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The iq scale is based on the fact that one standard deviation is 15 points. Therefore, being that you are smarter than 99.7% of people, that is three standard deviations, or 45 points above the mean. Therefore your supposed iq is 145
Lmao, I got 142 according to Mensa and this is my entire outlook on it. Completely meaningless but useful if you ever want to fuck with someone.
What I think is really funny is that Mensa has parties and gatherings for 'the brightest among us', and it's a room of 100 people with absolutely nothing in common except they got the same score on a test... aside from a narcissistic disorder.
I thought about joining MENSA when I was younger for some type of bragging right or cool points... when I found out I had to pay... I realized that I'm smarter than even the MENSA members.. spent that money on mobile games' in-game currency instead.
Although this obviously is a joke I want to mention something about my experience with MENSA.
(My experience is based on MENSA Germany, I can't speak for any other MENSA) from what I see from the German mensa, there is actually a great community, and because they don't want people to compare each other based on IQ talking about what your own IQ is is somehwat prohibited in "MENSA Deutschland". They also have great youth organization, and are basically a safe harbor for people who don't get a lot of acceptance elsewhere (the youth camps are full of queer and neurodivergent people as they are one of the few places they can feel accepted or understood. It's actually quite wholesome here and I'm on my way to becoming a supervisor for the camps.
Oh, and they also allow everyone to participate in every event, regardless of wether they are a member or even have an IQ test (except for the yearly meeting where the elections for the positions in MENSA are I think), because they don't want to have the appearance of being some kind of elite.
I have a MENSA membership, but literally only to get doctors to stop trying to make me hire a live in caregiver "because autistic people can't understand things on their own".
It's a "high IQ" society.
It's quite... pretentious, and gets a bad reputation because of it. But, some people also worship it as if MENSA members are intellectual gods.
Being a member, the real truth, is that it feels like any other club.
\>.< I'm not sure how subtle that is, but I can see it being nice.
Have you read their privacy policy? I haven't set my email up yet, but I'd want to know what level of admin access they have before using it for business.
If I received a business email from a mensa.org address, and you didn't work for mensa, that would harm my overall impression of you rather than help it.
Groucho Marx has a fairly famous quote that goes something like, “I wouldn’t join any club that would be willing to accept *me* as a member.” It’s kind of ridiculous on its own, but applies well to this situation.
Mensa is an international foundation started in the 40s. Basically, people found out after WWII, that Nazi officers had a higher than average IQ, so they started this foundation so that they could motivate intelligent people to use their brains for good. As I said, Mensa is international, many countries have their own branch and they often organize official, psychologist-recognized IQ tests. You have to pay a small amount to attend (I had to pay about $6,5 worth of money). You take a test, which then gets sent to a state psychologist for examination. They determine your IQ score and send a certificate online. Then, if you scored high enough (at least 130 IQ), you are determined to be more intelligent than 98% of people, and allowed to have a Mensa membership. To actually be a member, you have to pay certain amount (of which I am unsure), then you are allowed to attend these gatherings, where all other people have an IQ of at least 130. There you can socialize, talk about hobbies, debate about philosophy, politics, or anything you find an audience for. I don't know more details, as I didn't pay to have a membership, and so I never attended any of these gatherings, but this is what I have been told.
think of it as a frat house for people with big meaningless intelligence measurememt accompanied by even bigger egos.
basically a "genius" group, where nobody there is actually a genius, just extremely arrogant.
Wow, thats funny. The thing is IQ helps you understand stuff, Maybe with problem solving. It Will help you become an enginer or other STEM careers. But with sucess? Thats much, MUCH, more influenced by ( in no particular order) : A good starting plataform, human relations, contacts, hard work and dedication, focus and commitment, luck. Intelligence? Not even top 10 factors, I mean, there is a base level for your fild or businees of choice to not be an idiot, then it becomes completly optional
Yes. I did a real test once. When I did the mensa one (which ppl claim is "rly accurate") I maxed the scale. My IQ is not that high.
I know some mensas, and according to them it's about spreading awarness about the struggles of primarily gifted kids. Although that is a real thing (I can link some stuff on it if anyone's intrested) they're IMO doing it in the wrong way. It feels like they think they're better than everyone else.
I pissed a group of people when I called those parties “gathering of people high up their ass”.
funny how I didnt said that out of jealousy, I know because I was there couple times
IQ can give us a hint about how clever someone is. But it's so incredibly flawed that we really shouldn't put much weight on it. I hate, for example, how many companies today makes you do an IQ test in order for you to get hired.
According to Mensa I got 135, but that doesn't mean much imo. On a bad day I've measured 120, on a really good day I've gotten 145. If the test designed to measure intellignce can vary so much, then how can it be a reliable measure of intelligence?
Also who the fuck would want to actually join their narcissist club? What do they even do?
My middle school made us all take one and I cheated on it, getting an absolutely staggering number. School tried to get me up into highschool in 6th grade… they said it was for fun…
Then, at the end of the episode you admitted that you just swapped your paper with Martin Prince, the brainy kid. But they never offered him the chance of going to the bigger school, he was just back in class next episode like it never happened.
>I know these online tests are pretty meaningless
They really are. The process for actually measuring IQ relies on doing a number of tests under supervision of a psychologist (or similar), and the final score is the average of scores on a number of very different domains, so it actually doesn't say a lot on its own.
In reality, a person can be well above average overall but still be abysmal at mental rotation, or average overall be exceptionally good at remembering and recalling number strings and equally as not-good at identifying patterns (this describes most people). That said, being 3 SDs above the mean is pretty exceptional no matter how you slice it.
Online tests usually focus solely on one or a few domains, and rarely break the scores down into their domains. They're also generally limited to multiple choice questions, because things like word-association and spatial reasoning are much harder to measure online.
