How smart is average?
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> That means for every engineer with an IQ of 135, there is a developmentally disabled person with an IQ of 65. I don't see a lot of either walking around. I encounter plenty of people with IQs of 135, in programming and physics (occupationally), law (a former SO was a law professor who once told me "you're pretty smart, and you're not even a lawyer"), and Mensa (132 on Stanford-Binet, which has an SD of 16, is the minimal requirement for entry). > That means that an Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein with an IQ of 200+ comes along once or twice in 100 years over the whole world, Not really. I know two brothers, both of whom have IQs over 200. One scored in the top 100 on the Putnam exam and got his PhD in algebraic topology from UCLA when he was 23. Through him I met a fellow who scored in the top 10 on the Putnam. IQ tests are child's play for people at that level. Mathematician Terence Tao and physicist Chris Herata purportly have IQs over 220, and Guinness listed Korean engineer Kim Ung Yong at 210 and Marilyn vos Savant at 228 (they no longer have a highest IQ category because of unreliability at those levels). Oh, and Einstein, while of course brilliant and deeply insightful, is estimated to have had an IQ about the same as Stephen Hawking's -- 160. IQ measures something, but it isn't the thing folks like that have. > so the poster who thinks his IQ is 200 has much to prove. Yeah, internal evidence strongly indicates that he's lying. It's particularly amusing that he claims that he missed the Mensa entrance by 1 point (despite other people claiming that Mensa scores are inflated by 20% so as to qualify more people and thus make more money -- bwahahah) because his multiplication and division were rusty, and making the age old excuse of people who fail odd-one-out tests that the correct answers are chosen arbitrarily.
Member 12023988 wrote:
because his multiplication and division were rusty
More to the point, anyone with an IQ in the 180 range would not have to remember or even be taught how to do multiplication and division. Someone on that level would be able to quickly derive methods for doing so on the spot, easily.
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Meh, I've taken plenty of IQ tests, both official and online... They all put me in the 185-200 range... Except when I was really bored and decided to join Mensa... I took their admission test (Didn't have any of the paperwork from the few of those IQ tests that were "official"), and missed qualifying by one point. (In my defense, their "Which of these things is not like the other?" questions were really "Which of the several obvious answers to this is the one we decided is correct?", and I lost time on the math section because I hadn't done long multiplication/division by hand in years) So to summarize, I'm pretty sure all intelligence testing is complete crap... And to summarize the summary of the summary, as DNA said, people are the problem.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in?
Author of the Guardians Saga (Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels)Not on a professionally supervised Stanford-Binet or Weschler you didn't. Just because a thing (on-line thing, yes?) says "IQ Test" don't mean didley-squat. A couple points: (a) Professionally valid IQ tests are increasingly unreliable above 150. But getting a score over 150 means that you are really, really smart. (b) The IQ scores you boast of above are higher than Gary Kasparov, Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein. Anyone scoring that high will cause a local ripple and people would want to talk to you, and re-test you (the "unreliabilty" thing) So, to summarize, I think I will discount your opinion of IQ testing, because it seems pretty obvious that you have never (other than Mensa) been "properly" tested. Good to know that you are on the A-Ark :) (at least, they told you it was the A-Ark, right? But the guys who told you it was the A-Ark, they aren't on board are they?)
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> The score required is probably very different now Um, no. The qualification is and was 2 standard deviations above the mean, which is a score of 132 on the Stanford-Binet. What has changed is the questions and the scoring, which are modified over time to keep the mean at 100. That implies that the tests have gotten harder, because IQs are rising (the Flynn Effect). As for what IQ means aside from being a normalized score on an IQ test ... numerous studies show correlations between IQ scores and various other attributes, such as SAT scores, income, wealth, and so on.
