When I was a child, I was leafing through Parade when I came across "Ask Marilyn" and read about her having the "world's highest IQ."
Several Sundays later when I'd gotten the gist of the whole thing, I asked my mother: "but what does she do?" I was totally and utterly perplexed. Here was a woman smarter than Einstein and Hawking squandering away her intelligence on such downright silly matters. You don't need an IQ of 230 to write a newspaper column... you just don't.
It pissed me off then, but I never gave it much attention... Since then I've left the States and totally cast her out of mind. But when the topic comes up, I just shrug and guess that this is God's way of showing us that you don't need to be the world's most intelligent in order to accomplish something, because sometimes the biggest "geniuses" amongst us are the biggest idiots in reality.
An IQ like that applied to literally anything under the sun other than a newspaper column could yield huge benefits to humanity. It doesn't matter what - anything she likes. History, psychology, chemistry, physics, math, computers, English, philosophy, anything.
But she didn't. And that pisses me off like crazy. Because I don't have her IQ but I work day and night hoping to make this world a better place.... and there she is, showing off her IQ as if at the World Fair to make petty gains as a household celebrity, a freak of nature rather than one of the luckiest people on the planet.
I don't think it's anything so serious as God's way of showing us anything. IQ tests don't measure intelligence perfectly, especially at the higher ranges. If millions of people take IQ tests, there will be a few who are super-good at whatever they do measure. Occam's razor says she is one of them.
I remember taking an official IQ test in 5th or 6th grade. One of the questions was how many feet there were in a mile. I kid you not. It happened that I was a runner, so I knew a lap around the track was 440 yards. 440 x 4 = 1760, 1760 x 3 = 5280. But even at the time I remember thinking, how could intelligence possibly depend on that kind of random domain knowledge?
IQ tests don't measure intelligence perfectly, especially at the higher ranges.
I would not use the word "measure" at all, but rather the word "estimate," for theoretical reasons mentioned by psychologist Joel Michell. It is well known that reliability of IQ tests is at its worst at the highest level of IQ scores. The author of the test that Marilyn vos Savant took was among the first to say so:
"The reader should not lose sight of the fact that a test with even a high reliability yields scores which have an appreciable probable error. The probable error in terms of mental age is of course larger with older than with young children because of the increasing spread of mental age as we go from younger to older groups. For this reason it has been customary to express the P.E. [probable error] of a Binet score in terms of I.Q., since the spread of Binet I.Q.'s is fairly constant from age to age. However, when our correlation arrays [between Form L and Form M] were plotted for separate age groups they were all discovered to be distinctly fan-shaped. Figure 3 [not shown here on HN, alas] is typical of the arrays at every age level.
"From Figure 3 it becomes clear that the probable error of an I.Q. score is not a constant amount, but a variable which increases as I.Q. increases. It has frequently been noted in the literature that gifted subjects show greater I.Q. fluctuation than do clinical cases with low I.Q.'s . . . . we now see that this trend is inherent in the I.Q. technique itself, and might have been predicted on logical grounds." (Terman & Merrill, 1937, p. 44)
IMHO, the word measure seems more appropriate. Your IQ is just a number that measures how many questions you got right on an IQ test with the number of questions the median person got right. It's an exact number, not an estimate.
As for what this means, it's neither a measure or an estimate. It just is. It might correlate with some stuff, but it doesn't seem appropriate to use either 'measure' or 'estimate' to describe any such relationships.
Your IQ is just a number that measures how many questions you got right on an IQ test with the number of questions the median person got right. It's an exact number, not an estimate.
No, the IQ test result purports to say something about the test-taker's "intelligence," that is about how the test-taker would perform doing other tasks on a different occasion. And that is why every IQ test result is best described as an estimate. The longer answer about why most mental test results are best not described as measurements has to do with the technical meaning of "measurement" as it has developed in sciences preceding psychology, and that answer is given very nuanced discussion in Joel Michell's book Measurement in Psychology
P.S. IQ test scores typically do NOT describe in any straightforward way what the item-content score of the test-taker was, and it's possible, on the same form of the same brand of IQ test, to obtain identical IQ scores with other test-takers without having identical item-content performance.