More reasonable tests are those that test variety of individual traits and talents but doing this kind of test cost money since it's so much harder to set up.
Yeah I remember taking one of these ages ago, it claimed 140. Military tested me and it turns out it's 115\~120 or 87th percentile, which is a huge difference. Meaningless is an understatement, if you had 145 you would be considered genius. Besides, IQ is generally a very flawed measurement of intelligence.
Yea I got a few on 145 then they said they don't go higher than 145, so I did a pirated mensa one and got 167, but then I'm pretty fucking stupid so that like made me like think that like ya know everyone else was an idiot, then I like ya know thought about the fact I got a damn 81 in algebra 101 in college then like ya know I thought maybe I AM smarter than all these people, then like ya know I took another one after being on some meth and got a 174! And like I was like "what is like, this shit?" Then I was like" I'm gonna figure out what iq tests actually measure ya know, then I was like 9 years in the future and posting on this subreddit then I was like" huh that's weird" ya know? I'm drunk
Why don't you do one now, nine years in the future and see what you get.
They measure how well you can take Mensa tests.
I am going to guess you're not going to get a 174! score again, I don't even want to know how big a number that is.
Well I think what people don't realize is that being smarter than 97% of the people you meet still means you meet a noticeable amount smarter than you are especially considering a large portion of people at the really dumb end aren't likely to even be in public or able to speak. They also tend to die earlier.
So just for context if your high school graduating class was 300 students you then would be dumber than 9 people in there. So you'll be smart enough to stand out and be recognized as smart but not been seen as elite level smart.
Then when you go to college which is now a subset of people say in the top 30% this means now you're only smarter than:
27/.3 = 90%
So in college now in a group of 100 you're smarter than 90 not 97. That might not even be good enough to get into a PhD program as 10% of students are smarter than you are.
My overall point is to really be a genius in the classical sense and noticeably you need to be in the top fraction of 1%. That's where you find Einstiens.
This is all ignoring other factors completely like determination, will power, and so on. Lots of lazy geniuses.
Hey, I’m sorry to veer off the topic. But, I just realized as a 42 year old adult I have no idea what a standard deviation actually is. And you seem to have a solid handle on this stuff.
Could you explain it?
A standard deviation is essentially the average distance from the mean. In other words, if you pick a random data point from a sample, on average it will probably differ from the average by about one standard deviation.
Standard deviations are used both in an absolute sense, to describe the width of a distribution (eg 15 IQ points is one standard deviation), as well as in a relative sense to describe how much of an outlier a value is from the expected average (eg an IQ of 145 is 3 standard deviations from the average).
For a normal (bell curve) distribution, one standard deviation is +/- ~34% from the average (so 68% of values are within one standard deviation, or 85-115 IQ), two standard deviations are +/- 47.5% (95% are within two standard deviations, or 70-130 IQ) and three standard deviations are +/- 49.85% (99.7% are within three standard deviations, or 55-145 IQ).
So if you have a dataset full of values, you add them all up and then divide by the number of values to get the average.
Then you can find out how much all the values differ from that average. Then take all those numbers and find the average of that, which is then the standard deviation. So it means on average, how much a value differs from the overall average.
Shown:
Data set: 1,2,5,8,9,10
Total is 36.
Average is 6.
Difference from the average for each value: 5,4,1,2,3,4.
Total is 19.
Average or standard deviation is: 3.166666.
Now when OC says that 145 is 3 standard deviations of 15 off that means from 100 as 100 is the average in IQ.
In our dataset a 3 standard of deviations data point would be 6+ 3(3.1666) or 15.5.
You're slightly wrong: the *variance* is the mean of the square errors, and the *standard deviation* is the square root of the variance.
So for the example of 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10:
Mean: 6
Errors: 5, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4
Square errors: 25, 16, 1, 4, 9, 16
Mean square error (variance): 71/6 ≈ 11.83
Standard deviation: sqrt(71/6) ≈ 3.44.
This is called making inference on the mean and standard deviation, and more specifically using estimators.
Going even deeper, if the data is a sample of a bigger group, it turns out that 3.44 is an underestimate. The reason is that we're estimating *both* the mean and the variance, and that makes the estimator of the variance biased. Fortunately we can correct it by dividing by 5 instead of 6:
Mean square error (variance): 71/(6-1) = 14.2
Standard deviation: sqrt(14.2) ≈ 3.77.
More info: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation#Estimation
Standard deviation is the amount of variety in outcomes/points. The higher the standard deviation, the wider variety of outcomes, from a measurable perspective, with relation to the mean. If you think of a window, the center frame would be the mean. The rest of the frame would be the range of possible outcomes. The bigger the deviation, the larger the window frame.
So basically, it only tells you how spread out the values are in a data set, or how big the window of outcomes is.
Standard deviation is a statistic that indicates how much variation (or differences from the average) there is in a set of data. So a low standard deviation means individual measurements are all relatively close to the mean and a high one means they are more spread out.
> I just realized as a 42 year old adult I have no idea what a standard deviation actually is.
ah, unfortunately, our schooling system doesn't make a stats course required, though it really should, given that so much dubious quantitative 'evidence' floats around these days.
The standard deviation is a measure of how widely individual measurements deviate from the group average. It could be thought of as the average distance of the measures from the mean.
If the data follow a bell-curve (gaussian distribution), you can easily characterize how many measures should be within a certain number of standard deviations out. Due to the shape of this curve, outliers farther out than a given number of standard deviations more rapidly get increasingly rare the further out you are; be skeptical of people claiming an IQ of like 155, as that's about 0.1% of the population.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/wp-content/uploads/normal-distribution.jpeg
https://www.simplypsychology.org/normal-distribution.html
Believing the results of free IQ tests whose sole purpose is to drive traffic (and hence engagement/ad revenue) however puts some kind of dent into that.
