get away with these days. I still have the list; I found it in my mom’s papers after she died.
I was the highest one on the list–it gave my score as 155+. Okay, I was a damn smart kid, and proud of it. But… I wasn’t that smart. And these days, I feel like it’s a good thing I had some IQ points to spare because quite a few of them must have dribbled out my ears over the years. 
I’m still smart. I’m probably smarter than a lot of people. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel like a dummy a lot of the time.
The last time my IQ was tested, it was 60, but that test was scored in Celsius.
Why is this separated from my original post?
You’re drawing your own conclusions
In all my years, I’ve yet to meet someone with an IQ below 130. It’s a funny old world.
In 1979, I took this high-IQ test published in Omni magazine.
The test reproduced here was designed in 1979 by San Fransisco systems analyst Kevin Langdon to measure IQs in the range 125 to 180, and was claimed at that time to be the world’s most difficult IQ test. It is unsupervised and untimed. The only rule was that you were honour-bound to take it on your own, without help, but you could spend as long as you wanted on it - hours, days or months. What mattered was not the time taken, nor any special expertise or knowledge you may have, but just your power of concentration and ability to find the only logical solution by thinking deeply.
When this test was first published, those brave enough to try it sent their completed answer sheet to Omni for marking, and received an IQ report in return. The correct answers were not revealed.
I have answered the poll above with the number that was given on the returned test, but if I posted it here, you’d think I was lying or bragging. The only other person I’ve told is my wife. I will admit that it is between 100 and 200.
What means more to me than that number is an incident that my father related to me a while ago. He met someone who asked, when he heard Dad’s last name, if he was related to me. It turned out we had gone to junior high school together fifty years earlier. My classmate told my father, “He was really smart.”
I didn’t think I had a particular reputation for intelligence back then – and how smart could I have been when I was 12? – but it was extremely gratifying that, after five decades, that was what one of my peers remembered about me.
In 8th grade, my teachers were confused at my ability to ace tests without doing homework or taking notes on class. So confused, they were, the administration had me do a formal IQ test.
I remember it pretty clearly still, over 30 years later. Especially plowing through the “use these words in a sentence” part, and the test administrator running out of patterns during the block design portion with the red & white cubes.
My official score was 131. I didn’t get accused of cheating on tests again until we moved during my junior year of high school.
Turns out I was just a smart loud who did silly things, like “read encyclopedias for fun” and “pay attention in class.”
I just came across my letter from 1985. It lists the score in each of several scales back then.