# What is your IQ? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 29, 2009, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561 "2009-10-29T03:51:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2009, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/101 "2009-10-30T20:03:51Z")
The lady who lived across the street from me when I was a kid was a psychologist and offered to test me. She told my mother I had the highest score she’d tested, but this was the mid 1970’s in West Texas, so that was probably a 95. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2009, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/102 "2009-10-30T20:18:09Z")
> [@VarlosZ](#): > > The results here reported are (and this is a technical term) “total horseshit.” > > That is all. The opinion quoted above falls into the same category. _That_ is all. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2009, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/103 "2009-10-30T20:20:10Z")
Question for anyone who has given the test: how many questions are there? IQ scores reflect the results on a standard Gaussian distribution. When you are getting four or five sigma away from the mean, I wonder what the variance is based on a single question right or wrong. I’m sure that more than a dozen people get all the answers right, and that more or less sets the top score. Anybody know the details? ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2009, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/104 "2009-10-30T20:58:41Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > Let me be the first to say that anyone that claims they have an IQ over 160 is almost certainly flat out lying just based on the way the normal curves for standard IQ tests work. So…you’re saying that someone with an extremely high IQ wouldn’t be attracted to a message board that claims to fight ignorance? It looks like a 160 IQ is only [4 standard deviations from the mean.](http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQBasics.aspx) So according to the [handy chart on Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation), 1 in every 15,788 people will fall outside that range (higher or lower). So with maybe 10,000 people of 160-180 IQs wandering around just in the US, I feel pretty confident that some of them might have wandered into the SDMB and made themselves comfy. Given the self-selecting nature of the population, even one or two of the 80 or 90 people (in the US) with 180+ IQs might show up. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/105 "2009-10-31T00:29:58Z")
> [@CandidGamera](#): > > I think the standardized tests (SAT, ACT) were, honestly, more useful in predicting long-term success. Definitely was in my case. I scored a 127 in a state administered test, but kept putting off taking the ACT in high school until I was forced to come to school on a Saturday to take some sort of aptitude test that still allowed me to graduate on time. My career trajectory is about what you’d expect. ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/106 "2009-10-31T01:18:25Z")
138, and I only know because I have vague memories of being taken by my mom to visit a nice man in an office who let me play lots of fun games, which I recognized in graduate school to be a battery of assessments that included an intelligence test. I asked her about it, and she said she’d taken me to be tested because I frightened her with some of my behaviors, and she wanted to know how to create the best environment for me. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Understander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@The\_Understander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Understander)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/107 "2009-10-31T01:29:59Z")
High enough to not care… but it’s likely higher than 125 for posterity. ---
**Author:** ![rhubarbarin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eb9ed0/32.png) [@rhubarbarin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhubarbarin)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/108 "2009-10-31T02:43:02Z")
I was tested 3 times as a child. I believe Weschler all 3 times. At age 6 it was around 133 - very very high in verbal and comprehension, adjusted downward for spacial abilities, math, etc which is still very much my weak spot. I read the report a few years ago and the person testing me made all kinds of notes about how easily frustrated I was by some components of the test- and remain so to this day, LOL. At age 11 I got a result of 110 - then they tested again because they didn’t like that result (maybe I didn’t eat lunch that day, I dunno) and I got 120-something so they put me in their ‘gifted’ program. I don’t think it’s a very valuable measure of anything but being good at taking an IQ test. But it’s interesting to hear about other people’s results. Unlike some of you on here I love to have people tell me what their IQ is. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Bith\_Shuffle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ce73a5/32.png) [@The\_Bith\_Shuffle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Bith_Shuffle)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/109 "2009-10-31T03:00:00Z")
I don’t know if I was ever given an IQ test considered sound in the psychological community. But in 3rd grade I took a test to be placed in the gifted program and was in the top percentile of Math ability - I think I got the highest score they had ever seen. My mom decided not to put me in the gifted program. I didn’t care, I hated school and never got good grades in it. ---
**Author:** ![GameHat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ed655f/32.png) [@GameHat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GameHat)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/110 "2009-10-31T04:25:37Z")
I remember my mom “volunteering” me for some University research when I was maybe 8. It was actually pretty fun - hang out with “cool” college kids, play board games, and take IQ tests. I remember doing pretty well at the IQ tests. I took a bunch. A range of scores, I suppose by this highly scientific [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_reference_chart) article I’d be “moderately gifted”. I don’t put a lot of stock into IQ tests. For one thing, you take enough, you start to get the pattern of questions. Just like how you can improve your SAT scores by memorizing maybe 200 “favored SAT words” without actually getting any better at reading or writing. I dunno, I think IQ test-taking is a skill that has a moderate intelligence effect but a high “experience in taking IQ tests” effect. ---
**Author:** ![meanoldman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@meanoldman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/meanoldman)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/111 "2009-10-31T04:43:43Z")
Mine is so high, I am not using a keyboard or mouse to enter this. I am merely re-arranging your thoughts to make you -think- you are reading this. This is actually a blank page. or my mind is a blank ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/112 "2009-10-31T04:49:13Z")
> [@GameHat](#): > > I don’t put a lot of stock into IQ tests. For one thing, you take enough, you start to get the pattern of questions. Just like how you can improve your SAT scores by memorizing maybe 200 “favored SAT words” without actually getting any better at reading or writing. That’s why the lady I helped score the IQ tests for her research warned me that if I did help her, I could not take one myself for five years and consider the results valid. (That was the lady who did not believe they were valid anyway.) ---