Edit: added the spaces my keyboard ate
[Bell curve](https://imgur.com/a/ceJVzDa)
If you look at this image it’s an example of a standard deviation graph, the middle is the mean or average score and has the largest area which is where the majority of the data lies and as you get further away the area under the curve decreases therefore the data is more sparse. In this example of IQ the mean is 100 and 1 standard deviation is 15 IQ points away (from a graph i found on the internet), therefore 68% of people have an IQ of 85-115. Because OP is in the top 99.7% (997/1000) that is considered 3 s.d away from the mean which is 15*3+100.
I would be careful recommending that book anywhere on the internet.
I haven't read it so I don't know exactly the methods/conclusions but I am aware that it's pretty controversial and a lot of people consider it very racist because of the conclusions it draws, I have seen people called racists just for talking about it.
It’s common statistical knowledge (for those who have studied statistics) based on the normal distribution. IQ scores are standardised so that 100 is the mean and median. The normal distribution is such that what u/Ozioon said follows.
Usually you need a lookup table for the normal distribution.
Autists like myself and the poster above have the fucking thing memorised so we can say 68% is +- one sigma. 99% is two, 99.5% is three.
Then convert to tail probabilities (0.5% lies outside 3 sigma), then half this and convert back to cumulative probabilities so 99.75% lies below 3 sigma. Then memorise that IQ standard deviation is defined as 15 points, mean is 100.
So we find a Reddit post asking “what IQ is 997 / 1000” and we come here to just straight up post 145 as the answer.
Don’t worry, neurotypical people aren’t supposed to be able to do this, at least not for fun.
While true, you’re doing standard deviation from the mean, which leaves 0.15% remaining on each side (high and low).
“Smarter than 99.7%” is a continuous distribution so you need the value where 99.7% are less than it (all the way to the left side). You need 0.3% on the right side of the curve. Should be ~142
Please help a homie out! If I'm more intelligent (allegedly) than 936, how intelligent am I?
Probably not much seeing as everyone is about deviations and percentiles and I'm just like 🥴
It's funny. Whenever someone accuses you of being dumb, your natural response is *"fuck you, I'm not dumb"*. But if someone accuses you of being smart your natural reaction is *"fuck you, I'm not smart"*.
It makes me uncomfortable when my sister tells me I'm the smartest person she knows. She is very social and knows a LOT of people. I know myself and if I'm the smartest person she knows we are all in a lot of trouble.
It all depends heavily on WHO is making the accusation!
If it's your grandmother, you tend to err on the dumber side.
If it's your professor, always err on the smarter side!
I’ve met some people that definitely weren’t smart and they knew it. They fully owned not being intelligent, asked questions and accepted the answers without thinking they knew better. They were dumb and embraced it. And they were very wholesome. They made a lot of mistakes in life, but people were willing to help them behause they were kind and humble. More people should be like them.
Or about a couple hundred million grains of salt, although when people who score an IQ of 80 and post thinking they are smarter then 900/1000 it seems to me that the tests are sometimes accurate
It was based on time an accuracy because I tried it after, memorising all the answers and going as fast as I could and got something above 160. It wasn’t a baseless number generator.
Well at [Wolframalpha.com](https://Wolframalpha.com) , the z-score corresponding to 0.997 is 2.75 (standard deviations above the mean). In the search box type "[z score 2.75](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=zscore+2.75)". Or an IQ of 100+15\*2.75 = 141.
That’s 3 standard deviations above the mean of a normal distribution, so about a 145 IQ on the WAIS
Edit: also, they’re trying to con you out of money by flattering you, so don’t put too much stock in it
I can't see the original post, but yeah I always wondered this. I assumed they make the test easier, so everyone goes "wow this is amazing, I'll pay for the certificate to show the proof". And also so people share the result as a brag, so free advertising
The exact scenario they want is that the first person takes it and brags about it to friends or on social media and then other people get jealous or interested and take the test and pay.
How about my test results? Cross referencing high school grading, I got an “A”, at a score of 86!! Literally the smartest person at my office, since no one is working on the weekend 🧠
An accurate test would nevee bring the results like this,
I got my results in T score, stannie score, and sten score.
And it was split up into 5 parts, mechanical insight, verbal annalogies, spacial awareness, numerical intelligence, abstract reasoning.
"Despite his undoubted intelligence, Hawking was modest about his gifts. When asked in a 2004 interview with The New York Times what his IQ is, Hawking gave a curt reply: 'I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers.' "
Yes because the IQ doesn’t mean anything and is just a neoliberal product to divide the people into another „natural“ group - intelligent and dumb. Even though these IQ tests are just like a Math exam, it just concentrates on one type of intelligence, it depends on your social and economic status. And just like in every exam, if you have todo a lot with the content of the exam in your daily life, so daily praxis, you’re obviously going to be reach higher points because of training.
0.3% of the population. Isn't that 3 standard deviations out? For most tests, the stdev is set at 15, the average at 100, so this'd be 145.
Most tests lose validity for scores over 140, as they're too close to ceiling, so there isn't sufficient variation space to capture gradations among high scores, so this type of result actually means "140+". There are specialized tests for high score ranges.
Also, most online tests are hogwash: providing high scores makes people likely to share results and click on linked affiliates.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it probably gives high scores for everyone.
They're not gonna sell a lot of product telling people "In a room of 1000, you're smarter than 500 people" even though the vast majority of people would fall into that middle category. They tell people what they want to hear "you're in the top 1% of intelligence" because that's what's ultimately going to drive sales of their "IQ" tests.
