those free IQ tests - do you believe your results?

[nat whilk II]

I'm sorry but I'm not a genius. Everyone who knows me will verify this statement. I don't care what score I got on the free Tickle IQ test (140). I might have gotten lucky when I had to do a little guessing on a couple of questions.

 

But I'd rather save my good luck for some activity that pays off in $$.

 

So, is everyone else also way above average, too, on these tests?

 

nat whilk ii

[UstadKhanAli]

One should remember that an IQ test was originally designed to measure the likelihood of succeeding in an American school, and is not designed to measure "genius" or "intelligence".

 

Most of the free online tests are waaaaay too short to be truly comprehensive. In other words, it's too short to be truly accurate, and there can be too much variance to measure one's scholastic aptitude in the American school system with any true validity.

 

I hope this helps!!!!

[Spencer Crewe]

I really want to believe that I'm that smart. But at least I'm smart enough to realize that I'm not that smart......um.....yeah.

 

Cheers!

Spencer

[Branwyn]

www.thespark.com used to have an "IQ Test" that was actually a joke, but no one knew initially...it was reeeeeeeally long...long enough that when the questions started to repeat themselves, you didn't notice immediately...people like me who have brains but no common sense didn't notice for a while...so the longer you took it, the lower your score.

 

My score was very very low.

[Will Chen]

I don't believe intelligence can be judged by a simple number.

 

For example, your local mechanic might be a genius when it comes to engine design. That knowledge probably spilled over into general motor design and he can understand any appliance which uses an electric motor. Due to studying electric motors and car electrical wiring, he also learned basic circuit design and tinkers building them on the weekend. He learns by watching showing a natural aptitude to spatial relationships so wood working and simple furniture design comes naturally to him. With all his strengths he can't use a computer to save his life.

 

Conversely, you have a antivirus software designer who has an indepth understanding of computer networking and various computer languages. His career led him to build his own computer during which he picked up circuit design as a hobby. Additionally, his spatial understanding of databases led him into computer aided design where he enjoys virtual construction of concept cars, however he has no concept of how a motor runs.

 

Who is smarter?

 

Intelligence is striving to find an answer when none exists and finding the motivation to understand the unexplainable.

[UstadKhanAli]

wbcsound, that's quite accurate.

 

Just to add to that, educators generally agree that there are several different kinds of intelligences, some of which are quite different from what some consider to be "intelligence". So, for example, Spatial Intelligence is considered one kind of intelligence. Interpersonal, intrapersonal, kinesthetic, auditory, visual, etc. are other kinds. Obviously, some people can excel at several different kinds.

 

And you've probably noticed that you prefer to learn a certain way. Some people learn by rolling up their sleeves and just doing it, while others can book-learn something and be pretty darn knowledgeable, while others need to listen to it or see someone doing it....

[Metal|Boy]

I did the IQ test at the local institution for employing (I don't really know how you guys call that institution in english) and I got the 124. That was about a year ago, when I was 15. I did a few ~2 hours tests in about a week. I still remember what was the hardest part: Telling the 5-7 character long number backwards.

 

I did those test because I needed 129 IQ to get the Scholarship. I didn't get it at the end .

[nat whilk II]

Oh yeah, I agree - human mental abilities can't be reduced to a score on a single scale.

 

Personally I think the "knowing your IQ" is an illusion and can be something of a trap - I mean if you score high, then you're self-satisfied, if you score low you feel doomed to dumbness.

 

Still the IQ tests are testing something, and have some consistency, so I treat them like a puzzle or game of some sort.

 

I'm mainly wondering if the Tickle (and perhaps other) IQ tests are skewed to make you think you are smarter than you think you were, and therefore more likely to spend the money they ask for to take you to the next level of "special reports on your abilities" and further tests, etc.

 

Perhaps I'm just paranoid. But like I always say, just because people are out to get you is no reason to be paranoid!!

 

nat whilk ii

[phaeton]

As AfroKen says, the online tests are too short to be accurate- miffing a dozen questions can really affect your outcome...