**Author:** ![kittenblue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ba8739/32.png) [@kittenblue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kittenblue)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/113 "2009-10-31T05:11:21Z")
I got my score on my eighteenth birthday…144. Don’t know how log before that I had taken the test, but in my high school, on your 18th birthdayyou got called down to the office, were given a voter registration card to fill out, a draft registration form if you were male, and shown your permanent record, which included that magic number we were told not to discuss. Since I’d been in gifted programs and advanced placement classes since I was in 4th grade, I had already gotten a hint that I was supposed to be smarter than average. I don’t feel that way much anymore, at age 52. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/114 "2009-10-31T05:27:17Z")
When I was either a junior or senior in high school, I decided to do a study on correlating IQ and GPA for the school and got special permission from the superintendent of schools to have access to redacted test scores and GPAs. It was fascinating. The results were a loose correlation. Very few scores were upwards of 120, and there really didn’t appear to be much correlation between those scores and higher achievement. ---
**Author:** ![Chicken\_Fingers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Chicken\_Fingers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chicken_Fingers)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/115 "2009-10-31T08:11:43Z")
I went through a lot of #2 pencils, throughout the 60s and early 70s, taking various IQ and IQ sub-category tests. They have to test their tests and scoring systems on someone, and apparently I was quite the conscientious and stable little tester on my end of the curve. (Hey, it got me out of class.) As I understand it, the versions of Stanford-Binet and other tests used now do not measure IQ above a certain number. I don’t think that most researchers and testers care whether you’re slightly better at these tests than 99 percent of people, or waaaaaaaaaay better at these tests than 99 percent of people, so they are now saving themselves the work of breaking down the tiny sample at that end of the curve. So if you were told years ago that your test score was higher than 160, it’s a valid score, as far as these things go. Different tests score differently, too, obviously. Today’s 140 might have shown as a 165 on a test you took in 1970. Were you “smarter” then? Who knows, but they were attempting to measure the higher numbers. The older tests are actually still valid, though outdated in a cultural sense. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/116 "2009-10-31T09:49:20Z")
I don’t know whether the psych tests we were administered in school ever involved IQ. Probably did, but I just don’t know. The result I’ve listed is from the test Mensa administered in Spain until a couple years ago. It was all about logical sequences with black and white pictures. I know I’m better at both logic and pictures than the average cookie, but of course that’s useful only if you’re working with logic or pictures: it doesn’t help when you’re trying to deal with, say, a harridan who follows the logic of “I’m the customer therefore you must kiss my arse!” **Voyager** , when I was leaving, the proctor asked me what had I answered to the last question. In his experience, people who got that one right got “in”. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/117 "2009-10-31T12:34:34Z")
I read something last night in the Nov/Dec 2009 issue of _Scientific American Mind_ that seems pertinent and interesting to this discussion: one researcher has evidence (laid out in the article “Rational and Irrational Thought: The Thinking That IQ Tests Miss”) that intelligence and _rationality_ are weakly correlated at best. It’s commonly accepted that IQ tests measure “something” about “intelligence” because people who do well on one type of IQ test pretty much do well on all the other types also. Yet those same people who frequently do well on IQ tests and their like (for example, top undergrads at MIT) do NOT score much better on these types of questions compared to a control group of average IQ people. Here’s a sample question used to illustrate the point: \*\* ( Jack ) =\> ( Anne ) =\> ( George ) \*\* \*\*Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an umarried person? \*\* \*\*(A) Yes (B) No © Cannot be determined \*\* The correct logical answer is **(A) Yes**, because Anne is the unknown factor and has only two states: either she’s married, or she’s not. If she is married, then the statement is true because she’s looking at George (unmarried). If she is NOT married, the statement is still true because Jack (married) is looking at her. Over 80% of people tested choose ©, because they “lazily” think that the question boils down to whether or not Anne is married (which is the case), which is not given in the problem, and see the available option of “Don’t Know/Can’t Tell” which fits in with their first conclusion, so voila. If the © option is _removed_ from the question, then people get the question right. _ **This tendency to “think it through” over “picking the obvious answer” is only weakly correlated with IQ.** _ The author of the article (Keith E. Stanovich, professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto) also recently wrote a full book on the topic, _What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought_ (Yale University Press, 2009), which I am going to pick up soon. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/118 "2009-10-31T14:53:58Z")
> [@Chicken\_Fingers](#): > > As I understand it, the versions of Stanford-Binet and other tests used now do not measure IQ above a certain number. I don’t think that most researchers and testers care whether you’re slightly better at these tests than 99 percent of people, or waaaaaaaaaay better at these tests than 99 percent of people, so they are now saving themselves the work of breaking down the tiny sample at that end of the curve. The major reason for this is that there are legal protections afforded to those of low intelligence (as measured by IQ tests), and so it’s important to identify them and offer those protections. There’s no special legal status for high intelligence, so it’s really not as important to identify. ---
**Author:** ![Oregon\_sunshine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/50afbb/32.png) [@Oregon\_sunshine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oregon_sunshine)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/119 "2009-10-31T14:53:59Z")
138: Stanford-Binet, age 5. 142: full-scale WISC-III, age 9. ---
**Author:** ![Rushgeekgirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rushgeekgirl/32/3715_2.png) [@Rushgeekgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rushgeekgirl)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561/120 "2009-10-31T15:06:17Z")
I’m not exactly sure whether it was 134 or 136. I took a test in fourth grade to make sure I still qualified for CLUE. I’m guessing I must have taken one before that to qualify in the first place because I attended from second to sixth grade. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-iq/515561.md?page=7)