Member 12023988 wrote:
numerous studies show correlations between IQ scores and various other attributes, such as SAT scores, income, wealth
... but average people don't know that :)
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It would be smart to think about what sort of answer you can expect to that question, and why you would or wouldn't accept the answer as factual. For instance, if I made some claim about the ability of people with 100 IQs to program in C#, how could I possibly prove it, and why would you choose to believe it ... other than being predisposed to doing so. BTW, the people making claims about Mensa and its tests are lying. The person claiming to score 185-200 on "official" tests has never done any such thing if he failed to qualify on a Mensa test, which has a much lower standard (132). Mensa test scores are most certainly are not inflated by 20% ... Mensa administers standardized Stanford-Binet and Weschler tests, using trained proctors, but also accepts proper documentation of results on other tests. The "Which of these things is not like the other?" questions do not have arbitrary answers ... that is a common excuse of people who fail, but there is an objectively right answer, with an explanation that most people accept when it is pointed out to them. And really, "I lost time on the math section because I hadn't done long multiplication/division by hand in years"? There's no division on these tests that even a halfwit can't do in their heads, and even if there were such problems, manual multiplication and division are trivial rote procedures that high IQ brains don't forget. People with 200 IQs can visualize in multiple dimensions; they don't struggle with arithmetic. If this person scored 200 on "official" tests, how did he manage that with such poor skills, and why did he do so much worse on a test that purportedly has scores inflated by 20%? These are the sorts of obvious questions that people with average IQs don't bother to ask. And no one in Mensa ever talks about their test scores, in part because they're smart enough to realize that they are likely to end up on the wrong end of the comparison. The chatter about bragging rights and Mensa wanting your money is sour grapes and largely downright stupid ... if Mensa were inflating scores in order to get more members to make more money, they would do away with the entry requirements altogether. And again, Mensa uses standardized proctored tests, the same ones used by psychologists. No, sorry, this is just the common phenomenon of random not terribly bright people lying on the internet.
Well, 12023988, there is a lot of dross in this thread. I am sure I have seen "average IQ" people coding C# (and other languages). No, it wasn't pretty, but they were paid to do it. Y'see, there are an awful lot of "average" people in Management, making the hiring decisions. I recall one case (obviously a "diversity" hire) where I rewrote a program of hers. This was a positive mentoring exercise. No pressure, lead by example etc. We went over the two versions of code. To be honest, you people have NO idea how bad her code was. The problem was, neither did she. Even after the mentoring session, she still had no idea. She was at that company for just over a year, and job-hopped over to another company - pay rise and promotion included.
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My experience is that intelligence is wide spread. Some who are good in logic and mathematics, are really bad in art, sports or craftmanship. I dont like people who got an attest about 130++ and think other people are stupid. X|
Press F1 for help or google it. Greetings from Germany
IQ testing (professionally supervised tests) are PREDICTIVE. Any given set of high-IQ people will have better life-time outcomes in all sorts of areas (health, wealth, longevity among others). Their outcomes will be rather better than any given set of "average" people. Their outcomes will be immensely better than any given set of very low IQ people. There are NO tests for art, craftsmanship or sport that are predictive. None. Except for IQ tests of course :) (Forget physical tests you morons - of course you it helps to be to be tall to play Basketball, and to have two legs to play football).
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My experience is that intelligence is wide spread. Some who are good in logic and mathematics, are really bad in art, sports or craftmanship. I dont like people who got an attest about 130++ and think other people are stupid. X|
Press F1 for help or google it. Greetings from Germany
IQ testing (professionally supervised tests) are PREDICTIVE. Any given set of high-IQ people will have better life-time outcomes in all sorts of areas (health, wealth, longevity among others). Their outcomes will be rather better than any given set of "average" people. Their outcomes will be immensely better than any given set of very low IQ people. There are NO tests for art, craftsmanship or sport that are predictive. None. Except for IQ tests of course :) (Forget physical tests you morons - of course you it helps to be to be tall to play Basketball, and to have two legs to play football).
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IQ testing (professionally supervised tests) are PREDICTIVE. Any given set of high-IQ people will have better life-time outcomes in all sorts of areas (health, wealth, longevity among others). Their outcomes will be rather better than any given set of "average" people. Their outcomes will be immensely better than any given set of very low IQ people. There are NO tests for art, craftsmanship or sport that are predictive. None. Except for IQ tests of course :) (Forget physical tests you morons - of course you it helps to be to be tall to play Basketball, and to have two legs to play football).
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Not so smart of me :)
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Not so smart of me :)
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> Nobody knows, so what they do is give the test to a whole lot of people, and then by looking at the "average" of the number of correct answers, that determines what gets assigned as "100." You didn't understand the question. > Of course, that average has undoubtedly been going down as technology and our education systems dumb down people. Smart people know better than to mistake their beliefs for facts, and they certainly know better than to have no doubt about those beliefs. As it turns out, you are incorrect, and it has been necessary to make IQ tests harder over the years in order to keep the mean at 100: Flynn effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[^]
Flynn effect - quite true. It may be an artefact of generally increasing childhood health, nutrition etc. When the greatest proportion of "the population" (choose yours) has roughly the same conditions as the previous generation, the Flynn Effect will become very interesting.