"No, the IQ test result purports to say something about the test-taker's "intelligence," that is about how the test-taker would perform doing other tasks on a different occasion."
Do the makers of the various IQ tests each publish a document that says how well people with various IQs will perform at other tasks?
edit: Thanks for the link to the book, this is great stuff. I've been looking for a book like this for a few years, because it's been bothering me for a while now that there doesn't seem to be any philosophy of what can be measured vs. what can't. I'm glad I'm not the only person to notice this problem.
Do the makers of the various IQ tests each publish a document that says how well people with various IQs will perform at other tasks?
Typically, a technical manual for each new brand of IQ test, which may only be available to authorized psychologists but perhaps not to the general public, will publish the results of the test's norming administration, which might include statements that IQ test scores of people in certain defined occupational categories ranged from X to Y. As you can imagine, there is overlap between the scores of the smartest manual laborers and the dumbest professionals. Most occupational categories have a wide range of scores, but in general the occupations you'd expect tend to have higher mean IQ scores than the occupations not considered to require much smarts.
Yes, the measurement issue is very interesting in psychology. I have huge buy-in to Michell's conclusion that most of what is called measurement in psychology should not be called "measurement" at all. I see the consequences of the usual terminology in arguments by analogy in popular discussions of psychological tests (such as this thread), where it is commonplace for participants who have not read many psychological treatises to treat, say, IQ test scores in a way that is not warranted by how they are derived.
>I remember taking an official IQ test in 5th or 6th grade.
There is still inherent cultural bias in IQ tests, but it's definitely not that bad anymore. There's also a big difference between group IQ tests, which some states administer alongside achievement tests in elementary school and are basically completely worthless for measuring anything at all, and actual IQ tests, done one on one with a psychologist.
Normal IQ tests don't measure very high, to be certified with a 200+ IQ you need to take a test that looks more like a Putnam Competition test than anything else.
Yes, because the group IQ tests are lumped in with achievement tests kids often have no idea that it is different from the other achievement tests, whereas the psychologist tests certainly stand out. Looks like NYC public schools recently adopted a group IQ test after years of using the real thing... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis-Lennon_School_Ability_Test
>A comment on verbal intelligence: Some people wonder about the value of verbal items as a measure of "intelligence," since trying such items seems to involve little or no intellectual effort. From the purely statistical standpoint, many studies repeatedly showed that verbal intelligence, including the sheer size of one's vocabulary, has one of the highest correlations of any type of test item with overall intelligence as measured by tests containing a wide variety of test items. See for example the book Intelligence in the United States, published around 1958, for ample documentation. On the purely intuitive level, one might say that learning a language, including vocabulary, is for the child like decoding hieroglyphics. The brighter child will master this decoding process far more readily than the average child. Later, of course, one can artificially boost the size of one's vocabulary, but cleverly designed tests of verbal intelligence can get around this problem by relying on somewhat atypical verbal items that one would be unlikely to pick up through a "vocabulary improvement" course but that a gifted child would be likely to have picked up if he has been reasonably inquisitive -- and isn't inquisitiveness an important part of intelligence? Finally, to use a computer analogy, a powerful computer without adequate software (analogous to verbal intelligence in humans) would be relatively unproductive no matter how powerful the hardware. -- RKH
"From the purely statistical standpoint, many studies repeatedly showed that verbal intelligence, including the sheer size of one's vocabulary, has one of the highest correlations of any type of test item with overall intelligence as measured by tests containing a wide variety of test items."
I call bullshit. Hart & Risley found that by far the biggest predictor of verbal ability was the volume of language used by the parents. IQ had only a nominal correlation.
Out of interests sake: how does one validate an IQ test?
Thanks for asking the important follow-up question that is so rarely asked. To validate an IQ test (a test that purports to estimate "general intelligence"), one must first reach a consensus among test designers about some sign of intelligence that is detectable outside the testing room. Over the years, psychologists have proposed various behavioral characteristics of human beings as signs that those human beings are "intelligent," with entering challenging, high-income occupations that require a lot of higher schooling being one criterion proposed for adult IQ tests, and being precocious in school and having good grades and good teacher ratings being one criterion that is proposed for child IQ tests.
