Re: IQ test thread (a more balanced test that tests language as well as patterns)

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In college I took an IQ test to qualify for mensa. I more than qualified. Then the wanted $300 to join or something ridiculous like that.

Of course I didn’t give them the money…I’m not stupid.

Later I found out that’s a typical member fee.

Oh well.

Intellegence is what you make of it. Infact, a study shows that bouncers often have higher IQ than poliece officers.
 
Hiyas:)

I’m labeled a Mensa Gifted Child. And a 99 % club.

I used to think with all the brilliant minds we could help solve world problems…like hunger.
But the SIG’s left me with a perception it was an elitist social club.

As always, just my thoughts
 
EeyoresButerfly said:
The tests used are carefully constructed and are constantly being tweaked to control for bias.
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How do they distinguish between bias or real differences in intelligence between groups? I am guessing that they control bias by throwing out questions on which one group outperforms another?
 
Actually, I did have a test taken when they were diagnosing me for dysgraphia. The certification claimed very high intelligence, although it did not give a number. I was probably 14 or 15 at the time, which is practically the adult range of tests. I could go and ask them if they still have the files. This 159 is the second highest I’ve ever scored, unless this isn’t the 24 deviation Cattell scale (using which is a nice way to make everyone happy with his score because most people assume the score to be in the standard deviation of 16 or so, meaning the high scores are less extreme), but in that case I would be surprised. I seriously doubt I have more than 140 in the standard scale anyway, although it’s hard to judge because I’m hardly uniform across the board past a certain level. Most tests stopping at 140 is a problem because it’s relatively easy, in my view, to fail to discover the pattern in one or two tasks, so I don’t think any IQ range should be expected to max out on any given test.

BTW, I hate geometrical tests with curves (rotating a cod on a pan!) and I totally reject the lousy logic behind a design that admits certain arbitrariness or the possibility of there being two possible answers with one of them being simpler and thus better. Either it’s a valid pattern or not. We can have a pattern with some noise for obfuscation (making the task more difficult), but let’s not take it so far as to rely on some fuzzy logic!
 
flyingfish said:
How do they distinguish between bias or real differences in intelligence between groups? I am guessing that they control bias by throwing out questions on which one group outperforms another?
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Impossible, unfortunately. If you remove all things that could possibly be culturally influenced, you’re left with some silly geometry that’s giving people headache. Not only does it favour the science people (let alone mathematicians dealing with geometry) over the arts people, it probably isn’t as culturally neutral in terms of links as it is in terms of political correctness. I mean, yeah, I know using letters of the Latin alphabet in various positions disadvantages the Chinese but I’m pretty sure cultures put stress on various things and the results may be that a person may still be better prepared for some tests than for the others by virtue of his upbringing’s focus on certain skills or patterns of thinking.
 
We can have a pattern with some noise for obfuscation (making the task more difficult), but let’s not take it so far as to rely on some fuzzy logic!
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Thats a valid test…not for IQ, though, but for working in the goverment.😃
 
flyingfish said:
How do they distinguish between bias or real differences in intelligence between groups? I am guessing that they control bias by throwing out questions on which one group outperforms another?
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You would be right. One prime example was a comb. They found that African American children could not identify it when given the test. So they threw out that question. There are also a variety of tests that use different methodologies. I teach Sped and IQ testing is a prime component of evaluation. Typically more than one test is given. The IQ should be within a certain interval on both tests. There are also tests that are administered in different ways such as verbal and nonverbal tests. There are also tests that canidentify multiple intelligences, although this is still a fledgling field.
 
EeyoresButerfly said:
You would be right. One prime example was a comb. They found that African American children could not identify it when given the test. So they threw out that question. There are also a variety of tests that use different methodologies. I teach Sped and IQ testing is a prime component of evaluation. Typically more than one test is given. The IQ should be within a certain interval on both tests. There are also tests that are administered in different ways such as verbal and nonverbal tests. There are also tests that canidentify multiple intelligences, although this is still a fledgling field.
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What about things like male/female differences. Allegedly women are better with details and men are better with 3d shapes (?), so they structure the test in such a way as to have the same average for both genders. I don’t know if there are such differences between the races/cultures, but again I wouldn’t be surprised.

Do you know much about the details of where different groups perform better or worse?
 
flyingfish said:
What about things like male/female differences. Allegedly women are better with details and men are better with 3d shapes (?), so they structure the test in such a way as to have the same average for both genders. I don’t know if there are such differences between the races/cultures, but again I wouldn’t be surprised.

Do you know much about the details of where different groups perform better or worse?
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I don’t believe there is much difference between male and female performance because the questions are varied enough, but I’m not entirely sure. It’s been awhile since I had the classes. No test can completely eliminate bias. There will always be a bias against minority groups as tests are geared towards the norm. The most you can do (and what they try to do) is to continually update the tests to get rid of areas where there is known bias and make the bias as little as possible.
 
