And by professional I mean a live test preferably under the supervision of psychologist trained in IQ testing and not some online questionnaire that takes 5 minutes to fill in. My parents had me take a WISC-III together with some complementary tests and I was wondering if someone else on GAF has ever done the same? If so, how did you react to getting a score put on your 'intelligence'? Was it helpful to you? Would you rather have not taken it all?
I never put too much weight into knowing my score. It doesn't garantee you'll be succesful and you still have to work pretty hard to achieve things in life. Knowing you have a higher score than someone else doesn't make you a better person also, there's plenty of stuff I'm not good at where my friends are skilled at. I'm just a bit better at studying and grasping abstract concepts faster. Never felt the need to try to join Mensa or some other society, I just don't know how it could make my life better and it always felt a bit elitarian in my view.
People should know that IQ is a normalised test score, too. It's a rank based on how you compare to the population, with 100 defined as the average and a standard deviation of 15, meaning that 2/3rds of the people fall between 85 and 115. 130 means you perform better than 98% of the population and 145 is already close at the 99.9% mark. Even the best tests have a hard time putting a correct score on you above that and are capped at 160 anyway (some even at 145). One question can determine if you have 155 or 158 for example, and that's why professional test result discussions always give a range with a certainty rating. All these scores above 160 you see online for these scientists or celebrities is a bit bullshit, it's mostly done by taking into account the performances they had, guessing out of how many people this would be exceptional and converting that into a score. But there's hardly any normalisation possible and the error ranges are large. Thus comparing scores is only useful if you compare the broad ranges. 132 against 107 has some significance, and 149 against 132 too. But whether you have 108 or 115 doesn't really matter, as a retaking of the test could give you the one or the other.
I don't want this to turn into a score or brag thread, but I never found a thread on GAF discussing IQ and was just generally curious towards how people deal with scores such as IQ. For those who took the test, what was the reason for taking it?
I never put too much weight into knowing my score. It doesn't garantee you'll be succesful and you still have to work pretty hard to achieve things in life. Knowing you have a higher score than someone else doesn't make you a better person also, there's plenty of stuff I'm not good at where my friends are skilled at. I'm just a bit better at studying and grasping abstract concepts faster. Never felt the need to try to join Mensa or some other society, I just don't know how it could make my life better and it always felt a bit elitarian in my view.
People should know that IQ is a normalised test score, too. It's a rank based on how you compare to the population, with 100 defined as the average and a standard deviation of 15, meaning that 2/3rds of the people fall between 85 and 115. 130 means you perform better than 98% of the population and 145 is already close at the 99.9% mark. Even the best tests have a hard time putting a correct score on you above that and are capped at 160 anyway (some even at 145). One question can determine if you have 155 or 158 for example, and that's why professional test result discussions always give a range with a certainty rating. All these scores above 160 you see online for these scientists or celebrities is a bit bullshit, it's mostly done by taking into account the performances they had, guessing out of how many people this would be exceptional and converting that into a score. But there's hardly any normalisation possible and the error ranges are large. Thus comparing scores is only useful if you compare the broad ranges. 132 against 107 has some significance, and 149 against 132 too. But whether you have 108 or 115 doesn't really matter, as a retaking of the test could give you the one or the other.
I don't want this to turn into a score or brag thread, but I never found a thread on GAF discussing IQ and was just generally curious towards how people deal with scores such as IQ. For those who took the test, what was the reason for taking it?