One finds a sample of persons to take a new brand of test in its norming administration, and rates those persons by external criteria of "intelligence," weighting those criteria by consensus, and then checks the rank-order correlation between the ranking of the test-takers yielded by the IQ test and the ranking of the test-takers yielded by the validation criteria. There will NEVER be a perfect ("1.0") correlation between the test and the validation criterion, just as there is never a perfect correlation between IQ scores on one occasion and IQ scores on another occasion on the same brand of IQ test by the same group of test-takers.
There is enough play in the joints in both IQ test scoring (whatever the brand of test) and ranking people by other validation criteria (whatever they are), that strictly speaking one can't say that there is any all-time, universally significant ranking of human beings by intelligence. But a close-enough-for-government-work validation study would show an IQ test having correlations above .80, and perhaps even above .90, in comparison with previous brands of IQ tests, or in comparison with subsets of its own item content, or in comparison with some well regarded external validation criterion.
For reasons mentioned in another comment in this thread (above?), there is especially little reliability, and hence especially little validity, for IQ scores far above the population mean, and thus it's very hard to devise a validation criterion that would sort, say, members of Mensa
The only thing I remember about being hauled out of class at about the same age, was sitting in a room with some guy I'd never met and taking some test thinking "this is complete BS...I don't want to be here".
The concept of intelligence quotient is subjects score divided by average score of people subjects age. This is a pretty ridiculous metric, and anyone can see that the younger you are the better chance you have of scoring a genius IQ.
Current IQ test scoring is always done on the basis of standard deviation scores for the comparison population. That is because, as you correctly point out, child IQ scores lead to nonsense results if they are taken to be ratios of one "mental age" to another "mental age."
Any talk of IQ should include "the point", i.e. why you're paying attention. If measuring IQ corresponds with a wide reaching genetic study to find precursors for intelligence - awesome. If we're looking for reason to label a racial subset "lesser", than it's a waste.
I remember a really awkward moment in 6th grade, where my teacher took me aside and told me that my tested IQ was top of the class, higher than hers, and only equal to her son's (also in the class). What in god's name could I say to that?
As a child, I was never told what I tested at. What I was told is that they aren't supposed to tell you.
Of course, once they start moving you into different groups of students you know you test out in the upper "bucket", but still, your not supposed to know your IQ score.
Is my experience the norm here? Or did others here get told their score as a child?
I was classified "Exceptionally Gifted / Learning Disabled" which seems like a contradiction in terms but seems fairly accurate. The school would bend over backwards for me because of the LD issue, but I saw little difference from the EG part of things. Mainly it seemed like they had no idea what to do with me. For example: I was in a remedial English class in 8th grade and then bumped the next year into the Honors English class which I passed by the skin of my teeth.
PS: While I spent a few hours taking a lot of 1 on 1 tests I don't know if they did a real IQ test and I got over 160 or if it was a "soft test" and they used the same term.
I wasn't told mine directly, but I found it out later by reading the assessment letter (I was forced to take a test to see if there was a learning-disability explanation to my poor grades).
"In 1985, Guinness World Records accepted that she had answered every question correctly on an adult Stanford-Binet IQ test at the age of just 10, a result that gave her a corresponding mental age of 22 years and 11 months, and an unearthly IQ of 228."
This is totally bogus, because the Stanford-Binet Form L-M, an IQ test I also took as a child, was never, ever normed on a sample of adults. Not once, not ever. The L-M is strictly a child IQ test, and poorly normed for children also. The names in the test scoring manual for mental age levels (X number of years plus Y level of months) were GUESSES, and it is plain that they are guesses set in such a manner that they grossly overestimate the IQ scores of many L-M test-takers (yes, possibly including me). In any event, the L-M is now obsolete. The Stanford-Binet L-M was reviewed in the Buros Mental Measurements Yearbook, a standard reference book available in most university libraries and in better-stocked public libraries. volume 7. A citation to the Buros review can be found in a compilation volume about mental tests (Keyser & Sweetland 1984). A complete reprint of that review can be found in the one-volume compilation by Buros (1975). David Freides (1970), then associate professor and now professor of psychology at Emory University, began his review by saying, "My comments in 1970 are not very different from those made by F. L. Wells 32 years ago in The 1938 Mental Measurements Yearbook. The Binet scales have been around for a long time and their faults are well known." Professor Freides continued with a critique of the assumptions underlying the design of the test, and specifically mentioned clinical situations in which SB L-M scores should not be taken at face value. He concluded his review with the Latin phrase "Requiescat in pace," indicating he thought the test was moribund in 1970.
