So what the hell does this IQ thing mean anyway?

It's true. You have no idea how bad my hygiene is.




Do you?

IQ
As a newby, please excuse my clumsiness in responding.

IQ is a number produced by answers to a given test. That test measures what you should know in your particular culture, for your age, and your educational level. Like grades, it is imperfect, but it gives someone a number to use. Most use this number to measure themselves. Only a foolish evaluator would use that value as the most important aspect in defining their opinion. At the level which this value would have any meaning, such as getting a job in the CIA, much more sophisticated intelligence models are used; not to mention psychological testing.

All that being said, If I knew someone had an IQ of 160, I would be impressed, awaiting substantiation.

It means that too many people put too high a value on IQ.

I agree totally. I made an error in listing a Subject and ended up as a topic all on my own, when I actually wanted to reply to the importance or
relevance of the IQ test itself.

I worked for a lawyer.. one of the smartest men I ever met.... IQ wise. At one time he owned a plantation house and pontoon boat and a Porsche etc... In five years I watched him piss away his whole life..... started drinking, too hungover to work.. Files upon files worth LITERALLY millions of dollars to be made collecting dust in his office. Now, he's lost his law license, has expanded his criminal record (DWI's Etc..) Lost his house and office, and has no credit to speak of....

I'll take good ole effort and common sense over IQ anyday

soserene

The down side of an extemely bright mind is there may be some accompanying hypervigilance or awareness of what most people do not notice. This can often lead to addictive behavior to calm the attendant nervousness. A general statement here: There are also fine lines between brilliance and mental illness such as schizophrenia. Please understand that is not always the case. But many schizophrenics are extremely bright.

We can all recollect one famous intellectually gifted student in our school years who had no social skills to engage happily with his/her peers, so the brilliance was a trade off in lack of a complete life.

I often think about the wunderkind we select for university at the age of 12 - how can we expect them to be rational in so many things we take for granted such as entertainers or the best burger in town. Mundane? Perhaps - but it keeps us grounded. Who grounds the child genius?

Your good ole effort and common sense... is always the best there is, but I have to allow some fantastically brilliant minds have given many gifts to the world around us.

Sorry, got here a little late.

Regarding the IQ, age relation. I took an IQ test when I was in 7th grade (800 years ago) and scored a 138. I took an IQ test three months ago and got the same score.

I look at it two ways. I'm on a curve where I was going up when first tested, and going down when recently tested (probably true). Or, the test correctly considers age and I have been at a constant level.

Either way, IQ does not guarantee common sense. If I were REALLY smart, I would have asked the people giving me the test what it means. And why I was taking it. And why I had to be strip-searched.....

Agreed

I was basically just agreeing with the above posts.(in more words than necessary, probably hehe)
A High IQ doesn't really mean you are "smart" and a low IQ doesn't necessarily make you stupid...

I guess it depends on many factors.. environment, lifestyle.. on which kind of stupid you want to be!!

And what the hell is this GQ thing?

An innocuous plot on the part of capitalists to separate you from your hard earned . . .

Do they use IQ tests in US schools? The reason I know nothing about it is the fact that it's rarely used here that I know of.

They did years ago, Wilso, but i rather suspect they have been replaced by proficiency testing, as almost all states require some form of proficiency testing now, and those who participate in the Federal program are also obliged to test for proficiency in the curricula . . .

I agree IQ tests are rarely given in recent years. More interesting are attitude, self esteem, ability to analyze, and apply new concepts. Neil

what does it matter?
My 2 cents; I had to take a controlled IQ test in Highschool to get into a special class for 'gifted' kids, I did well - 145 but felt insulted by the notion that the correct answers where a 'gift' they were all areas in which I had great personal interest, namely solving problems. A skater punk friend of mine seemed to have been of similar intelligence in my opinion but after taking the test I could see that he would do very poorly, yet he 'knew' so much that I did not. Today we are both computer geeks and probably do just as well at our jobs. I took one of those online tests recently and my score hadnt changed much - 143.

so my conclusion is this; IQ must actually measure something real, my wife did the same thing 153 in middle school 151 recently and I suspect another one of my friends would have been 100 and 100 had he taken them. The differences are not an illusion, it is merely the assumptions we make of what that number represents that is an illusion. My wife and I are much much smarter than my friend, he is litterally more successful than us than we are 'smarter' than him. However, we are in fact measurably 'smarter' there are endless complicated problems ranging from social, mechanical, technical, etc... that I know I could solve with ease that he could not, some not with ease, many, never.

so what?

