What does this IQ score mean (if anything)?

Factual Questions
81

[QUOTE=Voyager]
While I agree in general that some people inflate their scores, I know (from the teacher leaving her book open) that two kids in my junior high homeroom had IQ scores of 160 and above.

You’re confusing results with capacity, btw. Having a high IQ might mean you are capable of great things, but in no way guarantees it. There are a fair number of GATE identified students who drop out.

If you had said 170 instead of 145, I might agree with you. But I know lots of people whose IQ is over 145 - some I’m sure of, some I suspect, but that is from the schools I went to and the jobs I’ve had.
[/QUOTE]

Don’t get me wrong. I made those numbers up based on experience about who is bullshitting, There are plenty of people taken as a whole in the population that have an IQ at or above 145 but that is very exceptional. My point was that bullshitters add 15 points to their score casually without even realizing that is an increase of entire standard deviation and the differences are vast. Once you get above 160 or 170, the whole system breaks down. Not only is that exceedlingly unlikely but standard IQ tests can’t even measure that result reliably.

I am also not “confusing results with capacity” and never have if you reread my posts in this thread. I am merely commenting on the likelihood of someone getting a very high score on an IQ test. When IQ discussions occur anywhere, the participant’s IQ’s creep up to the near impossible level and you end up with the supposed highest IQ’s of any group ever assembled.

82

[QUOTE=Voyager]
While I agree in general that some people inflate their scores, I know (from the teacher leaving her book open) that two kids in my junior high homeroom had IQ scores of 160 and above.

You’re confusing results with capacity, btw. Having a high IQ might mean you are capable of great things, but in no way guarantees it. There are a fair number of GATE identified students who drop out.

If you had said 170 instead of 145, I might agree with you. But I know lots of people whose IQ is over 145 - some I’m sure of, some I suspect, but that is from the schools I went to and the jobs I’ve had.
[/QUOTE]

An IQ score of 160+, based upon a standard deviation ( σ ) of 15, would mean a person at the 4σ level. Only 0.003167% of the population can be found at or above that level. In a country of 300 million people, that means that only approximately 9500 such people exist in the country at all. Assuming a roughly even distribution of population over ages (yes, a poor assumption, but within the right magnitude, probably) of say 0 - 70 years, there would be about 135 people of the same age with that level of ability.

You will, I hope, forgive me if I consider on this basis the data that you recall to be flawed. Either you remember incorrectly, or the scores were incorrect (not impossible, depending upon the district).

The same calculations for those with IQ scores over 145 ( 3σ ) shows about 5800 for every age. Again, you are going to be very unlikely in any given school’s grade level to meet more than one such person.

One of the troubles with the normal IQ test is that, once it starts trying to measure past 2σ, it gets quite difficult to differentiate. Usually, you have to start using tests that are normed over a smaller portion of the population, namely those who’s regular IQ scores were already at the 2σ level or higher. Most people never take such a test, and in my opinion, they have little purpose other than putative bragging rights. :rolleyes:

83

Sure, you can solve the problem by making an appropriate assumption, but which assumption is appropriate? If the man had only one job, then I don’t think they would have specified his “part time” job; they would have just said “his job”. So I assumed that the man and woman each had a full-time job, but the man also had a part time job in addition (before he lost it). Did the woman have a part-time job, too? I dunno. And the “assume all else being equal” doesn’t help, either, since it doesn’t say equal to what. Is the wife’s total salary the same as the husband’s total? Before or after he lost his part-time? Or maybe her full-time job is the same salary as his full-time job?

84

[QUOTE=Chronos]
Sure, you can solve the problem by making an appropriate assumption, but which assumption is appropriate? If the man had only one job, then I don’t think they would have specified his “part time” job; they would have just said “his job”. So I assumed that the man and woman each had a full-time job, but the man also had a part time job in addition (before he lost it). Did the woman have a part-time job, too? I dunno. And the “assume all else being equal” doesn’t help, either, since it doesn’t say equal to what. Is the wife’s total salary the same as the husband’s total? Before or after he lost his part-time? Or maybe her full-time job is the same salary as his full-time job?
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, it was pretty awful wording. I think they said “part-time” only so people didn’t go “Huh? Why is it that his wife made four times as much income as him?”.

85

[QUOTE=Shagnasty]
I assume that you are joking but this is a good demonstration of what happens when people inflate their IQ (just a little in their minds).

An IQ of 184 equals a z-score of 5.6

The probability of that happening is 1 in 92,870,192. That most likely makes you have not only the highest IQ in your high school, your college, your city and your state but also probably one of the ten 10 highest scores in the U.S. I am not sure what the standard deviation is on penis lengths but that is probably up there as well.
[/quote]

I could be wrong, but I’m almost positive that if the score goes over 160, they just tell you “160+” because the test breaks down pretty severely once you get outside of four standard deviations and the numbers become essentially meaningless.

86

[QUOTE=mangeorge]
I think that’s what it was called.
I read a while back about how in some people the act of taking a test has an effect on their performance. Not just nervousness, but many intelligent people consider this (or any) kind of test to be pointless and a huge waste of time.
Is this true?
[/QUOTE]

Who knows. You can’t really test for that sort of thing.

