# Rock star with the highest IQ **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 4, 2015, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986 "2015-08-04T17:22:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![syncrolecyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f08c70/32.png) [@syncrolecyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/syncrolecyne)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2015, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986/41 "2015-08-05T21:22:04Z")
> [@tullsterx](#): > > I remember seeing Mark Mcgrath (Sugar Ray) on Rock n’ Roll Jeopardy, a show that was on VH1 for a short while, and he knew everything and completely dominated. Not a measure of intelligence surely but he was really impressive. You had to see it I guess. > > And I’m not sure it would be that obvious with musicians. I’ve played with some guitarists I consider great, and the best were very eclectic, space-casey, but I’m not sure about IQ. The best was AGLD, academically-gifted, learning disabled. I remember the Mark McGrath Rock n’ Roll Jeopardy performance, it was the stuff of legends. I wonder how he would do with Alex Trebek. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2015, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986/42 "2015-08-05T23:57:12Z")
Huey Lewis got an 800 on one section of the SATs. There are also long-standing rumors that he’s probably tied with Gene Simmons, who isn’t stupid either (he was an elementary schoolteacher before he was in KISS) with being rock’s biggest poonhound. :dubious: He doesn’t look the type, now, does he? ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2015, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986/43 "2015-08-05T23:59:20Z")
And even if Bruce Dickinson doesn’t have one of rock’s highest IQs (which is likely), he’s definitely in the running for being the ultimate polymath. Heavy metal singer, licensed airline pilot, author, high-level fencer, etc. etc. etc. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2015, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986/44 "2015-08-06T01:05:13Z")
Mick Jagger may be a contender. His studies at the London School of Economics were interrupted by fronting for some blues band. Sting was a teacher as well. Don’t stand so close to him! ---
**Author:** ![Iron\_Wine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b5e925/32.png) [@Iron\_Wine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iron_Wine)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2015, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986/45 "2015-08-06T01:29:27Z")
Jimmy Page isn’t like, 200+ IQ gifted but he’s been known to be quite philosophical and very thorough. Not to mention his wicked mastery of music producing in the 60s and 70s and superb musical writing skills. I don’t know, he seems pretty damn smart to me. ---
**Author:** ![BrassyPhrase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea666f/32.png) [@BrassyPhrase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrassyPhrase)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2015, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986/46 "2015-08-06T07:41:08Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Interestingly, she was a classmate of President Obama at Harvard Law School. And she’s said that Obama and Joan Jett are very much alike in that they both deliberately, consciously created new personalities and identities for themselves, and have tried very hard to become the characters they created. I say ‘cite’. Not because I don’t believe you, but because I would really like to read that interview or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![zweisamkeit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zweisamkeit/32/4360_2.png) [@zweisamkeit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zweisamkeit)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2015, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986/47 "2015-08-06T13:52:22Z")
> [@Iron\_Wine](#): > > Jimmy Page isn’t like, 200+ IQ gifted … A big problem with the concept of IQ\* is that probability and statistics are _not_ intuitive for people. News and media (unintentionally, but still) reinforce inaccurate assumptions and inflate “speculated”\*\* scores like an arms race. The [distribution of IQ scores](http://claims-management.theclm.org/_images/_editions/201011/score-figure-01.jpg) shows how freaking rare (actual, officially tested) high IQs are. An IQ of 145 is 3 standard deviations above the mean; _only **0.13%** of people can/will score higher than this_. But the general understanding of IQ is “higher = smarter” so people just keep inflating “speculative” scores because shit, man, Isaac Newton was WAYYYY smarter than (whomever) and his [speculative] IQ is said to be 180 or something, so Newton’s must’ve been over 200. An actual IQ of 200 would be 6.67 standard deviations above the mean. That’s _1 in 100,000,000,000_ for the Stanford Binet test or _1 in 10,000,000,000_ for the Wechsler test (6.25 standard deviations). So even for the Wechsler, the rarity is more than the current population of the entire planet. For the Stanford Binet, it’s roughly 1 200+ IQ among all humans who have ever existed. - ignoring the even bigger ones like cultural biases (not just in how the test is given, but which types of intelligence are valued and, therefore, included in IQ tests) and the fact the tests must be given by professionals and are actually carefully researched and refined, unlike any free “IQ test” anywhere (or tests that seem official and are given by an examiner but aren’t official or the examiner isn’t professionally trained to specifically give and interpret IQ tests). And the fact that IQ has not been shown to actually determine future success. \*\* aka, “pulled from my ass”. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2015, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986/48 "2015-08-06T15:32:17Z")
> [@zweisamkeit](#): > > A big problem with the concept of IQ\* is that probability and statistics are _not_ intuitive for people. News and media (unintentionally, but still) reinforce inaccurate assumptions and inflate “speculated”\*\* scores like an arms race. The [distribution of IQ scores](http://claims-management.theclm.org/_images/_editions/201011/score-figure-01.jpg) shows how freaking rare (actual, officially tested) high IQs are. An IQ of 145 is 3 standard deviations above the mean; _only **0.13%** of people can/will score higher than this_. > > But the general understanding of IQ is “higher = smarter” so people just keep inflating “speculative” scores because shit, man, Isaac Newton was WAYYYY smarter than (whomever) and his [speculative] IQ is said to be 180 or something, so Newton’s must’ve been over 200. > > An actual IQ of 200 would be 6.67 standard deviations above the mean. That’s _1 in 100,000,000,000_ for the Stanford Binet test or _1 in 10,000,000,000_ for the Wechsler test (6.25 standard deviations). So even for the Wechsler, the rarity is more than the current population of the entire planet. For the Stanford Binet, it’s roughly 1 200+ IQ among all humans who have ever existed. > > - ignoring the even bigger ones like cultural biases (not just in how the test is given, but which types of intelligence are valued and, therefore, included in IQ tests) and the fact the tests must be given by professionals and are actually carefully researched and refined, unlike any free “IQ test” anywhere (or tests that seem official and are given by an examiner but aren’t official or the examiner isn’t professionally trained to specifically give and interpret IQ tests). And the fact that IQ has not been shown to actually determine future success. > > \*\* aka, “pulled from my ass”. 