Suppose a doper tells you that their IQ is 160. There are (at least) five options:
That person was tested using an instrument with a standard deviation of 15 and is extraordinarily intelligent.
That person was tested using an instrument (such as Cattell verbal) with a standard deviation closer to 25 and is very intelligent.
That person took an online test which indicated an IQ of 160.
That person had “160” given to them at some point by official sources (parent, school, etc.), but that person gave them a falsely high number (through badly controlled testing conditions or some other error).
That person knowingly scored lower and is lying.
I wonder why you disallow every scenario except the last. Certainly there would be cases where I would be disinclined to believe such a high number, but it would be based on my previous knowledge of the person. As I don’t actually know anybody here I would take them at their word. If inflated IQs were a pet peeve of mine I might decide to fight ignorance by eliciting further information from the person, then if something from scenarios two to four came up, correct their misinformation.
It is ungracious and, frankly, ignorant to assume that every single person here who reports an IQ above some arbitrarily high cut-off is lying.
By the way, I grew up in FAIRBANKS ALASKA, you motherfuckers.
So when I talk about 60 below, I’m talking about 60 below.
Although I’m starting to be convinced by the statisticians that the IQ score I was given when they tested us for the gifted program couldn’t possibly have been correct. I think a lot of people are simply reporting a number that was given by some school guidance counselor. That doesn’t mean that they’re lying, it also doesn’t mean the test was properly administered or properly weighted.
The one thing virtually all dopers seem to share is care in the use of language. From punctuation to capitalization, to well-ordered pargraphs and analogies or parallels, it’s all here. The first inkling I have that someone is intelligent comes from their use of language, and written language raises the bar. I don’t know what the average IQ is in here or who’s the highest, but it doesn’t matter. I really enjoy reading and participating in these boards.
I found a list on-line of the ten top geniuses. Einstein isn’t among them, but then, most of these are guesstimated. You’d need 180 to make the cut, and only one was American. Top: IQ of 210. I’m not worthy!
When you are having a really hard time in high school chemistry, you can use your score to push yourself to try harder. “I’m smart, there must be someway I can understand this!” Or, maybe, comfort yourself a bit. “Hey, a “C” isn’t that bad; even Tommy only got a “B”.” That’s the only use for the single composite score.
I think I.Q. tests report scores for individual sections. [I don’t remember taking mine, and I never saw the report.] So, teachers and parents can use the results to help kids in their weak areas. “Ms. Rigby, Eleanor is testing above the norm, but only because her verbal skills are off the chart; if you don’t start working on her math skills, she’ll never be able to so much as balance a checkbook”.
What’s it for? The same thing as a scale, a mirror, a voice recorder, the look on someone’s face when they see your private office for the first time [that would be horror]; it’s a tool for evaluating yourself.
Here’s a goofy analogy: my I.Q. is like a treadmill. I can not push myself as hard as the treadmill does.
Actually, where communication is unambiguous its purpose is fulfilled and the strict form itself is irrelevant, becoming to the written word as training wheels on a bicycle. Understanding this, a reasonably intelligent person may identify the grammar nazi as a lightweight poseur trying to up his brain cred by conforming to what popular culture tells him an egghead should be: a tight-assed type-A pencilneck with nothing better to do than bray like an idiot donkey when someone doesn’t put a period in the right place.
Are you really so pathetically ridiculously monumentally stupid that you don’t realize how stupid this makes you sound? The smart people around here stick out like sore thumbs, until now you have not stuck out sweetheart, and it ain’t for being smart. I suspect that you are among to people the OP is directed. Why the fuck would you claim to be smart when it is so fucking apparent whether or not you are? I am sorry you are a fat pathetic loser and I hate to be the one to break the news that you ain’t that smart either, but maybe a little humility will make you more likeable…
I’m strongly on the “the IQs here aren’t as high as people think they are” side but I agree with you here.
I think the IQ inflation might have SOME lies in it; I’m sure somewhere along the line one or more people have made up a high number. But I think a lot of it is just ignorance and the reporting of numbers that were not the result of reliable testing. I don’t think most people are actually, consciously lying.
Maybe you misread my post. I state that achievement scores cannot convert to an IQ score. I have never heard of such a thing. How can an achievement test convert to an IQ score when an achievement test doesn’t measure intelligence?