Abnormally high IQ scores, by their nature, often speak of a brain too general to be of much use. “Effectively,” said Rust, “you are mastering far too many things.”
Broadness, though, is what Savant craves. “Reading all about these subjects,” she says of her work, “I am becoming amazingly informed to a superficial extent.”
I use "genius" to describe a person who has studied a particular area with a level of dedication, creativity and success such that they are orders of magnitude above even others in their field.
I use "genius" to describe a person who has studied a particular area with a level of dedication, creativity and success such that they are orders of magnitude above even others in their field.
That is actually the standard definition of "genius" in current psychological literature, other than that most of those authors would say, "several standard deviations above" rather than "orders of magnitude above." One of the leading authors on "genius" as psychologists define that term is Dean Keith Simonton, whose articles are sometimes submitted here to HN.
Simonton and many other authors (e.g., Arthur Jensen) note that the IQ threshold to be a "genius" in currently accepted professional sense of that term is not particularly high, perhaps only an IQ of 120 on a currently normed, properly validated test. Lots of creativity and lots of hard work, besides IQ, go into making a genius.
When I'm coding something challenging, I have trouble keeping it clear in my head. I have to break things down into sections and try to extract the core problem from the noise - but that's not enough. I then have to build it in stages, adding a layer at a time of complexity. Sometimes I had the wrong model, and have to go back. I do discover things, and see more as I go. So now I can solve problems that I'm not smart enough to solve: a self-transcendence.
I sometimes think someone smarter than me could just see* this. It's a frustrating and discouraging thought. Like you, my only answer is: but they're not*.
Even people who do "just see" things eventually have to learn to break things down into pieces and solve them bit by bit. As you get older and acquire more expertise, the complexity of problems you solve gets higher, until it reaches a point where nobody can hold it in their head.
When I was a kid, I used to piss off my teachers by just writing down the answers on all my tests & homework. They'd always say "Show your work!" and I'd say "What work? I just know what the answer is", and most of the time it'd be right. When I wrote computer programs, I'd pace around for a bit until I'd figured out everything, then sit down at the computer and type it in. When I solved physics problem, I'd memorize the problem statement, go take a shower, mull it over, and write down the solution when I came out.
This worked until my freshman year of college. And then it started to not work - half the time, it'd work great and I'd be done with my homework in no time, but half the time I just wouldn't be able to solve the problem at all. And then it started to not work at all, and I basically failed at solving anything.
So I had to learn the same skills of breaking things down and solving them piece by piece that everyone else already knew. Laboriously. At the age of 20, when most people had figured it out by 12. I'm certainly more effective now for having learned them though, as I tend to get stuck much less often.
It's still frustrating though, because I can't shake the feeling that I'm dumber now than I was at 13. I don't even know if I can still solve things just by looking at them anymore - so much of my work requires small, incremental changelists and clawing my way up the technology ladder. For someone who'd built so much of my identity on always knowing the answer (terrible idea BTW, never build your kid's ego up on their intelligence), this was a really bitter pill to swallow.
I have to really concentrate, and I might even get a headache just trying to imagine something clearly and distinctly with twenty or thirty components. When I was young, I could easily imagine a castle with twenty rooms with each room having ten different objects in it. I can't do that anymore.
I have to clarify. :-) I am also one of those people who "just see" things. I meant that for a problem just at the edge of my abilities, someone who was just a little smarter (or who had the right representation/point of view - worth 80 IQ points) would be able to "just see" the answer to that one.
I think one can solve more complex problems "just by looking at them " - if one can find a representation that makes them simple. For example, switching from Roman numerals to Arabic numerals makes multiplication so simple a child can do it. (last paragraph http://ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm)
In a way, our brilliance as children is a gift from the ancients. I think it's deeply meaningful to create new representations to pass on in turn.
