So what the hell does this IQ thing mean anyway?

It means you are brilliant. If you are working, you should quit and volunteer to run the nation to which you are most attached. Comb your hair in the opposite direction you are presently using and get ready to fight the women off with a stick. Money, power and pride are in your immediate future. The world is at your feet waiting upon your every breathless phrase of word.

I stand ready to obey you.

Joe

I doubt that my current employer would agree with that assessment!

A score of 130 means that you did very well on that "IQ" test.

You have also helped A2K's advertising rates.

Isn't IQ relative to age? My 6 year old son did extensive tests to measure his intellengence over a 1/2 day and he scored 130 +/- 2 puting him the top 2% of all Australian 6 year olds.

I thought IQ increased fairly lineraly with age as the brain wires itself most predominantly between ages 0 - 20 given it is stimulated enough.

I tried it a while ago and got 135, which I thought was too high. I'm confident that I'm of 'above-average' intelligence (along with most A2Kers), but 135 is practically genius-level, which I'm sure I'm not!

IQ means intelligence quotion--but it largely measures inculturation in the society in which the test is written. This should not be surprising. A French educator named Binet originally invented the test for precisely that purpose, to measure the extent to which schoolchildren in French colonies were being successfully inculturated. However, in the period of the first world war, this type of test was used in the United States to determine "intelligence quotion," and to assign jobs to people entering the U.S. military. It had the effect, pleasing to the authors, of making black people, for example, seem to be only qualified for manual labor. The contention that it measures intelligence is specious. The Stanford-Binet test used in the United States comes in two forms--short form (possible 180 points) and long form (possible 200 points). A score of 130 or more in the short-form test is considered genius, but 145 in the long form. I scored 133 in the short form when in my second year in high school, and, as GD mentions, i certainly don't think that i deserve to be described as a genius. The test concept is fatally flawed.

Out of interest, does anyone think it will ever be possible to devise a test that could give a true representation of relative intelligences?

IQ tests are supposed to be "age weighted". The score shouldn't increase based on age at all. Your score is supposed to be a comparison of one's intellectual capacity to others that are the same age group.

If you score 130 at age 3 and then score 135 at age 5 you have moved ahead of your peers. If you score 125 at age 5 then you're peers have advanced more than you. But there isn't any direct correlation between your two test scores themselves. They'd be entirely different tests.

I have a fairly high IQ = Good at passing tests, but not much common sense, nor talent for completing even simple tasks quickly and within the implied parameters = I often do what the boss said, but not what he wanted. Neil

Well gee...with an IQ like that, you should be able to figure out what it means.

What are you supposed to do with it? Paint it on the roof, and wait for the Visitors to come and pick you up. Didn't you get the leaflet?

THAT's what you'd just told your poor 94-year-old friend, isn't it...

Nah, he was up there banging on his air conditioner with a monkey wrench (wrong tool, wrong job) of his own accord. I knew if I let him in on the big secret, he'd do something really dumb.

when I was a kid in High school I scored an 80 just by marking boxes - (be the first one done) back in the rebellion days, same with SAT and ACT - never tried - pretty dumb looking back when one is graduating from College.

All psychological tests including IQ can be viewed merely as an aid to selection of personnel.

If you put one of the company "good guys" through a battery of n tests (even arbitrary content) you obtain n scores. This n-tuple can be compared with the n-tuples of applicants using the cosine of the angle between the vectors in n-space as a measure of correlation. In practice, this logically dubious method is augmented by an interview !

Aspiring "intellectuals" should perhaps get themselves a score on the Miller Analogies Test, and forget about "IQ".

80? That's getting down toward Pedro Guerrerro territory. (No disrespect to the slugger.)

Setanta, I agree with you and would like to add some comments.

Consider this typical description. "He is 6'-3" tall, weighs 180 lbs., has blonde hair and has an IQ of 130."

We treat and talk about the IQ as if it really existed.
The IQ is a metaphysical construct similar to the word "soul." This is the result of reification.

Reification:

The transformation of social relations into an objective existance. Reification is often used derogatively, as imagining that abstracted relations exist in Nature, rather than being products of human thought.

The IQ is an abstraction which has been reified to the point where we think of it as a physical thing. In other words, we have used the word "IQ" billions of times as though we were talking about an object. And, we have come to believe it.

To my knowledge, there is no such thing as Intelligence Quotient.

BillyF, what has bothered me about the IQ hoax is the vicious way in which those with a vested interest in the thesis have defended it. In the 1970's, statistical analysis of testing methods research lead many acadmics to question whether or not the IQ test had any validity beyond testing aculturation. The reaction from those who used testing in the selection of job applicants, or the assigment of tasks to employees was swift and nasty--they accused such researchers of practicing political rectitude, and making yet another assault on "the establishment." Nothing deterred, researchers began giving test materials to those taking civil service examinations after one testing cycle, and were able to demonstate a consistently demonstrated elevation of test scores when prospective applicants were given a broad range of materials to study which did not include material specific to the questions which would be embodied in the retesting.

To me, it was always so much hogwash, because i had already read of Binet and the tests which he had devised. The colonizing impulse of the French republic in the late 19th century was likely no more loftily inspired than that of any other nation--nevertheless, they touted their mission civilizatrice, their "civilizing mission." The educators in France in the same period were militant "crusaders" for a secular, effective education which would prepare students to participate in the society which was educating them. To that end, Binet developed a test to determine the degree of success at the aculturation of students in French colonies. The point from the beginning was to test the degree of knowledge of the student of the dominant culture in which they were expected to participate.

The reaction of those with a vested interest in IQ testing is understandable; this does not lessen, however, the predictable result of such testing, which was to marginalize those who were not members of the dominant culture (in the U.S., Blacks, Latinos, Amerindians . . . ). I doubt that any but the most stridently militant of anti-establishment types (and such did exist, though not nearly to the extent alleged by their critics) were willing to say that the use of IQ testing was a racist tactic. That, however, was the effect. Binet's test was never intended to test the intelligence of the test subject, simply their knowledge of the dominant culture. I rather suspect that Binet and his colleagues were too perceptive to believe that a written test could effectively define degrees of intelligence.

I really don't care much for IQ - I think I discussed that elsewhere before.

The gift I really have is the PQ (People Quotient) - but it's not highly observable here in a written forum.