 

As branwyn says, there are plenty of people with high intelligence but little common sense. That was very true of me as a child, but I'm noticing that as I get older i'm getting 'dumber' but more 'street smart'.

 

I'm not sure that I like this tradeoff, though.... In the 3rd grade I scored 167 on an IQ test. In the 6th grade I scored 146. Near the end of high school, in the depths of depression and anxiety i barely bent the scale at 125.

 

My psychologist explained to me how an IQ test isn't particularly a measurement of intelligence per se, but more how much of your intelligence you actually use. Someone who wasn't very gifted mentally but uses everything they've got can easily surpass someone who is smarter but more 'mentally lazy'. Furthermore, since I had no common sense she explained that stress, fatigue, illness and all these things can cause temporary stupidity and other effects.

 

The scarier part of it all was how she pointed out that being creative, smart and happy is a wonderful thing, and that society is going to do everything they can to beat that out of you the older you get.

[blue2blue]

I don't believe "real" IQ tests given by psychometric professionals over many hours in controlled conditions...

 

I should believe a 5 minute test given over the internet?

 

 

I was one of those lucky people who 'tests high' and was part of an experimental grouping of 'gifted students' back in the fifties. My college board tests were quite high (my best score was in the xx.xth percentile on the PSAT in '68) but I've never known my supposed IQ and don't particularly want to. [update... yeah, I x'd out the numbers... even though I'm saying they don't mean anything, it still looked like bragging to me]

 

Frankly, I sometimes wish I'd never known how high my other scores were.

 

But then, if I hadn't, I probably would have thought I was as dumb as the counselors at my high school tried to convince me I was.

 

I had a GPA of 3.85 and SAT's in [a high] percentile but they really tried to get me to co to a community college because I "wasn't ready" for a four year school. Dig it. [update, part 2: let's just say I could have gone where I wanted, pretty much, certainly any of the UC's.]

 

 

That said, the sort of skills that lead to those kind of test scores do not necessarily correlate to a successful, happy life. I've had plenty of my share of self-generated troubles and known lots of other smart but not necessarily fulfilled people.

 

It's not all a bunch of hooey -- but those who put much weight at all on a number or two that is supposed to sum up their entire set of capabilities are fooling themselves -- and quite possibly setting themselves up for some very crushing disappointments.

[phaeton]

(as always)...

 

Well said, blue...

 

That said, i think i saw a picture of you once, and if it was current you must be very well 'preserved' for your age.

 

No test will tell us what we'll look like when we get old

[blackpig]

I have a good friend who I don't see very often nowadays...he lives in England now and visits home rarely. He played guitar on a band with me when we were teenagers and I've always had immense respect for the man both as a musician and a friend. He was a very rare and fine guitarist (I use the term "was" loosely - he doesn't play anymore but that's a personal decision that is his alone). He has a creative aura about him that touches all of those that surround him and leaves you feeling good about yerself. An inspiring bloke indeed. This man confided to me one day that he had an iq measured at 75. All this talk of iq and stuff leaves me cold.

[blue2blue]

Originally posted by phaeton (as always)... Well said, blue... That said, i think i saw a picture of you once, and if it was current you must be very well 'preserved' for your age. No test will tell us what we'll look like when we get old

 

Well, I'm not as young as I used to be. Lately I've let my beard grow out and I'm shocked that it's about 85% gray, now. Last time I had a beard, back in my thirties (I grew it to give my self some gravitas, which, oddly, seemed to work, at least as far as folks' perceptions) it was about the inverse.

 

At [mumbles age], I feel like I'm still trying to create my master work (trying to reference the old guild/professional system, here) at the same time I'm trying to get my things in order for, heh, posterity... Somehow, I just seemed to miss the growing up phase and now I'm already on the back side of the mountain and headed to the valley... er, not to mix metaphors.

