I have no earthly idea what my IQ might have been at any given age.
I’m not really trying to figure out the difference between 100 and 130 on a test, but rather what kinds of things a person of 100 IQ would struggle with, that someone who has an IQ significantly higher might not think is difficult.
Or if it’s not quite like that, what sorts of things do more intelligent people draw the correct conclusions on that people of average intelligence don’t?
Or what concepts do people of average intelligence have a hard time grasping, but more intelligent people don’t?
Let me explain it this way. I consult for mega-corps. My current assignment for the last three years has been at a manufacturing and distribution facility for a company everyone has heard of. There is mega-money involved in that facility and they only pick the best of the best blue-collar workers to work there and they get paid well for it. They get those jobs by having a high school diploma, the ability to follow orders in a very military type fashion, and an extreme work ethic. The ones that get hired after a two year trial period good high pay for their educational level. They are highly skilled in specific ways but they can only do a few things well and probably average about an IQ of 100.
As long as everything is working fine, they get the job done day after day. However, they can’t seem to work around unusual circumstances like systems failures, equipment failures or whatever else can possibly happen in a complex environment. That is why they have me there. My IQ is much higher than theirs even though I am not a better person or a harder worker. When something fails in a minor way or catastrophically and the work procedures haven’t accounted for that scenario, they call me first to figure it out for them. If I can’t figure it out on my own, I have a whole team of super-geniuses backing me up remotely. We can solve anything in very short order even if we have no prior experience with the problem at hand.
Complex problem solving for novel circumstances is one huge thing that separates those with a higher IQ from those with a lower one. Think something like the engineers saved the astronauts on Apollo 13 for example. Most normal people can’t do that at all.
There are other markers as well. It is pretty easy to tell how smart in general someone is just by making a few off-hand references that require putting different pieces of information together. There are even jokes that kind of a proxy for IQ tests even though they require no special knowledge.
Here is one example:
A chicken and egg are laying in bed. The chicken looks at the egg lovingly, takes a slow drag off of cigarette and says ‘Well, I guess that answers that question’
If you don’t get it, think about it. Some get it instantly and others never do.
I am pretty sure it exactly as high as I think it is because it is just a test score and I have been tested officially several times. I never gave the number here though and there are plenty of people with higher ones than mine.
I have never been an employer, only a person qualifying performers of music; nor, for my sins, and no matter how I now regret it, a plumber or mechanic or butcher with a trade; but as a exploded-in-mid-thesis survivor I am well aware of many people out there with graduate degrees lacking any sort of mothewit or comprehension of things they don’t know that they should know. Ie, idiots, who may or may not be culturally illiterate.
As to another OP comment, an IQ test, I think, is required for all who apply for Social Security Disability, no matter what the claim is. I took the test and simply stopped doing the graphic “which thing is that one rotated and inverted” questions*. Similarly, on my SATs, I never studied the tricks on how to solve the “the train leaves at 1:00 PM, and she has a green bag but is scared of heights” dramas. I simply skipped them. Luckily I had decided then that I was not going Ivy League.
*It crossed my mind that I could bomb the whole test, and it could only help my claim go forward.
My point was that we all start out at a lower IQ and progress upward from there. To answer your question, it may be worth looking at your childhood. How was your decision-making and insight different than as an older child or adult?
An person of average intelligence holding an average job may think that they’ve been promoted to manager because of their high intelligence and insight. A person of higher intelligence can see that it’s more because of their ability to fit in with others and to perform repetitive mental tasks without going nuts. Also, a person of average intelligence may think that asking questions is intrinsically stupid because common sense dictates, for example, that the world is flat.
If his score was in the 21st percentile, that’s not really a cause for concern at all. About a fifth of the population is at that level or below, by definition. I can’t imagine that they called the parents of a fifth of the students (more than that, really, since the test had multiple sections) because they were concerned about them.
Alternately, if you mean that he got 21% of the questions right, that doesn’t really mean anything without knowing the nature of the test. I’ve taken tests where the highest score was around that. A test can certainly be designed where the average score will be around 70 or 80 or whatever (and a lot of people seem to assume that will always be the case), but then again, a test can also be designed such that the average score will be 50, and in fact such a test is probably a more useful assessment.
Personal experience: having no knowledge of math will not lower your IQ score. The test is indeed timed, and the math portion, I basically failed. I still ended up in the top 1% and did Mensa for a year (wasn’t worth the money you pay to be in the club). And the math questions aren’t Calculus - they are word problems. (A train going 70 miles an hour is headed for another going 60 miles an hour on the same track. One started here, the other started there. When are they going o hit each other?) The other math portion of the test was counting change. Literally counting money. The rest of the test is Sesame Street “One of these things is not like the other.” You get a boat, a shoe, a dog, and a car. Which one doesn’t belong?