IQ = Human Brains clock speed, litterally speaking, he has a 1000mhz processor and I have a 1445mhz processor with multithreading capability. this in no way measures how much ram or hard drive space either of us have and most importantly does not measure what is ON our hard drives (knowledge) I also happen to have more knowledge (not better, just more quantity) than him, but that has never been measured by a number, however the lower amount of knowledge that he has is worth twice as much money as my knowlege.

so IQ does in fact matter, just not any where near as much as many people choose to make it matter. For things like world peace and cold fusion, you just cant subsitute a lot of average brains for one elevated one. but for just about everything else that matters, namely being happy, you are way better off having the average 100IQ, that means that you fit in, you understand the average person, lower and you are confused, higher and you find yourself very frustrated, not a desireable place to be.

just my 2 cents

I believe that whether or not present tests are accurate, there is really something there to measure. Just hearing different people talk, some sound smarter than others. Some of this could be learning and training, but I don't believe that all of it is. I'm not sufficiently familiar with present IQ tests to know whether or not they're accurate, but I believe that two qualities an accurate tests would have would be that (1) the questions would be as devoid as possible of references to any cultural knowledge, and (2) the score would be repeatable in that when someone took the test on different occasions, he would usually get about the same score.

In my view, and with the benefit of experience in having done many and varied official IQ tests, I would suggest that what they measure is an ability to do IQ tests.
I can be just a dumb as the next person.

Do you believe that people have different levels of intelligence, but that they will never be measurable, or that everyone has the same intelligence, or that no workable definition of intelligence is possible?

I think the whole thing about IQ tests is really barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps the one next to the right tree but nevertheless they're not quite right.
I mean after all I still can't work out why I end up going the wrong way around the M25 when I came off it and went half way around the roundabout and back down the other side only to find myself still travelling in the wrong direction !!!
But according to the testers I have an absurdly high IQ.
Your guess is as good as mine dude.

In any case I think the word intelligence is far too ambiguous.
I'll give you an example.
In some IQ tests there are puzzles with words in them that require you to have a large vocabulary, there are other puzzles that require you to know certain things.
These are only testing memory and learning.
Other tests measure only pure reasoning and require no special knowledge or skills other than the ability to see and make your answer known. A caveman can do them.
Pure reasoning skills are very narrow things indeed and depend upon how your mind works.
I am particularly good at visualisation, pattern recognition and transformation. I'm absolutely rubbish at working out which number/letter comes next though.

Personally I divide the questions into two groups. One group has those questions where it's possible for there to be multiple answers, all of which are reasoned out in their own special way and are totally self consistent but your answer might not be the answer the tester was looking for but it's an answer with just as much validity as any other but if you don't write down the specific one the tester is after you don't get the points.

The other group is purely dependent on your reasoning skills as a human and the answers are unambiguous. There really is only one way for the peg to fit in the hole.

I would suggest that the pure reasoning types are more valid in testing because they are not knowledge dependent and so are measuring more of the mind's inherent capacity for reasoning as opposed to any ability to recall information learned.

So what is it that you want to test ?
That's the important question.

There is a rough correlation between the IQ level and the general reasoning skills and abilities of the person but it's by no means a complete guide to intelligence.
It's akin to knowing that there's more space in a pitch black cave by dropping a rock through a hole in the roof and listening to the sound.
It leaves a vast amount untested. A vast amount.

I think you're just saying that present tests aren't accurate.

I don't think they should test acquired knowledge, and certainly not cultural knowledge. But since intelligence exists, it is not unreasonable to want to measure it. They might have to define it better first, though, and hopefully the definition would correlate with the general English meaning.

Subject: FW: Robotic Insight



A popular bar had a new robotic bartender installed. A fellow came in for a drink and the robot asked him, "What's your IQ?"
The man replied, "130."
So the robot proceeded to make conversation about physics, astronomy, investments, insurance, and so on.
The man listened intently and thought, "This is really cool."

Another gent came in for a drink and the robot asked him, "What's your IQ?"
The man responded, "100."
So the robot started talking about football, baseball, and so on.
The man thought to himself, "Wow, this is really cool."

A third guy came in to the bar. As with the others, the robot asked him,
"What's your IQ?" The man replied, "70."
The robot then said, "So, are you Democrats really going to nominate John Kerry?"