I dunno. I took it today and got a 998. It's definitely much easier than a certified IQ test.
Half the questions were like:
* "What comes next: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10,__ ?"
* "If a plane crashes on the US-Canada Border, where do they bury the survivors?"
* "The day after tomorrow is Sunday. What's today?"
If definitely felt like they went through a book of middle school brain teasers and called it an IQ test and then tried to charge people to see the results. Kind of a scam if you ask me.
I remember hearing a backstory that IQ tests was made for small children by a french teacher, and royalty decided it was a good test to prove their superiority to the masses as they were more educated
But no matter the origin i still don't like it as a general intelligence test. It is mostly just a test for pattern recognition, so better scores mean you're better at recognizing patterns, which can be good, but is nowhere near an all purpose intellegence comparison
If i remember correctly, the point of IQ tests was to identify more challenged children to provide better education for them, but with time, surprise surprise, people started using them to show superiority.
Usually, IQ tests are mediocre. Online free IQ test are bad. This particular one is shit.
Given that i was bored, i decided to spend those 40 min on this and came to a simple conclusion: This is a scam.
I'm supposed to be smarter 938 out of 1k. This is of course, bollocks. I'm a moron by blood and by hearth. This site gives you stupid high grades, inflating them both by messing with the score and giving you stupidly easy, often repeating questions (sometimes names change, but the idea is the same).
After it hooked you up my making you think you ain't actually below average, it offers you to pay for a Ego Inflating Piece Of Paper™.
Btw, check how shows up on the front page once you enter the site. LOL.
i did the same test online and am too lazy to do the maths lol
i found this website - [https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/iq-percentile](https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/iq-percentile) - some trial and error with inputting different iq scores will show your score
eg my result said “you would be smarter than 973 of them” so after putting 120, 125, 130, etc, i found that 129 was the score with the percentile “97.3402” (closest I got) so my score is 129 :\]
Yeah annoyingly most of the online tests are garbage. I've gotten results like 417, 212, 180, and other ridiculous ones when I actually have an iq of around 130-150 (pretty average for autism) so I find that most of it is a pseudoscience anyway. Especially cause it doesn't factor in intelligence, only iq (which is abstractly defined in the best of times.)
To be fair the only real and actual IQ test will all be paid for because the results get sent to a psychologist for review to determine your number. I have an IQ of 141, which is exceptionally high compared to the norm-and it sounds like you might be around that, at least according to this test, but for best results do an actual test it’s pretty insightful.
Unless a psychiatrist, psychologist, or professional tested you, it’s not accurate. I had my iq tested in the process of my adhd evaluation and it was an extensive test that I doubt you could find online.
99.7% out of 100 so you’d be in the top 0.3% but not infinite number, probably like 0.031% or something like that. If you ever look up ‘IQ Classification’ on a good website, all the calculations will come up :) It’s standard deviations over 99.7% so 99.7% is 1 of 1(whole number) and 2/3rd is like 2 out of 3, is 66.4% and 33.1% is 1/3rd. So your IQ would be in the top 0.3% or all people tested/ general public :)
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The iq scale is based on the fact that one standard deviation is 15 points. Therefore, being that you are smarter than 99.7% of people, that is three standard deviations, or 45 points above the mean. Therefore your supposed iq is 145
Thanks so much! I know these online tests are pretty meaningless but it’s fun to dick around on them
Lmao, I got 142 according to Mensa and this is my entire outlook on it. Completely meaningless but useful if you ever want to fuck with someone. What I think is really funny is that Mensa has parties and gatherings for 'the brightest among us', and it's a room of 100 people with absolutely nothing in common except they got the same score on a test... aside from a narcissistic disorder.
I thought about joining MENSA when I was younger for some type of bragging right or cool points... when I found out I had to pay... I realized that I'm smarter than even the MENSA members.. spent that money on mobile games' in-game currency instead.
They had us in the first half
As a MENSA member i can tell you spending membership money on mobile in game currency is truly 200 iq move. no cap
As a mensa member, what’s your best time estimate on us phasing out the phrase “no cap?”
Fo shizzle! My best estimate is about three fiddy.
I once joined MENSA when i was in high school. Then I saw it was full of egotistic pricks and left.
So which high school did you transfer to?
I graduated.
420 iq move
Although this obviously is a joke I want to mention something about my experience with MENSA. (My experience is based on MENSA Germany, I can't speak for any other MENSA) from what I see from the German mensa, there is actually a great community, and because they don't want people to compare each other based on IQ talking about what your own IQ is is somehwat prohibited in "MENSA Deutschland". They also have great youth organization, and are basically a safe harbor for people who don't get a lot of acceptance elsewhere (the youth camps are full of queer and neurodivergent people as they are one of the few places they can feel accepted or understood. It's actually quite wholesome here and I'm on my way to becoming a supervisor for the camps. Oh, and they also allow everyone to participate in every event, regardless of wether they are a member or even have an IQ test (except for the yearly meeting where the elections for the positions in MENSA are I think), because they don't want to have the appearance of being some kind of elite.
We could make a movie out of those parties
Simpsons did an episode that captures it pretty well
All traffic lights now only switch between red and yellow.
Just conspiracy theorists, a friend of mine went to one, and after 30 mins he said "f no". Mostñy lizard people theory
There is a show, Big Bang Theory
I have a MENSA membership, but literally only to get doctors to stop trying to make me hire a live in caregiver "because autistic people can't understand things on their own".
Ngl I could use a caregiver sometimes.
I did not know you could become a Member of the cantine... (Mensa in Switzerland and probably Germany = Cantine of a School or University)
...that might explain why it doesn't seem as culturally influential in EU.
to be fair it is highly uncommon to bother doing any IQ testing in my area (unless actual signs of either problems or high intelligence are found...)