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OK, so 100 is the average intelligence. Without really thinking about it, one kind of assumes that average is... well, you know - meh, average. Not smart, not stupid, just... average. But actually, has anyone done any studies to really get a handle on just what average intelligence amounts to? (Other than answering IQ tests...) 'cos I think it's probably pretty damned stupid. I'm asking this in all seriousness - not trying to have a rant. What **is** average intelligence - just how smart (or dumb) is someone with an IQ of 100? For example - how would such people fare in: applications to an average university a course to become an airline pilot learning to program in C# studying law running for public office (ha ha just joking with that one!) ..this sort of thing... [edit] just to be clear: I am not looking for a scientifically rigorous answer - the question doesn't have one, I know that. Just.. as the title says: how smart is average?
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart." - Linus van Pelt. "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't think you were so smart!" - Charlie Brown.
Wombat: (a) IQ score determines individual success pretty much in proportion to the prevailing level of meritocracy. (b) Ie, rigidly structured societies heavily dampen IQ sorting. In history we can often find the top strata of some societies infested with complete maroons. (c) Wombats have square poop. I have one that often browses through my back yard, leaving scat.
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Not on a professionally supervised Stanford-Binet or Weschler you didn't. Just because a thing (on-line thing, yes?) says "IQ Test" don't mean didley-squat. A couple points: (a) Professionally valid IQ tests are increasingly unreliable above 150. But getting a score over 150 means that you are really, really smart. (b) The IQ scores you boast of above are higher than Gary Kasparov, Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein. Anyone scoring that high will cause a local ripple and people would want to talk to you, and re-test you (the "unreliabilty" thing) So, to summarize, I think I will discount your opinion of IQ testing, because it seems pretty obvious that you have never (other than Mensa) been "properly" tested. Good to know that you are on the A-Ark :) (at least, they told you it was the A-Ark, right? But the guys who told you it was the A-Ark, they aren't on board are they?)
Robert g Blair wrote:
Not on a professionally supervised Stanford-Binet or Weschler you didn't.
I don't know them by name, but there was definitely one "professionally supervised" one ~30 years ago... And without going into detail (Real name, public forum, etc), there were significant effects. Life-changing, even.
Robert g Blair wrote:
The IQ scores you boast of above are higher than Gary Kasparov, Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein.
Which is exactly why I think the entire concept is garbage. Either I have as much potential as them, and just haven't been motivated to reach it, or the measurement itself is flawed. I would assume the latter.
Robert g Blair wrote:
Good to know that you are on the A-Ark :) (at least, they told you it was the A-Ark, right? But the guys who told you it was the A-Ark, they aren't on board are they?)
Pfft, there IS no A-Ark... That's just what we told those fools on the B-Ark... Hold on, my telephone is ringing... Someone should really clean this thing... X|
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in?
Author of the Guardians Saga (Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels) -
Robert g Blair wrote:
Not on a professionally supervised Stanford-Binet or Weschler you didn't.
I don't know them by name, but there was definitely one "professionally supervised" one ~30 years ago... And without going into detail (Real name, public forum, etc), there were significant effects. Life-changing, even.
Robert g Blair wrote:
The IQ scores you boast of above are higher than Gary Kasparov, Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein.
Which is exactly why I think the entire concept is garbage. Either I have as much potential as them, and just haven't been motivated to reach it, or the measurement itself is flawed. I would assume the latter.
Robert g Blair wrote:
Good to know that you are on the A-Ark :) (at least, they told you it was the A-Ark, right? But the guys who told you it was the A-Ark, they aren't on board are they?)
Pfft, there IS no A-Ark... That's just what we told those fools on the B-Ark... Hold on, my telephone is ringing... Someone should really clean this thing... X|
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in?
Author of the Guardians Saga (Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels)Sure Ian. Can I just get this straight: You scored 185 or 200 on a professionally supervised IQ test. But you failed a Mensa test (passing grade = 132). Because "
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Which of these things is not like the other?" questions were really "Which of the several obvious answers to this is the one we decided is correct?", and I lost time on the math section because I hadn't done long multiplication/division by hand in years
To people who are familiar with IQ testing Ian, those excuses are quite funny. Both of them reveal an inability to understand the concepts. False negatives, ie, scoring lower than you can, (deliberate, language problems, illness etc) are quite possible on those tests. It happens sometimes. False positives, ie, scoring higher than you should, has only ever been achieved by cheating. And usually requires collusion with the test proctor. EDIT: Just thinking about my own experience, I have toned this post down a bit. It is quite possible you tested low at Mensa because of illness, or after-effects of something (I don't want to say drugs or anything). I had the experience, for several years, of being "dumb" - due to illness. When I look back at the (not so good) code I wrote back then I can remember how "hard" everything seemed to be. Still, I did manage to complete a couple projects in a reasonable manner. So maybe "average" people can cut code ...
