IQ (1905- ) is short for intelligence quotient. It is a way to measure intelligence. IQs go from 0 to about 200. Most people have an IQ near 100.
To give you a rough idea of what the numbers mean in English:
0 to 70 | retarded |
70 to 90 | dull |
90 to 110 | average |
110 to 130 | bright |
130 to 200 | gifted |
Most maids have IQs of about 100, professors about 115 and doctors 120. To join Mensa you need an IQ of at least 130.
IQ = (mental age / calendar age) x 100
If you are over 16, then your calendar age is just 16. It does not go higher than that.
To find out your mental age you take an IQ test which compares how well you did on its questions compared to people of different ages.
So, for example, if you are ten years old but did as well on the test as an ordinary 12 year old, then your IQ is (12/10) x 100 or 120.
Or: if you are fully grown but have the mind of an 8 year old, than your IQ is 50: (8/16) x 100.
So when Steve Sailer says that ordinary black Americans have an IQ of 85 he is saying they have the mind of 13-year-olds (= 16 x 0.85). That is why he says they need “moral guidance” and why black Africa will always be in a “Lord of the Flies” mess unless it is ruled by outsiders.
On the Internet you can find terrible IQ maps of the world. I do not know where they get their numbers. Most go something like this:
- 105: China, Korea, Japan
- 100: Europe, Russia, North America, Australia, Argentina
- 85: Latin America, Middle East, India, South-east Asia
- 70: Black Africa
Yellow, white, brown and black, in that order, it seems.
If you took the SAT before 1995, the test you need to take to apply to American universities, you can get a pretty good idea of your IQ: it is about one tenth of your combined math and reading score. So if you got 550 math and 630 reading (verbal), your combined score is 1180 and your IQ is most likely somewhere near 118. That is no accident. The SAT grew out of the old IQ test that the army used.
Here are the estimated IQs of some famous people:
- 195: Pascal
- 190: Newton, Voltaire, Kasparov, Wittgenstein, Laplace
- 185: Galileo, Descartes, Bobby Fisher
- 180: Michelangelo, Lord Byron
- 175: Kepler, Kant, Spinoza
- 170: Plato, Luther, Raphael, Wagner
- 165: Darwin, Hegel, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, John Locke
- 160: Einstein, Bill Gates, Hawking, Ben Franklin, Isaac Asimov, Reggie Jackson
- 155: Balzac, Sharon Stone, Cervantes, Rembrandt, Swift, Emerson
- 150: Rousseau
- 145: Napoleon, Nixon
- 140: Hitler, Hillary Clinton, Madonna, Shakira, Jefferson, Geena Davis
- 135: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Gore
- 130: Jodie Foster, Lincoln
- 125: George Bush
- 120:
- 115: John Kennedy
- 110: Ulysses Grant
- 105: James Watson
- 100:
- Less than 100: Andy Warhol (86), Muhammad Ali (78 )
IQs have been going up in rich countries over time, about a point every three years. This is called the Flynn Effect. No one knows for sure what causes it.
It would help if people understood just what it is that IQ tests test. It is not intelligence but something like it – whatever it is that makes some children do well in school and others do poorly. That something is not what Edison, Warhol, Picasso or Churchill had, yet no one ever doubted their intelligence after their school years.
See also:
I personally don’t put much stock into IQ metrics. Ever meet a group of MENSA members? Highly dysfunctional, weird, petty, often downright nasty, anti-social, etc. IQ measures something, but what it measures doesn’t appear to include skills necessary for success in life. Or, perhaps, it’s the combination of a high IQ and the personality type that would join a group like MENSA that is the filter for singling out egotistical assholes.
Keep in mind that Albert Einstein was considered a bad student as a youth, prone to daydreaming and inattention.
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An IQ test tests how good you are at taking an IQ test, simple
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I do not have an IQ. I was given a test by an educational psychologist and my scores on the subtests ranged too widely for my overall IQ to be calculated. My score on the visual processing test was in the bottom 4% of the population. My score on the verbal cmprehension subtest was in the top 0.1%.
The prize-winning author Donna Williams has an IQ of 70. http://www.donnawilliams.net/notintelligentenough.0.html
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My unofficial IQ is 142. I question the accuracy of said test.