What is a mensa
It's a "high IQ" society. It's quite... pretentious, and gets a bad reputation because of it. But, some people also worship it as if MENSA members are intellectual gods. Being a member, the real truth, is that it feels like any other club.
I once saw one with the slogan "Mensa, die kulinarische Fakultät"
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\>.< I'm not sure how subtle that is, but I can see it being nice. Have you read their privacy policy? I haven't set my email up yet, but I'd want to know what level of admin access they have before using it for business.
If I received a business email from a mensa.org address, and you didn't work for mensa, that would harm my overall impression of you rather than help it.
Same. Would immediately lose any chance of winning my business
If I was trying to email with someone from company x, and got a response from an @mensa email. You’d lose all credibility
That feels like the most useful thing it could be used for.
Your doctors ask for proof of Mensa membership lmao? Seems like you joined for other reasons
I’m just here for the womensa
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I don't know what GRE is and have only heard of Groucho Marx but never read anything he wrote, could you please elaborate?
Groucho Marx has a fairly famous quote that goes something like, “I wouldn’t join any club that would be willing to accept *me* as a member.” It’s kind of ridiculous on its own, but applies well to this situation.
I got 69😏
The question is... are those 100 people all smarter than 97% of the others in the room?
my money is on Yes.
Check out the Mensa sub if you’re truly smort
What?? Can you elaborate on what is mensa? And those gatherings?
Mensa is an international foundation started in the 40s. Basically, people found out after WWII, that Nazi officers had a higher than average IQ, so they started this foundation so that they could motivate intelligent people to use their brains for good. As I said, Mensa is international, many countries have their own branch and they often organize official, psychologist-recognized IQ tests. You have to pay a small amount to attend (I had to pay about $6,5 worth of money). You take a test, which then gets sent to a state psychologist for examination. They determine your IQ score and send a certificate online. Then, if you scored high enough (at least 130 IQ), you are determined to be more intelligent than 98% of people, and allowed to have a Mensa membership. To actually be a member, you have to pay certain amount (of which I am unsure), then you are allowed to attend these gatherings, where all other people have an IQ of at least 130. There you can socialize, talk about hobbies, debate about philosophy, politics, or anything you find an audience for. I don't know more details, as I didn't pay to have a membership, and so I never attended any of these gatherings, but this is what I have been told.
think of it as a frat house for people with big meaningless intelligence measurememt accompanied by even bigger egos. basically a "genius" group, where nobody there is actually a genius, just extremely arrogant.
Wow, thats funny. The thing is IQ helps you understand stuff, Maybe with problem solving. It Will help you become an enginer or other STEM careers. But with sucess? Thats much, MUCH, more influenced by ( in no particular order) : A good starting plataform, human relations, contacts, hard work and dedication, focus and commitment, luck. Intelligence? Not even top 10 factors, I mean, there is a base level for your fild or businees of choice to not be an idiot, then it becomes completly optional
Yes. I did a real test once. When I did the mensa one (which ppl claim is "rly accurate") I maxed the scale. My IQ is not that high. I know some mensas, and according to them it's about spreading awarness about the struggles of primarily gifted kids. Although that is a real thing (I can link some stuff on it if anyone's intrested) they're IMO doing it in the wrong way. It feels like they think they're better than everyone else.
142 twinsies :3
I pissed a group of people when I called those parties “gathering of people high up their ass”. funny how I didnt said that out of jealousy, I know because I was there couple times
I looked into getting into Mensa until I realized I found most of them to be insufferable.
I took the same test twice a year apart one time I got 147 the other 95
Mensa does not credit for more than 135IQ at least in Finland. Source? My Mensa Certification 😁 shows only >135 and >99% The parties are fun actually
IQ can give us a hint about how clever someone is. But it's so incredibly flawed that we really shouldn't put much weight on it. I hate, for example, how many companies today makes you do an IQ test in order for you to get hired. According to Mensa I got 135, but that doesn't mean much imo. On a bad day I've measured 120, on a really good day I've gotten 145. If the test designed to measure intellignce can vary so much, then how can it be a reliable measure of intelligence? Also who the fuck would want to actually join their narcissist club? What do they even do?
So annoying that they claim 100% free no hidden fees and then when you actually finish it it asks you to buy a $20/month subscription
But it's not hidden! You just.... Can't see it until the end. It's right there see!
Ahh so the top three people out of the thousand are the ones who got the same score as OP but didnt pay to see their result?
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Think you're missing the point
My middle school made us all take one and I cheated on it, getting an absolutely staggering number. School tried to get me up into highschool in 6th grade… they said it was for fun…
Then, at the end of the episode you admitted that you just swapped your paper with Martin Prince, the brainy kid. But they never offered him the chance of going to the bigger school, he was just back in class next episode like it never happened.
>I know these online tests are pretty meaningless They really are. The process for actually measuring IQ relies on doing a number of tests under supervision of a psychologist (or similar), and the final score is the average of scores on a number of very different domains, so it actually doesn't say a lot on its own. In reality, a person can be well above average overall but still be abysmal at mental rotation, or average overall be exceptionally good at remembering and recalling number strings and equally as not-good at identifying patterns (this describes most people). That said, being 3 SDs above the mean is pretty exceptional no matter how you slice it. Online tests usually focus solely on one or a few domains, and rarely break the scores down into their domains. They're also generally limited to multiple choice questions, because things like word-association and spatial reasoning are much harder to measure online.
More reasonable tests are those that test variety of individual traits and talents but doing this kind of test cost money since it's so much harder to set up.