😉 You are raising issues via the concept of High IQ as measured. I have also been thinking "well, as part of that ‘Who are Geniuses who are Active’ thread, I had stated that **Prince** is one. Does Prince have a high measured IQ? No clue; I assume he isn’t book-stupid. Does he have one of the highest “musical IQs” of the past few decades? Oh, hell yes. But I assumed the OP was looking for rockers with degrees and such, not who we think have high musical IQ’s. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986/49 "2015-08-07T02:27:30Z")
As I have to say in every thread where the topic of I.Q. comes up, 200 is the highest even theoretical value that could be assigned to an I.Q., since it means (by definition) that someone’s I.Q. is the highest among 100 billion people, and there have been approximately 100 billion people over the entire history of the human race. In practice, the highest value that can be assigned to an I.Q. is 160, since no reliable I.Q. test measures any higher than that. If you hear anyone claim to have an I.Q. higher than 160, ignore them. They can’t have had their I.Q. accurately measured at that level. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986/50 "2015-08-07T02:56:23Z")
Other things about Todd Rundgren - he is pretty much self educated in music, electronics, computer programming, audio engineering - everything he’s every done. He wrote the first paint program for a personal computer for instance. This is not amateur stuff, I met people at SIGGRAPH who didn’t know him as a musician. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986/51 "2015-08-07T03:47:22Z")
Sorry, I missed the edit window. Here’s some supporting info about Todd’s computer graphics stuff [from The Guardian newspaper](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2004/mar/18/onlinesupplement/print): **How did your Utopia Graphics Tablet System come to Apple’s attention in the 80s?** _Apple was one of the first companies to come out with a personal computer with colour. You could plug it directly into a television, but because of the trick it did with the NTSC signal, it didn’t work on all systems. I authored a program on something running in the New York Institute of Technology, where a lot of the pioneering computer graphics work was done. There I met Alvy Ray Smith (who later founded Pixar), in the late 1970s, when they were pioneering work with a computer-based paint box program. I was so fascinated I bought the computer. I got a third-party graphics tablet, which was essentially a flat board with a stylus-pen attached via a wire. It detects your position in relationship to the board and then maps it to the screen._ **That must’ve been very unusual?** \*Back then, it was a bizarre concept. Essentially, this was the first example of a paint-box program that used cutting-edge programmers tools to build a tool intended for artists, not necessarily programmers. It was meant to be a companion program to graphics tablet hardware that Apple was going to put out as an accessory to the computer. It could have been really popular but it was not designed properly and it failed its FCC emissions test. \* Again, this is not “successfully got a college degree before getting into music”, this is “pioneering work in a significant field with [one of the fathers of the industry](http://www.alvyray.com/Bio/default.htm).” Jim Blinn, [one of the other giants of the field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Blinn), plays trombone on Todd’s album _Nearly Human_. It is not as if Brian May’s long delayed doctoral thesis was cited by Stephen Hawking in one of his books. He was famously at odds with Andy Partridge when he was producing their album _Skylarking_, but even though Andy doesn’t like Todd, he respects him, saying “He’s got the people skills of a Dalek, but is a God among arrangers” (another skill in which Todd has no formal training.) I’m a fan, but people would have to do some pretty significant stuff in a variety of fields to be much smarter than Todd Rundgren. ---
**Author:** ![Mtgman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@Mtgman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mtgman)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986/52 "2015-08-07T04:33:01Z")
Not sure I’d qualify him as a rock star _per se_ but I’ve been super impressed with [Kevin Olusola, the beatboxer for Pentatonix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Olusola). The guy speaks at least three languages(English, Spanish, Chinese), plays three instruments at elite levels(toured Europe as first chair youth orchestra on the Sax when he was in high school, came second at Yo-Yo Ma’s cello competition, and played both sax and keyboard in two separate concerts at Carnegie Hall). Oh, and did I mention he graduated from Yale after being aggressively recruited by most of the top schools in the country? He was pre-med, neurobiology, for most of his time there and one of his advisors told him “go pursue music, you can always come back to medicine if you want.” This year he won a Grammy as an arranger as well. What may make him tip the scales is his awareness and use of social media. He almost singlehandedly invented the musical form called celloboxing, which is beatboxing while playing a cello. He popularized it with his own youtube channels and that’s how he got together with Pentatonix. They found his channel and recruited him from there. Now he’s a multi-platinum artist with one of the most varied and interesting portfolios out there. Enjoy, Steven ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986/53 "2017-02-14T00:22:33Z")
Reviving a zombie thread: Al Jarreau got a master’s degree in vocal rehabilitation before he entered the music business in his mid 30s. 🆒 In the late 1970s, there was a Midwestern-based prog band called Starcastle that achieved middling success. Their keyboardist, Herb Schildt, already had his degree in computer programming when the band formed; after they broke up, he got a master’s degree and one source said he started work on a Ph.D. but never finished it. He has written and published extensively on computer programming for the layperson. However, that was nothing compared to the jawdrop I did when I Googled their drummer. HE went to medical school, and for nearly 30 years has been a practicing physician in the Chicago suburbs. :eek: 🆒 In addition, the band did lots of dates opening for Rush - and he got his MD at Rush University. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rock-star-with-the-highest-iq/726986.md?page=2)