 

BTW, sorry about the mess I made of my post, above, x-ing things out. I actually came back to just delete the damn thing (sometimes I get the weird idea its okay to talk about stuff your folks tell you not to talk about for good reasons... but I usually come to my senses). Anyhow, I think you can still get the sense of it. Now, I'm just worried that folks will think what I x-ed out was ridiculously high.

 

Let's just say that it had the potential to make me one of the highest testing people at my 1000 person suburban high school. But my classmates became cancer researchers and chemistry professors and bigtime lawyers (and those were just my hippy/underground pals) and I became... me. So there ya go...

 

 

Did I mention the backside of the mountain seems to be something of a slippery slope?

 

[UstadKhanAli]

Originally posted by phaeton As AfroKen says, the online tests are too short to be accurate- miffing a dozen questions can really affect your outcome... My psychologist explained to me how an IQ test isn't particularly a measurement of intelligence per se, but more how much of your intelligence you actually use .

 

 

I really want to emphasize here that Stanford and Binet designed the IQ test as a predictor of future performance in the American school system. Not any other school system. The American school system. And as a predictor of future performance in the American school system, the test is actually quite accurate. It was not designed to do anything but this.

 

Despite the name, in no way does this test measure intelligence.

 

Of any kind.

~~~~~~~~~

As far as the length of the Stanford-Binet IQ test goes, it lasts quite a long time, as many of you who grew up in the U.S. in the '70s know, since you likely took the test in 3rd Grade. Why did you take the test in school? Because it was an accurate predictor of future performance.

 

And if you remember back to those Dazed and Confused times, you might remember that it was quite long. In fact,it lasted several hours and had many questions. If you study statistics, you'll know that the more information (questions), the more accurate of a measurement you'll get. 30, 40, 50 questions or however much these online tests are will not get any meaningful results.

 

BTW, One of my psychology professors used to snidely refer to it as the WASP Test of Future Educational Performance, in reference to its cultural bias, one of the main reasons that it was abandoned in schools (there's other reasons, too, but I don't want to sit here writing a giant book when a lot of you are probably glazing over or downright skipping this post anyway! ).

[phaeton]

I'm not glazing nor skipping!

[UstadKhanAli]

Originally posted by nat whilk II Personally I think the "knowing your IQ" is an illusion and can be something of a trap - I mean if you score high, then you're self-satisfied, if you score low you feel doomed to dumbness. Still the IQ tests are testing something, and have some consistency, so I treat them like a puzzle or game of some sort.

 

The test can be quite stigmatizing, and was discontinued in schools quite some time ago. That was one of several reasons why it was discontinued (other reasons include cultural bias, a complex issue here, and over-reliance on its usage on class placement, and other issues pertaining to sp. educ. students).

 

I'm willing to bet that each one of you knows someone who was tested for a low IQ score but succeeded wildly in a certain field. Maybe you know several. And that's because the test isn't testing intelligence at all. As someone else pointed out, there's different kinds of intelligences.

 

And, too, if you were to administer the IQ test to, say, a bushman in the Kalahari, the person would of course flunk. The test would be virtually meaningless to a bushman. But if a bushman were to devise a test for me based on what they consider crucial knowledge and wisdom, I would of course flunk.

 

Which one of us is more intelligent?

 

Well, we'll never know because the IQ test doesn't measure that. And quite frankly, who cares?

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Treating them like a puzzle or game is probably one of the better things you could do with it.

 

When I was an undergrad student (I have a four-year degree in Psychology), we got a hold of the Stanford-Binet tests and took them just for fun, also trying to administer them to each other correctly and check for biases and such. And that's how we treated it - pretty much as a challenge, as a puzzle or game.

[Hanshananigan]

 

Originally posted by UstadKhanAli The test can be quite stigmatizing, and was discontinued in schools quite some time ago. That was one of several reasons why it was discontinued (other reasons include cultural bias, a complex issue here, and over-reliance on its usage on class placement, and other issues pertaining to sp. educ. students).

 

 