The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was (under its former acronym) and continues to be an achievement test. You are absolutely right, the SAT Reasoning Test does correlate with college grades, a measure of achievement, but it is not as good a predictor of college grades as high school grades. This is why colleges consider a number of factors in their admission decisions.
I said it was a rule of thumb and a very good one IMHO. I didn’t say that a score of 160 was impossible. About 1 person in 31,000 will score that high. However, many more that 1 in 31,000 people seem to make that claim. In typical IQ threads that I have seen over the years, the creep upwards is absurd and simply not believable based on the odds. We have had people claim IQ’s over 180. Regular IQ tests can’t reliably measure up that high, and even if they could, the odds are 1 in 13,200,000.
If you are the betting type the odds are overwhelmingly in favor that the person is a dumbass and can’t comprehend anything to do with normal curves. It is much safer to assume that a person that self-reports a very high IQ is lying without further evidence. I would tend to believe that someone that demonstrates impressive intellectual abilities in multiple areas like Stranger on a Train has a very high IQ score rather than a poster with 500 posts mainly in MPSIMS.
That person was tested using an instrument with a standard deviation of 15 and is extraordinarily intelligent.
Could happen but probably not
That person was tested using an instrument (such as Cattell verbal) with a standard deviation closer to 25 and is very intelligent.
**That is not technically wrong but is deceitful if not disclosed. It is like reporting your highest driving speed in terms of KM/H instead of MPH and not saying anything.
That person took an online test which indicated an IQ of 160.
They shouldn’t report that at all. Some on-line tests are quite good. Some just want to sell everyone stuff based on their impressive IQ
That person had “160” given to them at some point by official sources (parent, school, etc.), but that person gave them a falsely high number (through badly controlled testing conditions or some other error).
Apropos of very little, we have a little task here at work that I like to call “the Ph.D. test”. One must bind a report using those folder covers with the metal clasps that fold over. They look something like this. The trick is the hinges. Temps with no education outside of high school get it right the first time, but a noob Ph.D. never will. Thus, if you cannot do it, you must have a Ph.D. It’s scarily accurate.
Internalizing that vile and intimidating exhortation that one ‘live up to one’s potential’.
As annoying as my high-school guidance counsellors were, now that I am in charge of my own work product, I find I must have listened to them.
So, knowing I am capable of better than adequate work forces me to perform better, just as being on the treadmill forces me to work up a sweat.
Someone else posted earlier, but I can’t find it, that telling a child s/he is ‘gifted’ might make them lazy. In my experience, ‘gifted’ kids are pushed harder, and encouraged to push themselves. Sometimes that doesn’t work, as another poster off this page was talking about.
a lot of the claims of 180 I’ve seen here have been obvious jokes, so let’s ignore them. I’m sure some claims of 160 were jokes also, but maybe not all. While it is true that very few people have an IQ of 160, that is still over 8,000 people in the country as a whole. This kind of place is a bit self-selecting for high intelligence, you’d expect a couple to show up.
Why do you think expertise in multiple areas is an indicator of high IQ? I was an officer for our school district’s advocacy group for GATE students for many years, and so heard lots of talks by psychologists on this, and gifted people are often very focused on one or two things. (Not that Stranger isn’t - just that it is not necessarily a good indicator.)
Besides that, what evidence would you accept for a very high IQ? You can’t really use achievement, since in our district an uncomfortably large number of GATE identified students dropped out. Attendance at a top school? That might require money and support from high school advisers. Being acknowledged as a leader in a field? In two fields? That often requires a bit of luck. Also, sometimes people are really good at one thing. Some of our GATE students are only marked as gifted in math or verbal, not both.
While you may be right not believing in a high IQ claim most of the time, you won’t be right all of the time - unless you think there is some reason that those with high IQs avoid you.
I hated chemistry–both inorganic and organic. I never understood the periodic table and no one bothered to explain it.(You didn’t ask for any of this, but I’m telling you anyway). My point (which is not supported or even addressed by the previous sentences) is that this “theory” never did work for me. I have my strengths and my weaknesses. No amount of trying is going to clarify Avogadro’s number for me. No amount of struggle will light the dim bulb that will always be trigonometry.
This didn’t happen. This SHOULD have happened. Welcome to white girl world (really just girl world circa 1972).