Because I suffer from ADD, I’m probably at the higher end until about 2 p.m. when the Ritalin seems to leave my system. Intelligence is pretty much wasted on people like me. Sure, I could become a scientist and possibly find a cure for AIDS, but look! A bird. What year did “The Bird Cage” come out? Being a transsexual has to suck way more than being a transvestite, but is a transvestite just a transsexual with less money? Oh crap. I don’t think I returned that Suze Orman book to the library.
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Here is the problem that people don’t realize IQ tests do not test intelligence they test acquired knowledge. They are extremely unfair. For instance imagine asking a child that grew up in rural poverty about a symphony…that is something that they may not have knowledge or experience of…does the lack of this make them stupid…certainly not, it only attests to fact that they have yet to gain that specific knowledge.
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That was true of some of the older tests, like the one used by the American army in the First World War (which was pretty much a vocabulary test), but not the ones they use now.
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This is a really interesting blog. I just looked at the IQ map from Wikipedia and I see what you mean in how Africa is listed at the bottom somewhere on the level of 0-60/70 IQ, which according to your data suggest that Africans (and those of a large African decent) boarders on retardation. The thing that I have come to find is that there are many people out there who subscribe to what’s called the EUGENICS AGENDA. It is very convenient for eugenists to believe that blacks are innately the most unintelligible people-group among us. Eugenics philosophy suggests that blacks are like weeds in the human race and should therefore be dealt with the way one would let’s say, deal with ragweed… The interesting thing with eugenics is that it teaches that ethnic cleansing should not come about forcefully by an outside source (like the government, for example), but should be done willingly by those the philosophy threatens. In other words, blacks should be responsible for ridding the world of them—sick isn’t it? Why do you think abortion is so important to these so-called liberals i.e. democrats (who by the way, made up the CSA or Confederate States of America, i.e. the confederate south during the civil war) and this cause is so detrimental to blacks. Blacks are only 13% of the US population (that rounds off to about 30/ 39 million), yet the abortion rate in the African American community is startling and off the charts.
There was a study done back in the early 2000’s where the casualties that took place within the African American community since 1973 – – 2001 were examined. Do you know the study revealed that approximately 13 million African American babies oops, excuse me fetuses were aborted between that time? The other fatalities, such as homicide, AIDS, drug addition, so on and so forth, were SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER. Abortion was the highest of them all…
Did you know that Margate Sanger, the supreme founder of Plan Parenthood an organization that specializes in facilitating abortions, particularly to “low income” families, was also a well known eugenist? She actually was a guest speaker at a KKK rally were she unabashedly spoke about the “benefits” of eugenics. The sad thing is that eugenics also threatens specific sectors of the white community as well, Irish for one. The eugenics agenda hates “poor white people” as well. These people who promote this nonsense are only concerned venerating their own family and closest associates as superior to any other racial group. So Irish, Italians, Ukrainians and so forth are also hated by this wretched, depraved agenda.
My point is that I do not trust any IQ statistic that deems black people the most inferior of people groups. That is just too convenient not for whites, but for eugenists, the ones who manages and oversees the alleged data to support what I personally believe to be PROPAGANDA (like the propaganda propagated against Jews in Nazi Germany). Look, the term “IQ” was coined by a German man by the name of William Stern in 1912 ( a time when overt eugenics was very popular). It’s interesting that blacks are supposed to be at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to intelligence when it was blacks who engineered the construction of the Great Pyramids, one of the wonders of the world. People are still trying to figure out how in the world they were able to build them and whey they have not deteriorated over time. There were great African nations that once thrived and made tremendous contributions to the world (outside of supplying Africans for the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade). However, much of African history was DELIBERATELY wiped out…
While I was at Wikipedia, I ran across an article entitled, “Race Differences in Intelligence.” The article was highlighting a book that is authored by one Richard Lynn. When I looked up Richard Lynn’s info, turns out, his is in support of Social Darwinism, i.e. NATURAL SELECTION (“survival of the fittest” philosophy). Not only that, he is also a supporter of EUGENICS. This, the same man who authored a book on differentiations among races of people when it comes to intellectual ability, is also a supporter of eugenics and natural selection, which was the precursor to the eugenics school of thought.
Peace out
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I knew Sanger was a racist eugenicist but I did not know about her speaking at Klan rallies.