IQ tests actually are still used in schools, primarily to test for mental retardation or to test brighter students into advanced classes. I'm not sure what the current administration (really, a state by state thing) attitude is, but I think most feel that variations in scores for those outside of MR (

 

Concerning bias, it still is a tricky business. The Weschler tests (the most popular) have been demonstrated to have very little bias for folks born in the US, regardless of race, urban/rural status, SES, etc.

 

Concerning the cultural basis for "intelligence," the same domains that are part of the "g factor" appear to be measurable in all cultures. However, as Robert Sternberg and others have demonstrated, the way these are measured is critical to determining how folks do on them. He speaks of intelligence more in terms of one's ability to navigate and succeed in one's environment. Some of his studies were very interesting, such as demonstrating that many housewives who do poorly on standard arithmetic tests have amazing capabilities to figure out pricing in stores, such as price after sale reduction or price/oz (no joke! this was years ago when it wasn't as sexist to think that women do most of the household shopping!).

 

Other biases are important to consider. For example, differences in "culture" between administrator and testee can influence performance.

 

There is certainly a correlation between IQ and performance in school. However, an interesting study revealed an important problem with early IQ testing. Investigators gave true or false feedback to teachers concerning the abilities of their students. In a nutshell, the students who were supposedly "gifted" and had potential for higher education ended up getting higher grades than those "slower" students, regardless of actual ability. Apparently, the teachers unwittingly were stroking the "gifted" students which resulted in better performance!

 

Although a "g factor" has been identified, it's usefulness is still hotly debated. I administer several tests a week, but use the individual tests or indices to determine impairment in certain areas, such as attention, processing speed, the abiltiy to shift sets, immediate/delayed memory, spatial perception, construction abilities, etc. Very useful for stroke, TBI patients, and other folks with brain disease/injury/etc.

 

Very complex area this whole IQ thing. On the net, I think it's trying to get you to click on something that might get you interested in buying something....very slick.

[Phil O'Keefe]

Personally I think the "knowing your IQ" is an illusion and can be something of a trap - I mean if you score high, then you're self-satisfied, if you score low you feel doomed to dumbness.

 

I don't think a high score and 'self-satisfaction" have to always go hand in hand. Sometimes a high IQ score can be a hinderance. Let me attempt to explain that...

 

I scored embarrassingly high on IQ tests. I don't think that I'm dim, or that they were not accurate assessments of my ability to learn or think, but those scores were a bit of a handicap in some respects too. For example, higher expectations are placed on children with high IQ test scores, and just because you score high on such tests doesn't mean that everything comes easily for you. Additionally, you wind up getting the "you're so smart you can do whatever you want to in life" attitude thrust upon you quite frequently, and that in itself can be a bit limiting insofar as "option paralysis" is concerned. After all, if you're constantly told you can do whatever you want to do, how do you decide upon one particular path without feeling that you may have made a "wrong choice" insofar as your life's pursuits?

 

I think there are some uses for IQ tests, but there are biases and problems with them, and some things that should be tested are not. IOW, I think too much emphasis can be placed on the results, and there is a danger of children being "pigeonholed" by the results.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Originally posted by Hanshananigan IQ tests actually are still used in schools, primarily to test for mental retardation or to test brighter students into advanced classes.

 

 

At which school (or state)? I've been told time and time again by my professors that I had in grad school (I have a Master's Degree in Special Education) and by my administrators that IQ tests are not used anymore, *especially* for the developmentally disabled. I've been informed by quite a few people that they were discontinued because too many people were using them solely for placement, and that they were culturally biased.

 

I've been working as a special education teacher for ten and a half years, and have sat in on hundreds of IEPs, and I've never once seen a psychological evaluation or an IEP with IQ scores.

 

I'm in the state of California.

 

Are other states different? I'd love to know, just for my own knowledge. I'd honestly be shocked if this were used much at all by any state.

 

Thanks.

[Hanshananigan]

