IQ

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What is an IQ Scale
Intelligence quotient
U.S. Presidents and Vice Presidents
Take a FREE IQ Test
What your IQ score doesn't tell you
Other Politicians

 

IQ scale


What does the IQ scale measure? What is an average score? How high can an IQ be? Here are some answers to these and other questions.

First of all, the concept of IQ was developed by either the German psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Stern in 1912, or by Lewis Terman in 1916, depending on which sources you consult. Intelligence testing was first done on a large scale before either of these dates. In 1904 psychologist Alfred Binet was commissioned by the French government to create a testing system to differentiate intellectually normal children from those who were inferior.

From Binet's work the IQ scale called the "Binet Scale," (and later the "Simon-Binet Scale") was developed. Sometime later, "intelligence quotient," or "IQ," entered our vocabulary. Lewis M. Terman revised the Simon-Binet IQ Scale, and in 1916 published the Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Scale of Intelligence (also known as the Stanford-Binet). The following scale resulted for classifying IQ scores:

Over 140 - Genius or almost genius
120 - 140 - Very superior intelligence
110 - 119 - Superior intelligence
90 - 109 - Average or normal intelligence
80 - 89 - Dullness
70 - 79 - Borderline deficiency in intelligence
Under 70 - Feeble-mindedness

Normal Distribution of IQ Scores

50% of IQ scores fall between 90 and 110
70% of IQ scores fall between 85 and 115
|95% of IQ scores fall between 70 and 130
99.5% of IQ scores fall between 60 and 140

Low IQ & Mental Retardation

An IQ under 70 is considered as "mental retardation" or limited mental ability. 5% of the population falls below 70 on IQ tests. The severity of the mental retardation is commonly broken into 4 levels:

50-70 - Mild mental retardation (85%)
35-50 - Moderate mental retardation (10%)
20-35 - Severe mental retardation (4%)
IQ < 20 - Profound mental retardation (1%)

High IQ & Genius IQ

Genius or near-genius IQ is considered to start around 140 to 145. Less than 1/4 of 1 percent fall into this category. Here are some common designations on the IQ scale:

115-124 - Above average
125-134 - Gifted
135-144 - Very gifted
145-164 - Genius
165-179 - High genius
180-200 - Highest genius

What your IQ score doesn't tell you
Three-year-old Alexis Martin reads at a fifth-grade level. She taught herself fluent Spanish using her parents' iPad.

"From 12 to 18 months old, we'd be driving around in the car, and she would recite her bedtime story from the night before," her dad, Ian, told CNN affiliate KNXV. "She didn't just recite them; she recited them exactly."

Alexis is the youngest member of Arizona's Mensa chapter. American Mensa (PDF) is an organization for people with IQs in the top 2%. The average IQ is 100. Martin's tops 160.

Mensa has more than 55,000 members nationally. You'd probably recognize some of the more famous ones: Nolan Gould, who plays Luke on ABC's "Modern Family"; Richard Bolles, the author of "What Color is Your Parachute?"; the Blue Power Ranger (OK, he's a fictional member).

But what does an IQ score really tell us about a person? Will Alexis be a genius for life? And if you still can't speak Spanish at age 50, should you just give up?

What your IQ score means

An Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, is a measure of what psychologists call our "fluid and crystallized intelligence." Put simply, an IQ test measures your reasoning and problem-solving abilities.

There are different kinds of IQ tests, but most analyze your visual, mathematical and language abilities as well as your memory and information processing speed. A licensed psychologist administers a series of subtests; the results are then combined into one score: your IQ.

"Anybody with very high IQ, they have the ability to manipulate, process and interpret information at a deeper level and a higher speed than the average person," explained Mensa's gifted youth specialist, Lisa Van Gemert.

What your specific numerical score means depends on the test you take. IQ is really a measure of how well you do on a test compared with other people your age.

Scores are generally shown on a bell curve. The average score is 100. People to the far left or far right of the curve are outliers. Alexis, for example, is on the far right of the curve for children her age.

What it doesn't mean

"The difficulty with these kinds of tests is that they're a snapshot," Van Gemert said. "We see what the kid looks like on this day, on this particular test, with this particular tester."

An IQ score doesn't measure your practical intelligence: knowing how to make things work, says Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. It doesn't measure your creativity. It doesn't measure your curiosity.