It always seems to be black and brown people who need to practise birth control and abortion. I always have to suspect the motives of white people who talk like that.
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“I knew Sanger was a racist eugenicist but I did not know about her speaking at Klan rallies.”
Yes, both are true.
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My IQ is 122 so Im considered “bright” however I didnt need a test to tell me what I already new.
; )
I wonder what causes black people to be at the bottom? Im weary of these tests because some how black and brown people always end up being at the bottom of the totem pole.
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I’ve always had a problem with IQ tests. Perhaps “Thad” may be able to enlighten me. While I don’t believe he is more intelligent, I do believe he has access to a greater amount of information than I do regarding this subject. Does that make me “more” or “less” intelligent?
The problem with many IQ tests, is that they are already prejudicial. I am not saying preducial on the color of one’s skin, but they are prejudicial on background, education, etc…
Knowledge is different than IQ, yet IQ tests often ask questions based on knowledge. I have a problem with that.
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Abagond —
I agree with you. What an absurd thought: “Only black and brown people need to practice birth control.”
Statisticaly, there are more “white” people on welfare than Black in the U.S, yet you see these types of comments as “blanket statements” to help propagate the racist hype. The separatist hype. (Keep in mind I am well aware that disproportinately, Blacks have a “higher” percentage of people on welfare than whites in the U.S. based on population)
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Sorry Renee – I echoed some of your sentiments/comments. I tend to post first, read later. I need to work on that.
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People all that is being discussed is good,but one has to earn an education in order to compete with any race of people. The Asians are deemed to be smart because they seek education. Black people do not give your sons and daughters a football or basketball and lead them to believe that this is the way out of poverty. Listen, hand your children a book, a computer something to train their minds to solve problems and improve comprehension. Then you can take those IQ test and score in the top percent. I earned not one but two seperate engineering degrees. I studied and studied to overcome my short comings not to overcome to show this race of people that i can be this. I did it for my family so I can teach my kids and not rely on the public school system 100 percent to teach my kids. So , when my kid is at school she has a fair opportunity to understand and grasp the concepts being presented. Take care of your own and not depend on others to educate your kid so they can take their place. That is not going to happen only a fool would prepare someone so they can take their place in life. No race of people are smarter than another, I proved that as an electrical engineer that has developed many software that is being used by some companies. The key to suceeding in life is to confront your downfalls head-on and overcome them. Strive to earn science degrees that is in the fabric of developing the frame work of our nation. Become a part of a job that delivers power to the nation such as electricity, medicine, laws, water improvement, petroleum, education (teachers).
Seek these avenues and you mind will open up to new ideas and learn how things are developed in this country do not sit on the side line and let other bring tommorow to you. You invent tommorow and be the inventor etc through education. They cannot stop you once you understand what make thing tick, but to remain ignorant is you fault and your fault alone.
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My IQ is 145. so what if you are a lazy someone that means nothing. common sense and hard work with education solve problems. You need to understand a thing to solve a thing.
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Whether or not anyone is willing to admit it, IQ scores correlate with life trajectories.
Obviously scores on an IQ test depends on acquired knowledge. If a person were unable to read or perform simple calculations, he would receive a low score. But much of what an IQ test measures is that innate ability to learn.
As for the scores of historical figures. well, since they lived before the existence of modern tests, it is impossible to gauge their performance — except by imputing it as a result of their achievements.
The fact that a handful of raging geniuses emerged in “Europe” over the last 500 hundred years is less important than the conditions that led to their arrival.
Notice that not one of them came from Africa or the muslim world. Also absent are obvious names from further east. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, several more writers, and many scientists and engineers from Russia. There were several prominent Indian mathematicians, and there have been a number of Japanese scientists and engineers who have earned genius ratings.
As for Muhammad Ali — not a chance his “IQ” was 78. Maybe today, with his punched out brain, his mental function is low. But as a young pre-damaged boxer, he was a smart guy. His true mental potential is unknowable, but certainly, if accurately measured, he would have scored well over 100.