I took that IQ test in grade 3 and 6 (I live in Canada) and I scored in the 99th percentile. That means I have a "genius" level IQ. I'm not a great coder, but I can tell you that I also have trouble keeping things clear in my head, and I do exactly as you describe. Perhaps that skill of breaking down problems is what IQ is measuring?
Thanks, I feel much better! I ranked highish on an IQ test book, 130-150 (however reliable that is).
I love your hypothesis of what IQ measures, though unfortunately I don't think it's true. But do I think the "skill of breaking down problems" is one thing that actual accomplishment measures. It also seems to me that even a 230 IQ person is limited to what they can grasp instantly, if they lack this skill. Perhaps if their high IQ removes their motivation for acquiring this skill, it might explain why the accomplishments of some high IQ folk aren't commensurate with their IQ.
230 IQ sounds awesome, but just what can such a person grasp at once?
Is it like someone with very long legs, so a step for them is a giant leap for anyone else...? If so, it isn't much good if they can't string steps together. If they can't combine their steps, a crawling baby will effortlessly outdistance them.
* but I work day and night hoping to make this world a better place*
The best thing about life is that we are all different yet the same. Perhaps she does not care about saving the world and perhaps not caring about making the world a better place is better. Perhaps not. Her choice dude, got nothing to do with you. Take your anger with the newspapers who made her a freak of nature and perhaps lured her into writing a column as a practical instant way of using her intelligence. If you read the article the barrister clearly mentions that he, they, were looking for a way to "cash in on this" and as it happens that way is to write a stupid column. Who cares, you don't need a high IQ to improve the world. I doubt the inventor of penicillin was the person with the highest IQ in the world and he has done a lot for humanity.
I believe that it can be a psychological burden, and possibly be a cause for much unhappiness. Not as a direct result of the IQ, but because of the expectations of yourself and others.
From an early age, I became aware of the positive reactions I got from people when I spoke about science or math. I believe that this pushed me towards these fields. After two decades of being a successful engineer, it occurs to me that another path might have brought just as much satisfaction, and quite possibly more.
My own son at one year, is impressing the hell out of me with what he understands already. I want to cushion him from having his future brainwashed into him by admiring do-gooders. I want to give him the freedom to become a fisherman or a farmer or anything else, without feeling like he's letting down mankind or himself.
We're the ones who make IQ a burden, but recognizing that fact, I think, can be freeing.
"Symptoms of the disorder first appeared while he was enrolled at Cambridge; he lost his balance and fell down a flight of stairs, hitting his head. Worried that he would lose his genius, he took the Mensa test to verify that his intellectual abilities were intact."
-- he obviously cared about his IQ /at the time/ if he took the test. If he really didn't care he could have just tackled some physics problem and seen if it felt the same (or something).
And subsequently he appears to have decided that having actual accomplishments as a physics researcher and as a popular author on science is much more significant than his IQ score. In other words, what he thinks after he learned more and had real-world experience is that boasting about IQ is for losers, as he said in the much more recent interview.
I have no idea. People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.
I love that quote, but I love this one from the article, too:
She was just another person trying to make it in New York. The fact that she had this credential just gave her something different and I remember thinking, "How can we cash in on it?"
That's from the guy who suggested she use her IQ to make herself famous. To him it was just a way to sell books.
Preoccupation with IQ is not for losers. But we also live in a world where computers augment our cognitive abilities. And so any measure of intelligence should probably be a combined measure of brain + computer.
(Good interview, but the best one Errol Morris did with his tv series was the one with the mob lawyer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLEe496IS1o And the movie Fog of War, of course.)
I'm undecided about the usefulness of IQ tests, but I'm avoiding taking any at all, which I suppose puts me in the "anti" camp. If I took one, I suspect the result would either go to my head if it's high (for some unknown value of "high") or be heartbreakingly disappointing, with nothing in between. Which is somewhat silly I suppose, particularly as it contradicts the idea that it's not a useful measure.