I'll be honest, Ken- I'm not directly involved with services for kids. I found a couple links from the AAMR and Virginia state about defining MR at least partially on IQ, though. I'm sure (like with most things) CA is different!:

 

American Assoc on Mental Retardation

http://www.aamr.org/Policies/faq_mental_retardation.shtml

 

VA General Assembly's Virginia Commission on Youth

http://coy.state.va.us/Modalities/retardation.htm

 

You probably know this, Ken, but for anyone else who might be interested: I'll add that the difference between an IQ of 100 (avg) and 69 (MR) isn't the same as the difference between those scores on a regular test. They are standardized scores per age, so:

 

IQ=100 50% score higher

IQ=90 75% score higher

IQ=80 91% score higher

IQ=70 98% score higher

 

Although this appears to suggest that if you look around, 2 of 100 people you see will be MR. Not true, in that these numbers include the profoundly MR folks who never make it to regular school and are not normally walking among us on the streets. Concerning bias, to see an individual with an IQ of under 70 is quite striking- it is hard to imagine a bias that would be so powerful that it would knock a child down 20, 10, or even 5%tiles. I understand that evals (for school placement, institutionalization, or legal competence) take other factors into account as well, such as functional adjustment to one's environment.

 

Ken, I'd be very interested in how kids would get tracked into MR or LD classes in your district. Is it possible to outline them here?

[2180]

It's a nice feeling to think you have a superior mind, but it all comes down to what you produce for the betterment of the world. You could crunch numbers all day long and never invent a better mouse-trap.

 

When I was a teenager trying to get to sleep, I would multiply as many numerals as I could or write symphony's in my head. That, doesn't make me a genius, the thing that makes you a genius is the one thing that no-one else has thought-of.

 

Kinda like inventing a new science, or something like that - maybe even nitro-glycerin or something to the affect of making the world a slightly different place.

 

We tread down the weary path of human existence, always knowing that we must come to an end someday, but we can somehow make the death of our bodies imortal by inventing something we "think" is good and for the world.

 

So, we create ideas or material objects(like mental objects) to make ourselves less at odds with the actual insignificant manifestation of our physical being, that we cannot have objective reason with.

 

Most of the High IQ people I've come to meet, are pretty much insane, constantly creating a world in their mind that doesn't really exist, so - you probably ain't that much of a genius, unless of course, you are NUTS.

[amplayer]

I took the same online test, and I scored very high. However, I'd say it was a measure of knowledge. It was NOT a measure of how smart I am or how well I can learn and comprehend new subjects. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, so I obviously didn't struggle with the arithmetic and logic questions, and that made my score much higher than it would have been before I went to college.

[DmitryKo]

I agree with amplayer. I took a Emode (aka Tickle) test and received an unusually high score (considering English in not my native language). Then I bought a book of more thorough IQ tests, this time translated (poorly) and scored substantially lower for the first time. But when I took some more tests and read the explanations, my score rised again (although not up to Emode level). And if I weren't taught lots of math in college, I wouldn't score that high. Not that studying function analysis and differential equations is of any help here, but at least I had learned arithmetics in process... he he. And knowing formal logic helped a lot as well.

 

 

IQ tests are maybe good for estimating your school potential, considering that many children who have no interest in learning are not retarded in any way. That's what they were designed for. A score of 130 just means you've answered more questions than 90% of the people who took similar (or the same) test. Nice to know, but making broad consumptions based on anyone's IQ score is silly, and especially so for adults.

[GuitarPLayer61990]

I had a 130 and I'm 15...however, I really am not a dumbass. I'm excellent with math, and english, I just am very lazy. So who knows? Id like to take a real test soon though.

[2180]

I had posted the "Tickle" IQ test for Craigs forum at the other place and I think it topped-out @ 140, then they wanted you to spend some cash for a more complex test. I think almost everyone that took the test got in the 130's and I think that Mensa wants 150 for a high IQ membership.

 

Actual genius is very rare, if you were to have an 180 IQ, you would be 1 person in 4 million. I've also read somewhere that genius is the most uncommon human phenomenom. Even more sparse than stuff like people with two heads and such weirdness, be glad you are normal.