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As many people have pointed out here, a lot of what is on IQ tests is based on acquired knowledge. I would also point out that IQ scores have changed significantly since they began large scale IQ tests in the early 20th century. I read somewhere that the average adult in the early 20th century would be considered mentally challenged if they took an IQ test today. But if the average young person today had lived in the 1920s they would’ve been considered a genius by early 20th century IQ standards. So you have a grandfathers and grandmothers with much lower IQ’s then their great-grandchildren. Genes can’t change that much within only two generations. So obviously the correlation between IQ and genes is not that significant. This should be obvious.
My opinion is having a fairly high IQ is like playing basketball or speaking a language. If you’ve been playing basketball ever since you were young then you’ll be able to do all the fundamentals. You probably won’t be Michael Jordan but you’ll be proficient in playing. It doesn’t take any real special talent. If more black parents were orientated towards academics then more black kids would have higher IQ’s. Because IQ tests basically only measure a person’s ability to succeed in school.
There is no mystery or magic when it comes to how people end up with high IQ’s. If parents have their kids doing math and reading then the kids will have high IQ’s. There is a book called “A Hope in the Unseen” about a young man from Washington D.C. inner city who goes to an Ivy League college. This young man’s mother had decided since the boy was born that she was going to put a lot of effort into him. She focused all her energy on the boy and the boy grew up to get acceptance into Brown College based on academics. And his was a young black man with a single mother, father in and out of prison, from a poor and dangerous neighborhood. I recently saw on youtube a Nigerian couple’s 8 year old twins became the youngest kids to pass advanced A level math in Britain. I’m sure that their parents put a lot of energy into teaching and tutoring their kids. For me it was the same thing. I have an above-average IQ and I know exactly why. I remember being forced to sit down and do math as a little kid. I remember being taken to the library and being read to. It is actually very simple.
Despite the obvious, a lot of people will run around claiming that IQ is genetically-determined. To me this is brainwashing. They are trying to convince certain people that they can’t succeed so they shouldn’t bother trying. I can guarantee that the people with high IQ’s aren’t adhering to the lies that they spread in public about IQ. All the Asian, Jewish and rich White parents have their kids being tutored and going to classes on the weekends. They aren’t relying on genetic predetermination to ensure their children’s academic success.
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http://gladwell.com/2007/2007_12_17_c_iq.html
Excellent article by Malcolm Gladwell on IQ.
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Whether or not anyone is willing to admit it, IQ scores correlate with life trajectories.
I doubt many people are arguing against correlation. What people are arguing against is a CAUSAL link and the belief that said cause is rooted in racial biology.
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I tend not to link IQ with some test taken thatt predicts how smart that individual has become. No, smarts comes from when you can acquire and understanding on various fronts of life and make it work for you. Its hard to explain. I look at things in life and picture the core of how things work. That curiosity existed in me before I earned my two engineering degrees. These earned educations have enhanced my ability to understand the behavior of how electrical devices work. How things work is the key to understanding life and separating the weak minded from the strong minded . Making things work to near perfection such as mechanical items, heart surgey, banking, etc. that what interest me all through life. To understand a thing well is to master that thing which gives the ability to predict its behavior relatively accurate. I like to determine what make things work from the type of material used that deals with thermal properties and strengths of materials to actually putting them in service to function for daily use. Deep space is said not to have gravity. Then, how can an astroid sustain a vector and a speed of several thousand meters per second. What pupulsion system is driving it?
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I came across this little tidbit:
What Is Intelligence Anyway?
by Isaac Asimov
What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn’t mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP – kitchen police – as my highest duty.)
All my life I’ve been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I’m highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don’t such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests – people with intellectual bents similar to mine.
For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles – and he always fixed my car.
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”
Indulgently, I lifted my right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.” Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.”
And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.
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Herneith,
Interesting! In my AP Psychology test we took a 10-question IQ test from decades ago (I don’t know the exact date, but pre-1950 for sure), and I think those of us who did “the best” didn’t get more than 5 or 6 correct. There were questions like “how many feet are in a hectare?” (or something like that…)
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“how many feet are in a hectare?”
I would have gotten zero, hahahah!
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Sir,
My child Sai Genesh, age 12 years is having an I.Q of 68. He is more perfect in all issues…speech, home responsibility, cycling etc. But not upto the mark in studies. he is not reading even for minutes. how to make him perfect in studies.
still we are observing hyper activity in him. He will remain all the things what he need..toys, school books, dress shoues etc.,
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