EeyoresButerfly said:
I don’t believe there is much difference between male and female performance because the questions are varied enough, but I’m not entirely sure. It’s been awhile since I had the classes. No test can completely eliminate bias. There will always be a bias against minority groups as tests are geared towards the norm. The most you can do (and what they try to do) is to continually update the tests to get rid of areas where there is known bias and make the bias as little as possible.
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And here a question from me, if I may. Wouldn’t a consistent removal of bias lead to ending up with a rump test of a limited value?
 
chevalier said:
Impossible, unfortunately. If you remove all things that could possibly be culturally influenced, you’re left with some silly geometry that’s giving people headache. Not only does it favour the science people (let alone mathematicians dealing with geometry) over the arts people, it probably isn’t as culturally neutral in terms of links as it is in terms of political correctness. I mean, yeah, I know using letters of the Latin alphabet in various positions disadvantages the Chinese but I’m pretty sure cultures put stress on various things and the results may be that a person may still be better prepared for some tests than for the others by virtue of his upbringing’s focus on certain skills or patterns of thinking.
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Yes, I seem to recall that there were problems with giving this sort of spacial test to aborigines in Australia. There cultural ways of expressing things didn’t allow for certain types of picture representations, (or something like that) and so they all came out really badly on tests that used those kind of pictures because they didn’t know how to “read” them.

I’m fuzzy on the details, but to me it says that even these kind of concepts have a learned element. The only way to really test someones basic brain capacity, I think, would be to somehow devise a test that accessed only the brains most innate structural/biological facets. But them even those develope in relation to stimuli, so I guess it would really just be impossible.
 
chevalier said:
And here a question from me, if I may. Wouldn’t a consistent removal of bias lead to ending up with a rump test of a limited value?
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I think you would have to be careful. The comb example is interesting, because it is probably because the AA kids didn’t use combs. But presumably they would be able to answer other questions of the same type, but with more familiar shapes, in a normal way. If there seemed to be a problem identifying shapes at all, that would indicate something different (but what?)
 
Bluegoat said:
I think you would have to be careful. The comb example is interesting, because it is probably because the AA kids didn’t use combs. But presumably they would be able to answer other questions of the same type, but with more familiar shapes, in a normal way. If there seemed to be a problem identifying shapes at all, that would indicate something different (but what?)
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Say, there’s a culture that didn’t come up with Euclid-style geometry and didn’t have primitive geometrical ornaments in its prehistoric art, no triangles, no squares, no nothing. This is probably not viable in any radical form, but we can surely imagine a geometry-challenged culture. Does that mean all of them folks are IQ-challenged or, say, the test isn’t good for them (or even IQ isn’t an adequate measure of their basic bra(name removed by moderator)ower)? I would be inclined towards the latter.

In my case, sometimes I just refuse to do certain tasks and come to terms with getting a worse score in the end when they overdo the geometry. I don’t have this kind of thing with normal numbers and certainly not with words.
 
chevalier said:
Say, there’s a culture that didn’t come up with Euclid-style geometry and didn’t have primitive geometrical ornaments in its prehistoric art, no triangles, no squares, no nothing. This is probably not viable in any radical form, but we can surely imagine a geometry-challenged culture. Does that mean all of them folks are IQ-challenged or, say, the test isn’t good for them (or even IQ isn’t an adequate measure of their basic bra(name removed by moderator)ower)? I would be inclined towards the latter.

In my case, sometimes I just refuse to do certain tasks and come to terms with getting a worse score in the end when they overdo the geometry. I don’t have this kind of thing with normal numbers and certainly not with words.
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Actually, I think just this kind of thing has been documented. I think the conclusion is that every test has to be considered in context and can only tell us something quite general.
 
126…

Looks like I’m not so intelligent.😃 Anyway, English is not my primary language…

And I don’t believe these tests really show your intelligence but they are fun to do.

Are there any wisdom tests? That is what I would be interested in.
 
I did the test… my boss came into my office twice to talk about things… so I had to switch gears and hurry up with the test ( I always have excuses don’t I?).

All that stuff at the end where you have to give your e-mail address, and then to find out more, you can buy a $9 membership… phoey. This leads me to believe that this test is set up to be “easy” and encourage people to think they are smart, and to learn how awesome smart they are compared to everyone else. It is an internet marketing ploy to make $$.
 
Cristian_B said:
126…

Looks like I’m not so intelligent.😃 Anyway, English is not my primary language…

And I don’t believe these tests really show your intelligence but they are fun to do.

Are there any wisdom tests? That is what I would be interested in.
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wisdom test–that’s called “life.”

But, really, that’s so true. Much better to be wise than smart. 👍
 
First IQ test posted I got 103, this one I got 135…hmmmm are they even reliable?
 
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