:stuck_out_tongue:

87

[QUOTE=the raindog]
I might be showing my age with the ‘corner tap’ reference.
[/QUOTE]

I did as mangeorge did and Googled it. The only place I’d ever heard the term was in a riddle that I never understood:

Q: Why is there a corner tap on the basilica?
A: So the Pope can cash his check too.

I’d always assumed I didn’t get it because I’m a protestant. Now it appears to be simply more of a regional term, one not commonly used on the West coast, where I’ve always lived.

88

[QUOTE=ForumBot]
Who knows. You can’t really test for that sort of thing.

:stuck_out_tongue:
[/QUOTE]

Ha ha. :wink:
But I’m sure we all know of people who do exceptionally well in real life, but didn’t receive excaptional grades.
Excluding possibly lawyers. :stuck_out_tongue:

89

[QUOTE=Voyager]
You’re confusing results with capacity, btw. Having a high IQ might mean you are capable of great things, but in no way guarantees it,
[/QUOTE]

I will wait with bated breath your apology as it relates this response. I have no idea where you came up with this vomited up horse shit as it relates to me in this thread. I just commented on the psychometrics of IQ tests and how the normal curve works. I simply mean that anyone that claims to have a a very high IQ better supply some supporting evidence or else that person is most likely lying.

You yourself claimed knowing two students that had an IQ at or above 160 which means that you have almost certainly been taken as well. The traditional tests just don’t work that way.

90

Stephen Hawking said that “people who brag about their IQ’s are losers”. Something like that. He claimed to not know his.
I need to re-read his book “A Brief History of Time”. Very interesting, largely because I could almost understand it.

91

[QUOTE=Shagnasty]
I will wait with bated breath your apology as it relates this response. I have no idea where you came up with this vomited up horse shit as it relates to me in this thread. I just commented on the psychometrics of IQ tests and how the normal curve works. I simply mean that anyone that claims to have a a very high IQ better supply some supporting evidence or else that person is most likely lying.

You yourself claimed knowing two students that had an IQ at or above 160 which means that you have almost certainly been taken as well. The traditional tests just don’t work that way.
[/QUOTE]

Curious, what kind of support would you accept for claims of IQ. I might be able to find my SAT scores somewhere and I am sure others could, but I don’t know anyone that could produce their IQ test scores from grade school.

Personally I will put on record, without good proof that my IQ was rated at 145 and when I take these silly IQ tests, I score in the 140-150 range consistently. I took the entrance test for Chubb Institute, which is all logic problem solving and got told it was the highest score they had ever seen.

You only have my word to go on, nothing else. So am I lying, or is it possible that threads like this might attract people that typically score very well on Logic/IQ tests?

Jim

92

ForumBot writes:

> I could be wrong, but I’m almost positive that if the score goes over 160, they
> just tell you “160+” because the test breaks down pretty severely once you get
> outside of four standard deviations and the numbers become essentially
> meaningless.

The problem is that you can’t norm the test to measure an I.Q. higher than 160. Even finding a test group to norm it for an I.Q. of 160 is difficult. You would have to give the test to at least 100,000 people to norm it at that level. Remember, an I.Q. means that you are (approximately) one of the smartest three people in a group of 100,000. It doesn’t mean anything else. Even if we assume that the test is completely valid, all that an I.Q. of 160 means is that the person has one of the three highest scores on the test.

Getting more than about 100,000 people to take a test would be extraordinarily difficult. This is why four standard deviations out, an I.Q. of 160 (or, in the other direction, 40 I.Q.), is about the limit of what can be measured. And, no, it doesn’t mean anything if you answered a lot more questions right than the second best person in a group of 100,000. Your I.Q. still is 160, in so far as that test can measure.

93

I could, because my father was in education and had us tested. I obtained the same score on testing with a different instrument in high school, and it correlates with my SATs and other scores. I perform at in the predicated way in academic and other settings that tend to correlate well with the skills sets of IQ tests. As to how intelligent I am in domains not measured by the tests, the answer is highly so in some and much less so than others.

94

Voyager writes:

> While I agree in general that some people inflate their scores, I know (from the
> teacher leaving her book open) that two kids in my junior high homeroom had
> IQ scores of 160 and above.

What junior high school was this? Perhaps it would be possible if it was one of those selective all-state ones that chooses by test from everyone in the state of that age and gives them scholarships to allow them to reside at the school, but otherwise it’s absurdly improbable. If your homeroom had 30 kids in it, the probability is only 1 in 1000 that even one child in that homeroom would have an I.Q. of 160. And forget about the I.Q.'s being above 160, because as I pointed out in my last post, honest I.Q. tests don’t measure scores that high.

95

[QUOTE=Shoshana]
I could, because my father was in education and had us tested. I obtained the same score on testing with a different instrument in high school, and it correlates with my SATs and other scores. I perform at in the predicated way in academic and other settings that tend to correlate well with the skills sets of IQ tests. As to how intelligent I am in domains not measured by the tests, the answer is highly so in some and much less so than others.
[/QUOTE]

Nice to meet you then. :wink: However, your case does not sound typical. Maybe I am wrong, maybe most people do have their IQ tests handy.