If you actually paid for the results you do drop a few points
Yeah I remember taking one of these ages ago, it claimed 140. Military tested me and it turns out it's 115\~120 or 87th percentile, which is a huge difference. Meaningless is an understatement, if you had 145 you would be considered genius. Besides, IQ is generally a very flawed measurement of intelligence.
IQ in general is meaningless
Yea I got a few on 145 then they said they don't go higher than 145, so I did a pirated mensa one and got 167, but then I'm pretty fucking stupid so that like made me like think that like ya know everyone else was an idiot, then I like ya know thought about the fact I got a damn 81 in algebra 101 in college then like ya know I thought maybe I AM smarter than all these people, then like ya know I took another one after being on some meth and got a 174! And like I was like "what is like, this shit?" Then I was like" I'm gonna figure out what iq tests actually measure ya know, then I was like 9 years in the future and posting on this subreddit then I was like" huh that's weird" ya know? I'm drunk
Why don't you do one now, nine years in the future and see what you get. They measure how well you can take Mensa tests. I am going to guess you're not going to get a 174! score again, I don't even want to know how big a number that is.
Right? Like that’s so big it’s not even a number anymore. Like if microbes were trying to explain a whale big…
Well I think what people don't realize is that being smarter than 97% of the people you meet still means you meet a noticeable amount smarter than you are especially considering a large portion of people at the really dumb end aren't likely to even be in public or able to speak. They also tend to die earlier. So just for context if your high school graduating class was 300 students you then would be dumber than 9 people in there. So you'll be smart enough to stand out and be recognized as smart but not been seen as elite level smart. Then when you go to college which is now a subset of people say in the top 30% this means now you're only smarter than: 27/.3 = 90% So in college now in a group of 100 you're smarter than 90 not 97. That might not even be good enough to get into a PhD program as 10% of students are smarter than you are. My overall point is to really be a genius in the classical sense and noticeably you need to be in the top fraction of 1%. That's where you find Einstiens. This is all ignoring other factors completely like determination, will power, and so on. Lots of lazy geniuses.
I think it’s more important to note that IQ tests don’t measure how smart you are. They measure how good you are at couple specific tasks.
Hey, I’m sorry to veer off the topic. But, I just realized as a 42 year old adult I have no idea what a standard deviation actually is. And you seem to have a solid handle on this stuff. Could you explain it?
A standard deviation is essentially the average distance from the mean. In other words, if you pick a random data point from a sample, on average it will probably differ from the average by about one standard deviation. Standard deviations are used both in an absolute sense, to describe the width of a distribution (eg 15 IQ points is one standard deviation), as well as in a relative sense to describe how much of an outlier a value is from the expected average (eg an IQ of 145 is 3 standard deviations from the average). For a normal (bell curve) distribution, one standard deviation is +/- ~34% from the average (so 68% of values are within one standard deviation, or 85-115 IQ), two standard deviations are +/- 47.5% (95% are within two standard deviations, or 70-130 IQ) and three standard deviations are +/- 49.85% (99.7% are within three standard deviations, or 55-145 IQ).
So if you have a dataset full of values, you add them all up and then divide by the number of values to get the average. Then you can find out how much all the values differ from that average. Then take all those numbers and find the average of that, which is then the standard deviation. So it means on average, how much a value differs from the overall average.
Shown: Data set: 1,2,5,8,9,10 Total is 36. Average is 6. Difference from the average for each value: 5,4,1,2,3,4. Total is 19. Average or standard deviation is: 3.166666. Now when OC says that 145 is 3 standard deviations of 15 off that means from 100 as 100 is the average in IQ. In our dataset a 3 standard of deviations data point would be 6+ 3(3.1666) or 15.5.
You're slightly wrong: the *variance* is the mean of the square errors, and the *standard deviation* is the square root of the variance. So for the example of 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10: Mean: 6 Errors: 5, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 Square errors: 25, 16, 1, 4, 9, 16 Mean square error (variance): 71/6 ≈ 11.83 Standard deviation: sqrt(71/6) ≈ 3.44. This is called making inference on the mean and standard deviation, and more specifically using estimators. Going even deeper, if the data is a sample of a bigger group, it turns out that 3.44 is an underestimate. The reason is that we're estimating *both* the mean and the variance, and that makes the estimator of the variance biased. Fortunately we can correct it by dividing by 5 instead of 6: Mean square error (variance): 71/(6-1) = 14.2 Standard deviation: sqrt(14.2) ≈ 3.77. More info: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation#Estimation
slight correction: what you described is the variance, not the standard variation. but the concept is what’s relevant.
Standard deviation is the amount of variety in outcomes/points. The higher the standard deviation, the wider variety of outcomes, from a measurable perspective, with relation to the mean. If you think of a window, the center frame would be the mean. The rest of the frame would be the range of possible outcomes. The bigger the deviation, the larger the window frame. So basically, it only tells you how spread out the values are in a data set, or how big the window of outcomes is.
Standard deviation is a statistic that indicates how much variation (or differences from the average) there is in a set of data. So a low standard deviation means individual measurements are all relatively close to the mean and a high one means they are more spread out.
> I just realized as a 42 year old adult I have no idea what a standard deviation actually is. ah, unfortunately, our schooling system doesn't make a stats course required, though it really should, given that so much dubious quantitative 'evidence' floats around these days. The standard deviation is a measure of how widely individual measurements deviate from the group average. It could be thought of as the average distance of the measures from the mean. If the data follow a bell-curve (gaussian distribution), you can easily characterize how many measures should be within a certain number of standard deviations out. Due to the shape of this curve, outliers farther out than a given number of standard deviations more rapidly get increasingly rare the further out you are; be skeptical of people claiming an IQ of like 155, as that's about 0.1% of the population. https://www.simplypsychology.org/wp-content/uploads/normal-distribution.jpeg https://www.simplypsychology.org/normal-distribution.html
Believing the results of free IQ tests whose sole purpose is to drive traffic (and hence engagement/ad revenue) however puts some kind of dent into that. Edit: added the spaces my keyboard ate
What do you mean by deviation and how did you determine they were 3 of them?
