National IQ test (on bbc) - own up wots ur score?


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Why post the ACTUAL results of some Mensa test in a thread that asks the IQ obtained from the BBC National IQ test then?

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According to the BBC website on which this test was based you would have to be 35 years of age - 54 years of age in order to achieve the result you have stated. The maximum you can achieve for a 20-34 year old is 136 if all 70 questions are answered correctly.

Which is good enough reason to suggest that the test is flawed. Technically, anybody of any age can achieve any IQ score. Of course, for extremely young children it's essentially meaningless. IQ was defined as the ration between "mental age" and actual age - now it's just a number - which is really only a sensible definition for children around the age of 10 - it's silly to say that a man aged 70 with an IQ of 156 has a mental age of 109...

Either way, the BBC test is flawed because it has been simplified for easy public consumption, rather than exact measurement. Not to mention the fact that it's highly questionable as to whether IQ actually measures intelligence or whether IQ is just a measure of how well you perform on IQ tests...

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Also as quoted from the Mensa site

"If you already have prior evidence of a high IQ it may be accepted by Mensa for direct membership - so why not enquire today?"

As quboid said, IQ is worked out as the percentage of the average person's intelligence. Therefore the reason that there are different IQs for different ages is that at age 16-19 for example, there is a different average to someone in the age range of 70+, probably due to the fact that the former are generally constantly studying and cramming information etc thus making their comparable levels of intelligence different. For example on the BBC National IQ test a 70 year old who managed to achieve 70/70 would have an IQ of 156 because this score would give him/her 156% of the average 70+ year old's intelligence. However a 16-19 year old with this score would have an IQ of 138 because this would only give him/her 138% of the average 16-19 year old's intelligence. Hope this clears things up :D

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For example on the BBC National IQ test a 70 year old who managed to achieve 70/70 would have an IQ of 156 because this score would give him/her 156% of the average 70+ year old's intelligence. However a 16-19 year old with this score would have an IQ of 138 because this would only give him/her 138% of the average 16-19 year old's intelligence.

That's entirely what it SHOULD be. Unfortunately, the BBC haven't done that - they've used some form of formula to calculate what it should be that causes an linear progression as you get older (i.e. the older you are, the less questions you'll get correct). This seems counter-intuitive, as the averages will mostly change exponentially (at a very rough level) - so that the difference between a 16 and 17 year old will be larger than that between a 36 and 37 year old, since there is greater psychological change happening during that period.

In other words, the BBC have taken a very innacurate shortcut...

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Of course the BBC test was watered down and it couldn't give accurate results. Mensa will allow other IQ tests for entry but not some TV quiz thing. They would require a formal, officiated and certificated test before letting you in without doing their test.

Samo - hate to burst your bubble, but in my opinion online tests are a lot worse. I typically get 150 in those - I wish! Most of them are just putting you in a good mood before trying to sell you something.

Anyway, how much money you make or how nice a person you are depends on a lot more than logical intellient (but it doesn't hurt :D ).

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Anyway, how much money you make or how nice a person you are depends on a lot more than logical intellient

And of course there's an awful big question about whether IQ tests even measure logical intelect. Or even if there is such a thing as "logical intellect" to measure...

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hi,

You need I think over 160 to get into mensa, and according to most IQ tests I think 110 is average and anything under 90 you are considered as being borderline retarded

its over 145 thats top 2%, over 155 is top 1%, i know cos i got a letter form mensa about 10 days ago saying my grade (155) was in top 1% and i got to go do one of them official tests.

Im only just 17 as well :)

tingle

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Mine was 120.

The BBC test wasn't meant to be 100% accurate: it was just a bit of fun. The questions wern't being done in a controled environment or anything like that.

BTW, for the BBC test they did say you would only need to get about 130 to be able to get into Menza for some reason or another. On that test, a score of 100 was supposed to indicate that you have an 'average' IQ.

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It says in the email that my IQ score was 74. So if that is a raw score than I have an IQ above 138. They only go to a raw score of 70 which is an IQ of 138 in my age group. I'm 21 years of age. I don't know how they calculate the IQ out of their raw score.

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I just wen't and got my IQ test from USF for when I wanted to get into the Graduate program for physics and I was at the top of their list to get in out of high school. I graduated at the top of my class in high school. 4.0 GPA with all honors classes for all four years. I flunked one year because of medical problems but appealed it and took it over again with no effect on my GPA. USF's test said I had an IQ of 164 which was more than enough to get into their physics program. Plus it also helps that my mother and father also graduated with honors from USF's physics program as well. I grew up around my father and mother (of course) and was brought into physics from a young age and it pretty much grew with me for all these years. I just love physics so much that I had to make a career out of it. How many of you out there like physics as much as I do. I'm not quite in the physics program yet (doing all the other crap required for a 4 year degree) so don't test me yet because I don't know crap about physics except what my mother and father have taught me as of yet. Don't make me look like a fool yet before I've even started it.

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Originally posted by MLapointe

It says in the email that my IQ score was 74. So if that is a raw score than I have an IQ above 138. They only go to a raw score of 70 which is an IQ of 138 in my age group. I'm 21 years of age. I don't know how they calculate the IQ out of their raw score.

What do you mean by a raw score?

The reason they only go to a score of 70 in their test is because there was only 70 questions to get right - you can not get higher. I thought the score in the email was your actual IQ score.

Also, pluggz, the point of an IQ test is that age doesn't matter - although in your case the table didn't account for you so I assume you based your score of the 16-19's section which means you would actually get higher in a proper test.

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I just wen't and got my IQ test from USF for when I wanted to get into the Graduate program for physics

USF seriously use IQ scores as a basis for entry into a graduate programme? That's possibly the stupidest requirement from a university I've heard of yet - in the words of one of the faculty at the psychology department here "what would be the point? University is for people to learn, not for people to sit around and already know the stuff". Slightly more accurately, how on earth do they think that being good at Raven's Matrices or knowing that Longfellow was a poet is going to produce a good grad student?!

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Originally posted by danshome

USF seriously use IQ scores as a basis for entry into a graduate programme? That's possibly the stupidest requirement from a university I've heard of yet - in the words of one of the faculty at the psychology department here "what would be the point? University is for people to learn, not for people to sit around and already know the stuff".

IQ isn't about knowing stuff, it's about being about to understand stuff thus a very sensible requirement for a top university (I'm assuming that's what USF is).

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