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Sure Ian. Can I just get this straight: You scored 185 or 200 on a professionally supervised IQ test. But you failed a Mensa test (passing grade = 132). Because "
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Which of these things is not like the other?" questions were really "Which of the several obvious answers to this is the one we decided is correct?", and I lost time on the math section because I hadn't done long multiplication/division by hand in years
To people who are familiar with IQ testing Ian, those excuses are quite funny. Both of them reveal an inability to understand the concepts. False negatives, ie, scoring lower than you can, (deliberate, language problems, illness etc) are quite possible on those tests. It happens sometimes. False positives, ie, scoring higher than you should, has only ever been achieved by cheating. And usually requires collusion with the test proctor. EDIT: Just thinking about my own experience, I have toned this post down a bit. It is quite possible you tested low at Mensa because of illness, or after-effects of something (I don't want to say drugs or anything). I had the experience, for several years, of being "dumb" - due to illness. When I look back at the (not so good) code I wrote back then I can remember how "hard" everything seemed to be. Still, I did manage to complete a couple projects in a reasonable manner. So maybe "average" people can cut code ...
Robert g Blair wrote:
To people who are familiar with IQ testing Ian, those excuses are quite funny. Both of them reveal an inability to understand the concepts.
An inability to understand the concepts... When they show five line drawings, ask the old "Which of these things is not like the other", and there are several things that exactly four of them have in common, it becomes a game of "Read the test designer's mind". As for the long division... My own fault, I suppose... Too much time relying on computers and calculators, so I had to re-teach myself the basics.
Robert g Blair wrote:
False negatives, ie, scoring lower than you can, (deliberate, language problems, illness etc) are quite possible on those tests. It happens sometimes.
I was getting over a cold at the time, but I wouldn't use that as an excuse... If I felt too sick to take the test, I would have postponed it.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in?
Author of the Guardians Saga (Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels) -
OK, so 100 is the average intelligence. Without really thinking about it, one kind of assumes that average is... well, you know - meh, average. Not smart, not stupid, just... average. But actually, has anyone done any studies to really get a handle on just what average intelligence amounts to? (Other than answering IQ tests...) 'cos I think it's probably pretty damned stupid. I'm asking this in all seriousness - not trying to have a rant. What **is** average intelligence - just how smart (or dumb) is someone with an IQ of 100? For example - how would such people fare in: applications to an average university a course to become an airline pilot learning to program in C# studying law running for public office (ha ha just joking with that one!) ..this sort of thing... [edit] just to be clear: I am not looking for a scientifically rigorous answer - the question doesn't have one, I know that. Just.. as the title says: how smart is average?
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart." - Linus van Pelt. "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't think you were so smart!" - Charlie Brown.
It's actually quite an important question - as "dumb" jobs get automated the entry level for having a real job gets higher. That means that a growing number of people must be unable to find work. So their lives can - to them - lack validation. If I were one of them I would get angry. So when a person of average intelligence can't find something meaningful to do, all hell might break loose. Needs a better brain than mine to re-engineer society.
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Member 12023988 wrote:
because his multiplication and division were rusty
More to the point, anyone with an IQ in the 180 range would not have to remember or even be taught how to do multiplication and division. Someone on that level would be able to quickly derive methods for doing so on the spot, easily.
Well, that's not "more to the point", because it's not me who was explaining why he failed the test questions, I was simply quoting his explanation. As I said, his moronic and dishonest explanation that his multiplication and division were "rusty" was "particularly amusing". As I wrote elsewhere,
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There's no division on these tests that even a halfwit can't do in their heads, and even if there were such problems, manual multiplication and division are trivial rote procedures that high IQ brains don't forget. People with 200 IQs can visualize in multiple dimensions; they don't struggle with arithmetic. If this person scored 200 on "official" tests, how did he manage that with such poor skills, and why did he do so much worse on a test that purportedly has scores inflated by 20%? These are the sorts of obvious questions that people with average IQs don't bother to ask.