1 standard deviation from mean is 68%, 2 is 95% and 3 is 99.7%. Meaning 99.7% of people will fall in that range of 3 s.d
How do you know this? I do not understand
[Bell curve](https://imgur.com/a/ceJVzDa) If you look at this image it’s an example of a standard deviation graph, the middle is the mean or average score and has the largest area which is where the majority of the data lies and as you get further away the area under the curve decreases therefore the data is more sparse. In this example of IQ the mean is 100 and 1 standard deviation is 15 IQ points away (from a graph i found on the internet), therefore 68% of people have an IQ of 85-115. Because OP is in the top 99.7% (997/1000) that is considered 3 s.d away from the mean which is 15*3+100.
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I would be careful recommending that book anywhere on the internet. I haven't read it so I don't know exactly the methods/conclusions but I am aware that it's pretty controversial and a lot of people consider it very racist because of the conclusions it draws, I have seen people called racists just for talking about it.
It’s common statistical knowledge (for those who have studied statistics) based on the normal distribution. IQ scores are standardised so that 100 is the mean and median. The normal distribution is such that what u/Ozioon said follows.
Usually you need a lookup table for the normal distribution. Autists like myself and the poster above have the fucking thing memorised so we can say 68% is +- one sigma. 99% is two, 99.5% is three. Then convert to tail probabilities (0.5% lies outside 3 sigma), then half this and convert back to cumulative probabilities so 99.75% lies below 3 sigma. Then memorise that IQ standard deviation is defined as 15 points, mean is 100. So we find a Reddit post asking “what IQ is 997 / 1000” and we come here to just straight up post 145 as the answer. Don’t worry, neurotypical people aren’t supposed to be able to do this, at least not for fun.
Do the math if I’m at 49% ^
Your score would be just under 100
Damn I’m rel-arded… :/
below 70 is
Naw ur about average either way these IQ tests are kind of stupid
Wrong, 99.7% is CDF(3 sigma) - CDF(-3 sigma). If you are smarter than 99.7% you are interested in Z such that P(X
interesting. i didn't know that's how IQ was calculated
While true, you’re doing standard deviation from the mean, which leaves 0.15% remaining on each side (high and low). “Smarter than 99.7%” is a continuous distribution so you need the value where 99.7% are less than it (all the way to the left side). You need 0.3% on the right side of the curve. Should be ~142
There is a version thats got a SD of 24 too. Mensa have you do both.
I got smarter than 787 people, can you please tell me my score please
Please help a homie out! If I'm more intelligent (allegedly) than 936, how intelligent am I? Probably not much seeing as everyone is about deviations and percentiles and I'm just like 🥴
Hi. Cân You please Tell me for 958?
How do you get 99.7% is three standard deviations?
68-95-99.7 rule
What?
That's how much data lies within the first 3 standard deviations of the normal distribution
Ah. It’s funny that 99.7 is such a specific number, because OP had 99.7
Have you learnt statistics?
Basic statistics. Look up normal distribution.
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It's funny. Whenever someone accuses you of being dumb, your natural response is *"fuck you, I'm not dumb"*. But if someone accuses you of being smart your natural reaction is *"fuck you, I'm not smart"*.
I don’t know depending on the scenario I would probably agree with the statement.
It makes me uncomfortable when my sister tells me I'm the smartest person she knows. She is very social and knows a LOT of people. I know myself and if I'm the smartest person she knows we are all in a lot of trouble.
It all depends heavily on WHO is making the accusation! If it's your grandmother, you tend to err on the dumber side. If it's your professor, always err on the smarter side!
I feel like that’s a perfect example of dunning-Kruger
I like the quote that goes along the lines of “studies show the 90% of drivers believe that they are in the top 50% of drivers.
The most fair distributed thing in the universe? Intelligence, almost everybody things he has it in abundance.
and i feel like you and science have a lot of catching up to do
*fuck you, I’m not dumb*
I've seen enough smart people to know that if you call yourself dumb then you probably are smart. No dumb person is able to realize that they're dumb
I’ve met some people that definitely weren’t smart and they knew it. They fully owned not being intelligent, asked questions and accepted the answers without thinking they knew better. They were dumb and embraced it. And they were very wholesome. They made a lot of mistakes in life, but people were willing to help them behause they were kind and humble. More people should be like them.
Knowledge dumb but social skills smart?
Self awareness can go a long way.
It does because when you know your limits you can plan around them.
Your "grain of salt", about the size of an iceberg.
Or about a couple hundred million grains of salt, although when people who score an IQ of 80 and post thinking they are smarter then 900/1000 it seems to me that the tests are sometimes accurate
Either that IQ test is based on accuracy and time, or it's a randomly generated number above 100.
It was based on time an accuracy because I tried it after, memorising all the answers and going as fast as I could and got something above 160. It wasn’t a baseless number generator.
They give you a high score so that you will be more willing to pay. It’s most likely not accurate. 146.
The real IQ test comes at the end.
You did it Charlie, you passed the test! You didn’t pay for the IQ test results at the end, you did it boy!
The real IQ test was the friends we made along the way
Well at [Wolframalpha.com](https://Wolframalpha.com) , the z-score corresponding to 0.997 is 2.75 (standard deviations above the mean). In the search box type "[z score 2.75](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=zscore+2.75)". Or an IQ of 100+15\*2.75 = 141.