I think anyone with an IQ of 100 can do anything they want if they apply themselves. Including being an astronaut. IQ is basically Sesame Street, as I have said above. I could never be an astronaut due to the math involved.
Me, all I wanted was a job that gives me steady hours, Get up, go do a job in an office with a computer, go home, forget job until the next day. I have done nothing with my brain except use it to cram for tests in college, memorize dialogue on the way to school on the train, and quickly jump into a series of jobs with little training. I learn quickly. That is all. Not everyone with a high IQ wants to be an engineer or doctor. I don’t have any big ideas on how to change the world. I use my brain to get by. I’m lazy and I can get away with it because my brain works faster. That’s it.
I did not get the joke at first reading. I thought it was a joke about egg-laying, didn’t feel like reading it, and skipped to the end of the post. I’ll ponder myself.
Average adult combined IQs associated with real-life accomplishments by various tests:[99][100]
[ul]
[li]MDs, JDs, or PhDs 125+ (WAIS-R, 1987)[/li][li]College graduates 112 (KAIT, 2000; K-BIT, 1992), 115 (WAIS-R)[/li][li]1–3 years of college 104 (KAIT, K-BIT), 105-110 (WAIS-R)[/li][li]Clerical and sales workers 100-105[/li][li]High school graduates, skilled workers (e.g., electricians, cabinetmakers) 100 (KAIT, WAIS-R), 97 (K-BIT)[/li][li]1–3 years of high school (completed 9–11 years of school) 94 (KAIT), 90 (K-BIT), 95 (WAIS-R)[/li][li]Semi-skilled workers (e.g., truck drivers, factory workers) 90-95[/li][li]Elementary school graduates (completed eighth grade) 90[/li][li]Elementary school dropouts (completed 0–7 years of school) 80-85[/li][li]Have 50/50 chance of reaching high school 75[/li][/ul]
Average IQ of various occupational groups:[101]
[ul]
[li]Professional and technical 112[/li][li]Managers and administrators 104[/li][li]Clerical workers; sales workers; skilled workers, craftsmen, and foremen 101[/li][li]Semi-skilled workers (operatives, service workers, including private household) 92[/li][li]Unskilled workers 87[/li][/ul]
Type of work that can be accomplished:[99]
[ul]
[li]Adults can harvest vegetables, repair furniture 60[/li][li]Adults can do domestic work 50[/li][/ul]
There is considerable variation within and overlap between these categories. People with high IQs are found at all levels of education and occupational categories. The biggest difference occurs for low IQs with only an occasional college graduate or professional scoring below 90.[7]
This requires one to put together several pop culture concepts in a way that might not be expected.
Are you sure you don’t want to think about it any more?
“Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” - A question on evolution and animal origins that isn’t easy to answer.
The slang term “come” meaning to reach sexual climax.
The supposed practice of smoking a cigarette after having sex. Supposedly nicotine has an interesting effect for someone who has just had an orgasm.
So, in the joke situation, a chicken and egg were having sex and trying to figure out which would reach climax first. Apparently it was the chicken.
It was just an example. Anyone that understands American English has the background needed to understand it but it certainly doesn’t apply to everyone world. However, there is difference in people that can understand twists like that intuitively and those that cannot. Equivalent examples in other cultures also exist to serve the same differentiation.
The shoe. The others* are all forms of transportation that don’t depend on your muscle power. The shoe requires you to supply the motive force, yourself.
I thought it was the shoe because it’s the only one that isn’t self-propelled.
I also noticed that only one word didn’t include the letter “o”. That’s a third possibility.
This situation where several answers are in fact valid occurs quite frequently in casual tests. I wouldn’t know for “serious” tests but I strongly suspect it happens there too.
No, it’s the boat. All the others move on land, the boat moves on water.
No, wait. It’s the dog. All the rest are non-living.
No, wait, it’s the car. It’s the only one that isn’t a neolithic invention.
This sort of thing happens in all sorts of IQ tests. Not just questions of this type, but also questions of the “what pattern is next in this sequence” type and the “Lacrimose is to dyspeptic as ebulient is to …” type questions.
This is the reason why “real” IQ tests are supposed to be applied by people trained in their interpretation, and accompanied by a follow up answer where the subject gets to explain their answers. Intelligent people are, ironically, more likely to get some of these questions wrong because they can readily see answers aside from the obvious.