(as a background: I'm often assumed to be the smartest person out of pretty much any group of people I happen to find myself in, which brings with it a whole slew of expectations and social awkwardness. It's a vicious cycle in that once people notice it, my reputation eventually precedes me. As a result I regularly feel the need to "flee" from jobs, clubs, cities, etc. and "reset" everyone's expectations. I'm finding freelancing/consulting easier than holding a job. And yet there's the nagging pressure of expectation from family, etc. that I "live up to my potential")
In childhood, it's bewildering but not so bad. In adolescence, it's awful. In adulthood, it's good, so long as you're able to get past your shitty teenage years.
The transition point (from disadvantage to benefit) is, on average, late college. One would expect it to happen earlier, but what usually happens in college (even, if not especially, in elite ones) is that the less talented half emerge as social leaders, not because there's any persisting malice toward smart people, but because they had better previous experiences.
Or perhaps because those other people who become social leaders had other skill sets not tapped by IQ tests. This idea is just about as old as IQ testing itself. Lewis Terman was the author of the IQ test that Marilyn of Ask Marilyn took when she was a kid, and that I took when I was a kid. Here's what he had to say about the limitations of IQ tests:
"There are, however, certain characteristics of age scores with which the reader should be familiar. For one thing, it is necessary to bear in mind that the true mental age as we have used it refers to the mental age on a particular intelligence test. A subject's mental age in this sense may not coincide with the age score he would make in tests of musical ability, mechanical ability, social adjustment, etc. A subject has, strictly speaking, a number of mental ages; we are here concerned only with that which depends on the abilities tested by the new Stanford-Binet scales." (Terman & Merrill 1937, p. 25)
I'm talking about high intelligence rather than high IQ. So, I guess I'm technically answering the question, "Is high intelligence a blessing or a curse", rather than that question about IQ specifically. In truth, I don't care much about IQ per se; the discussion of intelligence is a more interesting debate.
High levels of academic and cognitive ability, usually coupled with intellectual interests and the traits valuable (e.g. focus, creativity) in pursuing them.
As near as I can tell, high intelligence does not imply "shitty teenage years". I know plenty of "not so smart" folk that will tell you it was tough being a teenager.
There are a large number of people who are not highly intelligent who have negative social experiences as teenagers for other reasons. There are very few people who have high intelligence (140+ IQ) and positive social experiences in adolescence.
I took a fairly normal route though school graduating at 16 with a B average despite a high IQ. Anyway, for the most part I enjoyed high school and hated middle school. But, I spent most of my time trying to have fun and minimize the time I spent doing things I hated. If anything I found my IQ helped by reducing the amount of time I spent keeping up.
My older sister also has a high IQ and ended up salutatorian etc, but she still had fun and a fairly large social group. My younger sister is an "Artist" who still managed to become the valedictorian and had a great time in high school. She even got into calarts.edu which is insanely exclusive. So apparently even if you focus on academics you can still have a good time.
PS: It's not hard to make large groups of people like you if you just try. IMO, the problem with many high IQ people is they don't like talking with normal people and fail to develop social skills.
did you read this? the focus of the article is not on people who "feel burdened" by high IQs; it is about possible negative side effects of intelligence. (isn't this what _you_ get paid to think about? this comment is hilariously ironic...)
Several Sundays later when I'd gotten the gist of the whole thing, I asked my mother: "but what does she do?" I was totally and utterly perplexed. Here was a woman smarter than Einstein and Hawking squandering away her intelligence on such downright silly matters. You don't need an IQ of 230 to write a newspaper column... you just don't.
It pissed me off then, but I never gave it much attention... Since then I've left the States and totally cast her out of mind. But when the topic comes up, I just shrug and guess that this is God's way of showing us that you don't need to be the world's most intelligent in order to accomplish something, because sometimes the biggest "geniuses" amongst us are the biggest idiots in reality.
An IQ like that applied to literally anything under the sun other than a newspaper column could yield huge benefits to humanity. It doesn't matter what - anything she likes. History, psychology, chemistry, physics, math, computers, English, philosophy, anything.
But she didn't. And that pisses me off like crazy. Because I don't have her IQ but I work day and night hoping to make this world a better place.... and there she is, showing off her IQ as if at the World Fair to make petty gains as a household celebrity, a freak of nature rather than one of the luckiest people on the planet.