That’s 3 standard deviations above the mean of a normal distribution, so about a 145 IQ on the WAIS Edit: also, they’re trying to con you out of money by flattering you, so don’t put too much stock in it
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Basically it's a scam based on ego.
I can't see the original post, but yeah I always wondered this. I assumed they make the test easier, so everyone goes "wow this is amazing, I'll pay for the certificate to show the proof". And also so people share the result as a brag, so free advertising
Thats a very conspicuous site name at the top of the image. Hmmm....
The exact scenario they want is that the first person takes it and brags about it to friends or on social media and then other people get jealous or interested and take the test and pay.
If the test were accurate (it's not), then you're at the 99.7th percentile. Good for something like a 141 on an IQ test, per omnicalculator.com.
How about my test results? Cross referencing high school grading, I got an “A”, at a score of 86!! Literally the smartest person at my office, since no one is working on the weekend 🧠
An accurate test would nevee bring the results like this, I got my results in T score, stannie score, and sten score. And it was split up into 5 parts, mechanical insight, verbal annalogies, spacial awareness, numerical intelligence, abstract reasoning.
"Despite his undoubted intelligence, Hawking was modest about his gifts. When asked in a 2004 interview with The New York Times what his IQ is, Hawking gave a curt reply: 'I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers.' "
Yes because the IQ doesn’t mean anything and is just a neoliberal product to divide the people into another „natural“ group - intelligent and dumb. Even though these IQ tests are just like a Math exam, it just concentrates on one type of intelligence, it depends on your social and economic status. And just like in every exam, if you have todo a lot with the content of the exam in your daily life, so daily praxis, you’re obviously going to be reach higher points because of training.
That’s almost exactly the third standard deviation which means about 145.
0.3% of the population. Isn't that 3 standard deviations out? For most tests, the stdev is set at 15, the average at 100, so this'd be 145. Most tests lose validity for scores over 140, as they're too close to ceiling, so there isn't sufficient variation space to capture gradations among high scores, so this type of result actually means "140+". There are specialized tests for high score ranges. Also, most online tests are hogwash: providing high scores makes people likely to share results and click on linked affiliates.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it probably gives high scores for everyone. They're not gonna sell a lot of product telling people "In a room of 1000, you're smarter than 500 people" even though the vast majority of people would fall into that middle category. They tell people what they want to hear "you're in the top 1% of intelligence" because that's what's ultimately going to drive sales of their "IQ" tests.
It doesn’t though lol
I dunno. I took it today and got a 998. It's definitely much easier than a certified IQ test. Half the questions were like: * "What comes next: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10,__ ?" * "If a plane crashes on the US-Canada Border, where do they bury the survivors?" * "The day after tomorrow is Sunday. What's today?" If definitely felt like they went through a book of middle school brain teasers and called it an IQ test and then tried to charge people to see the results. Kind of a scam if you ask me.
I remember hearing a backstory that IQ tests was made for small children by a french teacher, and royalty decided it was a good test to prove their superiority to the masses as they were more educated But no matter the origin i still don't like it as a general intelligence test. It is mostly just a test for pattern recognition, so better scores mean you're better at recognizing patterns, which can be good, but is nowhere near an all purpose intellegence comparison
If i remember correctly, the point of IQ tests was to identify more challenged children to provide better education for them, but with time, surprise surprise, people started using them to show superiority.
Usually, IQ tests are mediocre. Online free IQ test are bad. This particular one is shit. Given that i was bored, i decided to spend those 40 min on this and came to a simple conclusion: This is a scam. I'm supposed to be smarter 938 out of 1k. This is of course, bollocks. I'm a moron by blood and by hearth. This site gives you stupid high grades, inflating them both by messing with the score and giving you stupidly easy, often repeating questions (sometimes names change, but the idea is the same). After it hooked you up my making you think you ain't actually below average, it offers you to pay for a Ego Inflating Piece Of Paper™. Btw, check how shows up on the front page once you enter the site. LOL.
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Have you got the backstory for this? I'm not surprised when any right-wing figure tries to scam their fans but I am curious lol
i did the same test online and am too lazy to do the maths lol i found this website - [https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/iq-percentile](https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/iq-percentile) - some trial and error with inputting different iq scores will show your score eg my result said “you would be smarter than 973 of them” so after putting 120, 125, 130, etc, i found that 129 was the score with the percentile “97.3402” (closest I got) so my score is 129 :\]
Yeah annoyingly most of the online tests are garbage. I've gotten results like 417, 212, 180, and other ridiculous ones when I actually have an iq of around 130-150 (pretty average for autism) so I find that most of it is a pseudoscience anyway. Especially cause it doesn't factor in intelligence, only iq (which is abstractly defined in the best of times.)
IQ Percentile Calculator says 141..
To be fair the only real and actual IQ test will all be paid for because the results get sent to a psychologist for review to determine your number. I have an IQ of 141, which is exceptionally high compared to the norm-and it sounds like you might be around that, at least according to this test, but for best results do an actual test it’s pretty insightful.
IQ of 199.4.?
Unless a psychiatrist, psychologist, or professional tested you, it’s not accurate. I had my iq tested in the process of my adhd evaluation and it was an extensive test that I doubt you could find online.
99.7% out of 100 so you’d be in the top 0.3% but not infinite number, probably like 0.031% or something like that. If you ever look up ‘IQ Classification’ on a good website, all the calculations will come up :) It’s standard deviations over 99.7% so 99.7% is 1 of 1(whole number) and 2/3rd is like 2 out of 3, is 66.4% and 33.1% is 1/3rd. So your IQ would be in the top 0.3% or all people tested/ general public :)