It doesn't tell your parents or teachers about your emotional readiness. Maybe as a 5-year-old, you can read and understand The Economist. But are you prepared to deal with stories about war-torn countries or prisoners on death row?

It would be a mistake, Van Gemert says, to look at a child with a high IQ as nothing more than a brain. Like any trait -- blue eyes, big feet -- their IQ is just one part of who they are.

Your IQ can change over time

A lot of factors can affect your IQ score over time. Poverty. Nutrition. Stress. How familiar you are with standardized tests. Nisbett's research has shown that children from lower socioeconomic levels adopted into a middle-class family often increase their IQ scores by 15 to 20 points.

"Heritability is not as great as some people (believe)," Nisbett said. "Environmental factors are very potent."

In one study, researchers tested 33 adolescents' intelligence once and then again four years later. In that short amount of time, some of their IQ scores varied by more than 20 points. The changes matched with structural and functional changes in their brains.

Kids who are geniuses at age 2 rarely stay that way, experts say. It's easier, Van Gemert explains, for young children to distinguish themselves on the curve.

In other words, it's easy to spot a genius 3-year-old when she's reading at a fifth-grade level and speaks fluent Spanish. But what makes one 47-year-old more intelligent than another? Is it education? Life experience? Their ability to put together a piece of furniture from IKEA?

You're smarter than your ancestors

Since the early 1990s, when IQ tests were first standardized, researchers have seen substantial increases in IQ scores with each passing generation. So the average 10-year-old today would score higher on the same test than a 10-year-old from 1954.

This doesn't mean we necessarily have bigger brains than our great-great-grandfathers; it just means we've improved our abilities to think logically, solve problems and/or use our abilities in hypothetical situations.

It's known as the Flynn Effect, for moral philosopher James Flynn.

"The cars that people drove in 1900 have altered because the roads are better and because of technology," Flynn said in a TED Talk last year. "And our minds have altered, too. We've gone from people who confronted a concrete world and analyzed that world primarily in terms of how much it would benefit them to people who confront a very complex world."

For instance, education has changed. We've learned to classify the world, to compare groups like animals or modes of transportation, Flynn said. We've also been taught to accept hypothetical situations (you remember algebra, right?). Our ancestors dealt only with what was right in front of them.

Our jobs have also changed. In the early 1900s, only 3% of Americans had professions that were "cognitively demanding," Flynn said. Today, 35% of us do. As such we're used to solving complex, hypothetical problems, like the ones on an IQ test.

Health factors may have had an influence as well. Studies have shown that early childhood immunization rates are a big predictor of a nation's average IQ score. So decreasing infectious diseases worldwide may have attributed to the overall increase in subsequent generations' IQ scores.

"From an energetics standpoint, a developing human will have difficulty building a brain and fighting off infectious diseases at the same time, as both are very metabolically costly tasks," the authors of one study wrote.

Not a genius? Don't panic

You probably remember the dreaded SAT or ACT test you took in high school. That's a type of IQ test. But Nisbett believes that a student's grade-point average is a better predictor of their success than their test scores.

"GPA is raw smarts times how hard you work times self-control times a lot of other things. That's true for success in life," he said. "I see graduate students with extremely high IQs who can't achieve much because they're lacking in curiosity. ...They're lacking the ability to get along with people."

Having a high IQ is not a guarantee of success, Van Gemert agrees, just as having a lower IQ is not a guarantee of failure. Good habits, perseverance and a strong work ethic are just as important as intelligence.

"If you don't develop those other qualities, you can waste a smart IQ," she said.

Van Gemert recommends that parents view their homes as a petri dish, one where they're trying to grow their children. That means lots of time spent together, interacting, and lots of books, building blocks and board games.

"The most important thing we can do for kids is to play with them," she said.
Source: www.cnn.com/2014/02/19/health/iq-score-meaning/