I said early in the thread I don’t think IQ tests are worth much, they appear to mostly test logic. My scores on standard testing and SATs were always high. This did nothing to predict what kind of student I was. I was a procrastinator and if I did not care for the subject, I did not apply myself. I basically just got by in most classes except Math, Science, Computers and Latin. My Guidance Counselor actually classified me as a ‘Chronic Underachiever’. IQ does not translate to doing well in college. (IMHO)

Jim

96

Here, just for fun, the Meyer-Briggs personality test. I suspect it predicts more about one’s life than simple I.Q.

97

The MBTI is not an IQ test. Common IQ tests are the WISC, WAIS, Stanford-Binet, and the Wonderlic (which generates an IQ range equivalent). The Myers-Briggs is a normative personality test. It is not available online for free. The test (sic) linked page may or may not be normed or validated. It’s actually based on Keirsey’s work, which I find weaker than the MBTI. Similarly, the IQ “test” linked from the page appears to be based on Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. I’m not willing to register at this site, so I can’t say for sure, but it doesn’t seem to me that a computer-administered instrument could test all of Gardner’s domains. That’s okay, though, because much as I admire Gardner, his theory hasn’t yet been empirically supported, so it doesn’t really matter.

98

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
Curious, what kind of support would you accept for claims of IQ. I might be able to find my SAT scores somewhere and I am sure others could, but I don’t know anyone that could produce their IQ test scores from grade school.

Personally I will put on record, without good proof that my IQ was rated at 145 and when I take these silly IQ tests, I score in the 140-150 range consistently. I took the entrance test for Chubb Institute, which is all logic problem solving and got told it was the highest score they had ever seen.

You only have my word to go on, nothing else. So am I lying, or is it possible that threads like this might attract people that typically score very well on Logic/IQ tests?

Jim
[/QUOTE]

It isn’t impossible and I believe you for what you claimed on your faux IQ tests. A real IQ test could certainly find the same thing and I know that whatever crap test you find on the web is most likely positively correlated with a real IQ score.

Major point #1 is that IQ scores can only be determined by the real IQ tests administered by a professional one on one for a few hours. I can absolutely believe that you might score a 145 on such a test. That is the only real definition of an IQ score and a 145 is extremely high but in the range of reasonability.

Major #2 is that most people don’t understand when you claim an IQ score of 145 versus say an IQ score of 160. Those seemingly innocent 15 points are an entire standard deviation at the far right hand side of the bell curve and result in an in incredibly unlikely occurrence let alone anything beyond that.

The vast majority of people that comment on this topic don’t understand either how IQ tests work or statistics which is quite ironic.

99

[QUOTE=Shoshana]
I could, because my father was in education and had us tested. I obtained the same score on testing with a different instrument in high school, and it correlates with my SATs and other scores. I perform at in the predicated way in academic and other settings that tend to correlate well with the skills sets of IQ tests. As to how intelligent I am in domains not measured by the tests, the answer is highly so in some and much less so than others.
[/QUOTE]

I commented earlier that I have had four real IQ tests starting in fourth grade ranging into my early twenties. I have also taken the SAT, ACT, and GRE (twice) and they all found almost exactly the same thing. Whatever they measure, they are measuring something because I have gotten the same percentage score +/- 1 for my whole life.

100

[QUOTE=Shagnasty]
It isn’t impossible and I believe you for what you claimed on your faux IQ tests. A real IQ test could certainly find the same thing and I know that whatever crap test you find on the web is most likely positively correlated with a real IQ score.

Major point #1 is that IQ scores can only be determined by the real IQ tests administered by a professional one on one for a few hours. I can absolutely believe that you might score a 145 on such a test. That is the only real definition of an IQ score and a 145 is extremely high but in the range of reasonability.

Major #2 is that most people don’t understand when you claim an IQ score of 145 versus say an IQ score of 160. Those seemingly innocent 15 points are an entire standard deviation at the far right hand side of the bell curve and result in an in incredibly unlikely occurrence let alone anything beyond that. I just assumed 1 out of 250 having an IQ in the 160 range was not abnormal. It sounds like it is.

The vast majority of people that comment on this topic don’t understand either how IQ tests work or statistics which is quite ironic.
[/QUOTE]

Interesting, I knew one fellow student that had an IQ of 160 but then he aced the 1983 SATs and got a full scholarship to Caltech so I guess that only supports your point. I on the other hand was a terrible student despite a good IQ test and very good SAT scores.

The IQ test in school way back when, was another group class test and did take many hours, but it was not professionally administered, just professionally graded (outside graders). This would be back in the mid-seventies. That was the only time I ever took a “real IQ” test. It sounds like you might be saying that even this should not be considered real. Is that correct? I believe it was third grade.

I was under the impression most schools stopped giving IQ tests in mass. I this correct?

My son had one administered by a Professional, but that was to test for his specific learning capabilities. He has ADHD. My daughter is doing great in school and has never had an IQ test.

Jim