I was told 2 things: 1. (in 5th grade) I was smart in verbal/language skills so therefore I must be able to do math as well. and 2. I shouldn’t worry about my math skills because as a girl I wouldn’t need them. (anyone who thinks we haven’t come a long way in education is too young to know about stuff like this).
I know my limits. I play to my strengths. I cannot balance my checkbook–I married an accountant and bank VP (it wasn’t the only reason, but let’s say it was an added inducement). I am not proud of these things, but at 45, I know what I am capable of. It’s a relief more than anything.
Strangely enough, I get the “goofy” analogy, what I don’t get is why someone would get a look of horror at the sight of my private office.
Also, I meant to write peeked, not peaked, in my post. :smack:
You are correct on all of that. I never said those super-high scores are impossible but they are so unlikely that they require some type of evidence, anything, to make them more believable. This is just a message board and neither you nor I can actually affect what an individual person’s real IQ score is. The only way to know for sure is to review their psychologist’s report and that obviously is not going to happen.
My main point is that general skepticism for IQ scores needs to follow the same bell curve that they are based on. It simply gets old hearing the same obviously inflated scores both here and elsewhere on the web. Just like the tests themselves, this criticism does not apply to any one person but to groups as a whole that are reporting average IQ scores that are simply unfeasible. I would be happy if people just learned a little about normal curves and the IQ scores themselves before they start tacking on 10 or 15 points here or there without understanding what they are saying.
I have no idea what either the average or median IQ of dopers is, but I do know that you don’t understand sampling theory very well. You are basically saying that a high IQ for the average of 5,000 Dopers over a population of 180 million or so is statistically unlikely. That would be true if Dopers were randomly selected from the population. That’s clearly not so. First, to be a Doper you need to be willing to send some money to the Reader, have an Internet connection, and have time. That eliminates a bunch of people. Next you have to be comfortable in a highly verbal environment. The quality of writing here - in terms of grammar and spelling - is pretty high. That eliminates a whole bunch more people - over half the population I suppose. Even within this smaller population there is self-selection. So your simplistic view of what is statistically unlikely is just plain wrong.
Two data points. Somewhere there is a list of Doper Jeopardy contestants. There are quite a few. a hell of a lot more than would be statistically likely. I have no reason to doubt anyone. It also might be interesting to poll dopers on how many have college or advanced degrees. My impression is that this is far higher than chance.
I don’t know what our average IQ is, but you have no valid reason to call 130 statistically unlikely. Given what I said about selection, 100 would be far more unlikely.
See the post right after yours for a statistical critique of calling just about any average IQ unlikely.
I’m still curious about what evidence you’d accept. Psychologist reports are going to be self-reported, and suspect. Plus, IQ has fallen out of favor. When I was in junior high the class roster had an IQ field. I have no recollection of how we were tested to get a value. That was over 40 years ago - I know that IQ is not generally tested for today, since it is out of favor. GATE selection in our district is by nomination by a teacher or parent, and selection by a test and then a psychologist’s interview. However due to the budget crunch, there is more group testing. Some parents with a background in this say that some kids do worse one on one, through nervousness, but others do worse in a group test environment.
So, if there is a hypothesis offered that someone has an IQ of 160, what evidence would falsify it, and what would tend to confirm it in your opinion?
Uh…I think we are talking past each other here. I have now stated twice (and this is the third time) that I do not believe that aptitude test (or call them achievement tests if you want) scores can be converted accurately to IQ test scores. I said it, then you “corrected” me and stated the same thing. Then I said that I agreed with you. Now you are here “correcting” me again. Just so there is no more confusion, let me state categorically that I agree with you on this issue.
What I DO think MIGHT be true is that there may be some correlation between aptitude/achievement test scores and IQ test scores. That is, if you take a kid who scored very well on an aptitude/achievement test, and you give them an IQ test, you probably can expect to see a higher-than-average IQ. Whether it will be slightly higher than average or way higher than average, I don’t think you would know…I doubt very highly that you could predict what the specifc score will be.
That’s fine…I’m not that familiar with aptitude/achievement tests, and of course we are all aware that colleges do not base admissions solely on them (although they are of some value, I’d imagine). But whether or not they are effective at what they are designed to do is kind of irrelevant to my point. My point was that they are NOT IQ tests, they are NOT designed to measure IQ, and they DON’T convert accurately to an IQ score, at least, not as far as I have ever heard.