U.S. Presidents

IQ
President
Party
P IQ
Rank
Vice President
VP
Rak
Total
Rank

George Washington

None/Fed

132.5
11

John Adams

142.5

John Adams

Fed

142.5
8

Thomas Jefferson

160.0

Thomas Jefferson

Dem/Rep

160.0
2

Aaron Burr, G

Thomas Jefferson

Dem/Rep

George Clinton

James Madison

Dem/Rep

George Clinton

James Madison

Dem/Rep

Elbridge Gerry

James Monroe

Dem/Rep

Daniel Tompkins

John Quincy Adams

Dem/Rep

168.8
1

John Calhoun

Andrew Jackson

Dem

John Calhoun

Andrew Jackson

Dem

Martin van Buren

Martin van Buren

Dem

Richard Johnson

William H. Harrison

Whig

John Tyler

John Tyler

Whig

James K. Polk

Dem

George Dallas

Zachary Taylor

Whig

Millard Fillmore

Millard Fillmore

Whig

Franklin Pierce

Dem

William King

James Buchanan

Dem

John Breckinridge

Abraham Lincoln

Rep

140.0
9

Hannibal Hamlin,

Abraham Lincoln

Rep

140.0
9

Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson

N U

Ulysses S. Grant

Rep

Schuyler Colfax

Rutherford Hayes

Rep

William Wheeler

James Garfield

Rerp

Chester Arthur

Chester Arthur

Rep

Grover Cleveland

Dem

Thomas Hendriks

William McKinley

Rep

Garret Hobart,

William McKinley

Rep

Theodore Roosevelt

149.0

Theodore Roosevelt

Rep

149.0
6

Charles Fairbanks

William Taft

Rep

James Sherman

Woodrow Wilson

Dem

Thomas Marshall

Warren Harding

Rep

Calvin Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge

Rep

Charles Dawes

Herbert C. Hoover

Rep

129.77
16

Charles Curtis

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Dem

139.6

10

John Garner,,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Dem

139.6
10

Henry Wallace

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Dem

139.6
10

Harry S. Truman

Harry S Truman

Dem

Alben Barkley

Dwight David Eisenhower

Rep

131.9
12

Alben Barkley

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Dem

158.0
3

Lyndon Johnson

Lyndon Johnson

Dem

Hubert Humphrey

Richard Milhous Nixon

Rep

131.1
13

Spiro Agnew

Richard Milhous Nixon

Rep

131.1
13

Gerald R. Ford

Gerald R. Ford

Rep

127.0
17

Nelson Rockefeller

James (Jimmy) Earl Carter, Jr

Dem

153.0
5

Walter Mondale

Ronald Wilson Reagan

Rep

130.0
15

George H. W. Bush

George H. W. Bush

Rep

130.1
14

James Danforth (Dan) Quayle

William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton

Dem

156.0
4

Al Gore

George W. Bush

Rep

124.0
18

Richard Cheney

Barack Obama

Dem

145.0
7

Joseph Biden

Donald Trump

Rep

na

Legend: N U - National Union. na - not available
Source:
choiceorlife.com/smartest-dumbest-u-s-presidents-ranked-by-iq-score/9/?utm_campaign=col-mob-us-pri1&utm_source=outbrain&utm_content=2563cc&utm_medium=707901

Other politicians

Jeb Bush 128 (17)
Ted Cruz 135 (11)
Mitt Romney 142 (9)
Hillary Clinton 140 (9)

Donald Trump 120-130 range. Nobody seems to know. At 120 he would be the lowest President and four points below George W. Bush, to a possible high of 130 (The ONLY Presidents we have on record below 130 are Herbert C. Hoover (129.77), Gerald R. Ford (127.0) and George W. Bush (124.0), all Republicans. The lowest Democrat - Franklin Delano Roosevelt at 139.6. (Source.)

Donald Trump the mystery man and leader, for seven years of the birther movement. We don't know if this secretive man has graduated from college or taken an IQ test or filed taxes or has a health record. Does he actually have a birth certificate in the name of Donald Trump? It is estimated that his IQ is in the 120-130 range. Of other politicians, Milt Romney would have ranked 9th with 142.0, Hillary Clinton at 9th with 140.0, Ted Cruz at 11 with 135, Jeb Bush at 17, 128 and Donald Trump, at a high of 15 tieing Reagan at 130, or a low 4 points below George W. Bush (our lowest President at 124.0) at 120.0.

While Donald Trump hasn’t outwardly said his IQ, based on his education level, he graduated from Pennsylvania with a Bachelor’s of Science in economics and anthropology. Trump never released his high school and college transcripts, which could mean he may be dumber than we think. Donald Trump won the electoral college for 45th President of the United States but fell short by almost 3 million votes from winning the will of the people. And that only represents the votes for Hillary Clinton and not those for other presidential candidates. He definitely doesn't speak for the average voting American.

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