IQ Test Produces Shock Results
My wife is currently studying for a specialist teaching qualification. Part of her course is to assess people's IQ. Wishing to hone her test-giving skills she asked for volunteers at home. My daughter and I said, 'Yes.' I soon discovered that was the wrong answer.
If anyone ever asks you to do an IQ test 'for fun', don't do it! There are three possible outcomes and only one has a smart objective.
The first outcome is when participants discover they are far more intelligent than they expected. It doesn't happen often as intelligence is normally allied to ego, but on the rare occasion that it does, it means that that person would make an ideal assistant on Countdown, is usually in demand for pub quizzes, and is one of only a handful of people who actually knows what MENSA* stands for.
The second outcome is when the person finds they truly are as dumb as they first thought - as proven by the fact they did the test anyway. I'm sure the people who fall into this category would claim, 'That's not so bad. I already knew I wasn't the brightest candle on the cake.' Yes, that's true, but now everyone else knows it too. And anyone who tells their friends upfront that they are applying to MENSA might as well skip the actual test and go straight to the category marked as really rather stupid. When their score proves what they already knew, short of lying about their result - which they're not smart enough to think of doing anyway - they'll have to reveal it to their friends. If I was them, I'd cut to the chase and get a T-shirt printed with My QI score confirms I'm officially backward written on it.
The third and worst outcome in my opinion, and my own experience in this test, is where the candidate discovers they're not as intelligent as they first thought. Now, you'd think we'd all get used to this fact as we're tested all the time in our everyday lives. But no, we always find excuses for our mental deficiencies. Every time I enter a pub quiz and come second - from the bottom - it's always because we're short of team members not because we've been universally challenged. In fact, every round usually has its own excuse - 'Why do they always choose obscure topics like sport and music?', 'I'm a Corrie fan, I don't watch Eastenders' or 'It's the quizmaster's fault for not allowing half marks on the spelling questions.'
It was the same when I attempted crosswords and sudokus while commuting to and from work. I'd always claim, 'I would have finished it if my station hadn't come along.' To be honest it could have been the London to Edinburgh slow train and it wouldn't have made any difference. My most embarrassing crossword failure was when I had to ask my wife for help with the word for five across. 'The clue is "fake ammunition" and it's got 6 letters - blank, "L" blank, blank, "K". Any ideas?' Sometimes your mind just goes fake ammunition.
Unfortunately IQ tests don't allow for excuses. That's the theory anyway, and they back it up with scientific sounding words like perceptual reasoning, verbal comprehension and processing speed index. Which means there's no general knowledge round, you're not offered a fish and chip supper halfway through, and saying you don't understand the question automatically places you in the thick category.
And things started out so well for me too...
'Using these pieces of card,' said Gillian in her best teacher voice. 'Please position them to make the shape shown in this picture. Starting...'
'Finished!'
'In future please do not begin until I've started the timer.'
'This is fun. It's like doing jigsaws. What's next?'
'Please do not ask questions. I'm supposed to ask the questions.'
'No questions. Got it. Am I allowed to talk? Oops, sorry, that was a question.'
Gillian frowned, 'I'd rather you didn't. Here are your next pieces.'
'Righty ho. Fin...I mean, you need to start your timer.'
A short while later.
'In this section you will be shown sequences of images. In each case you should tell me which of the four given options completes the sequence.'
'A.'
'In this section you will be...'
'No. I heard the first time. The answer's "A" '
My wife pointedly started her stopwatch, 'Your time starts now.'
'A.'
'Move on to the next sequence please...'
A longer while later.
'Phew, they got quite tricky towards the end. By the way, why did we stop early?'
'No questions, please.'
'But there's one more sequence left, I can see the empty box on your marking sheet.'
'The test halts if you get a certain number of questions wrong in succession.'
'What? I thought it was weighted by the time I took. The faster the answer the higher the mark. I'd have studied the pictures more closely if I'd known.'
'There is a time limit to each question. Can we move on to the next section, please?'
'I'm not sure about this...changing the rules halfway through...'
Next came the verbal analogies round. Thirty six questions that started with an example of a linked pair of words, then asked for the missing word to complete the second pair.
'...thank you for that,' said Gillian. 'And now for the final section.'
'Whoa! We didn't finish that round either. What's going on? And those links were tenuous to say the least. I thought you said this was a serious test.'
'It is. Can we continue, please?'
A frustratingly short while later.
'...and that completes the vocabulary section. Please wait while I work out your overall score.'
'Someone was having a laugh in that section. Half those words were made up!' Gillian ignored my ramblings as she cross-referenced my scores and age against different tables to obtain a standardised result.
'Thank you for doing the test. I am pleased to inform you that your IQ is...'
Let's just say that my IQ score placed me firmly in the mildly gifted range. Mildly gifted? That's like saying you're averagely good looking. I don't want to be mildly gifted, I want to be a genius, but without the flares, long hair and beard. I want my brain to be sought after for research purposes after I die. I want to join MENSA - but only so I can sit round a table debating Carol Vordeman and Rachel Riley's figures. And I want to be ranked with the likes of Einstein - relatively speaking of course.
What I don't want to be is lower down the IQ scale than my fourteen year old daughter. Bethany took the same test and announced a score that placed her firmly in the more mildly gifted than Daddy category. To make matters worse, as the tester, Gillian wasn't allowed to complete the same test for comparison. Which means I can never refute her claim that Bethany inherited her intelligence from her mother's side. Christian wisely steered clear of the whole debacle which automatically makes him the most intelligent person in our family.
It's not that I begrudge my children being smart - in fact I positively encourage it at exam time - but they already have youth, innocence and energy on their side, so I think I'm entitled to a tad more brainpower than my kids. If it was a common sense test they'd lose out every time, but it wasn't.
Of course I am smart enough - I do have a Ph.D. after all - to know that the longer I rant on, the more people will start to point fingers and say, 'He's really not happy is he? Any minute now and he'll start talking about his doctorate.'
Which is why I've devised this alternative IQ test for anyone out there who thinks they're cleverer than they actually are - like me. It's loosely based on the Bow-Locks test, is demographically standardised, and heavily time-weighted.
If you wish to take my alternative IQ test then, good luck, and click here.
In the meantime, this mildly gifted writer is off to research brain transplants.
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*I didn't know either. I thought MENSA was an acronym for Massaging Egos of Notionally Smart Alecs but no. In fact, it's Latin for "table", "mind" and "month". For supposedly intelligent people who meet once a month round a table to debate issues of the mind, you'd think they'd come up with a better name. WOMENSA perhaps? (back)