On the Internet, find some free IQ tests that you can take. Then take at least one — maybe more. You’ll get a score of some sort.
Then post something here on this page about what you did and what you found out. You may consider the following questions:
- Do you think that these tests appropriately evaluate your intelligence?
- Do you feel that the tests were adequate? Why or why not?
- How would you change the tests to make them reflect more accurately what you consider to be your “intelligence”?
Want extra credit? Respond thoughtfully to something someone else has posted!
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i think that you cannot find out how smart you are just by takin 1 or 2 iq especially not of an online id test . Ppls inteligence canot be found by answering 15 question about maths and grammar. That just showes your ability to think or alos common sence.
the test are not adequate to find out you correct iq. because like stephen said some ppls might not have learnd about that subject or know anything about it. which would bring you score down .
In order to answer this question, I think that first we need to address the question of what exactly intelligence is. Once that is established, the methods used to assess one’s intelligence can be chosen. However, at the moment, it seems to me that there are a lot of guesses concerning what intelligence really is, and therefore the IQ tests that are meant to measure this, are inadequate. Although I understand some of the logic behind the creation of most IQ tests, I cannot say I believe them to appropriately evaluate intelligence. My reasoning for this is that in a lot of cases the tests only test you in certain areas, disregarding others. The test I took, for instance, was entirely based on common knowledge. However it mentioned names and places that I was not familiar with, and therefore the question became incomprehensible to me as a test-taker. Some tests are more focused on academic areas, and might even focus on mathematical logic and numbers. This does not test one’s intelligence, simply one’s academic abilities in Math, if even that. In order for the tests to reflect more accurately our ‘intelligence’, I would suggest that the tests cover broader areas, so that questions embrace a larger diversity of subjects, methods, and skills. In this way, the subsequent score is correct in terms of all the skills of the person taking the test, and not just a fragment of that person’s ability.
As it has been said by alot of comments, and especially Eirik’s, intelligence Can’t be define only on one skills or ability. As person to person are different , this just creates alot of variable on what intelligence is. Not everyone is the same. So is intelligence; there are alot of different kinds. For example if A would score in one IQ test and B would score less in the same test, Maybe on the next test the result would be the other way round. Also Person A could be more analytical than person B , and B is more a mathematical person. As a musician, I believe music is also a type of intelligence because Someone who is smarter than me at any other given subject wont exactly achieve the same level of IQ test on music as i Would.
This test doesn’t really test one’s intelligent fully as there will be gaps on other skills. Maybe for generalise IQ it would sum it quite ambigous but well enough. However in order to achieve a thorough IQ test, Alot of variables in skills have to be considered. Also due to one’s ethnic origin should be taken into account.
I do believe we would be able to make a test that will fully if not close to grade an person’s IQ but it would be a very long long process just to take it.
I don’t think an IQ can show how someone is intelligent. It can maybe give a hint on how someone could be smart but there are lots of different kinds of intelligences and here i think only logic is putted in. All this IQ test are just showing how logic you are more than “what is your intelligence. I think the test is adequate only to show how skilled you are but not how smart maybe is more adequate, at least i think, to say it shows how logic you are. It could be more accurate if it actually made us do something practical so that it can show both manual and logic skills.
In my opinion,I honestly dont think that IQ tests and designated tests which result in showing your intelligence help define your intelligence, I dont believe it does it accurately as opposed to an original IQ test on paper following all guidelines. In Christina’s comment, she explained how IQ ads and popups come up all the time while surfing the net, “How smart are you?, is a popular one. First of all, as soon as you see that, its flashing and all bold letters, and right away you exit, obviously you realize its fake or its a stupid game. How far can you trust those popups, if it was an official test and had actualy calibur it would have its own website and links, not just popping up on popular sites wher it needs to be seen. Intellignece isnt just Academic smart, it has many different levels…such as personal smarts, and street smart, also day to day knowldge ties in there. Also, these tests on the internet dont had a logical balanced out question set, your intellignence cant be accurately calculated through a series of 20 or more non-related questions. Sure, it asks you to add 10+5, and maybe to replace a wrong word for the correct one in a sentence, but IQ tests aer logically written, and the questions have a sort of realtion and pattern which correctly evaluate your general intelligence. Many IQ tests on the internet show you a lot of shapes and specific patterns which dotn focus well on knowledge, IQ tests should foucs well on all around knowledge and academical knolwdge, such as linguistic, mathmatecial, and scientifical. Intelligence is an enormous thing, and i ahve to agree with Siri when she says levels of Intelligence and how some people have it varies vastly. Some people can be an absolute genius when it comes to academics and their IQ, but their day to day knowledge may be limited, and vice versa.
Ovarall I think that how the actual test questions are set, shows if tis good or not.
I don’t believe that these IQ test we find online can accurately define our intelligence. The reason is a lot of these “IQ tests” are based on mathematical knowledge (or at least the ones i took) which would only assess my mathematical skills. The rest of the questions were related to logical reasoning and a few language questions were they would have a few sentences and i had to decide on which was correct. This is not adequate enough to determine my IQ because there were far to little questions and some completely irrelevant to the test.
I personally think that these tests can’t show how smart I am or someone else’s because it’s asking you a bunch of random questions which make your brain working but not shows your intelligence. Some people may be good at answering questions in a limited time and some may not. I think these test are not adequate because it’s asking you totally random questions in limited time and some people who are slower workers than others might have difficulties to for fill a task in a limited time.
To makes these test more accurately, they shouldn’t have a time limit because your intelligence doesn’t have to do anything with the speed you can an answer question. Also maybe ask more realistic questions and not ask “which two lines look alike out of the six shown.”
IQ tests that are posted on the internet are, what I believe, not accurate at all. Like we mentioned in class you can’t just figure out your IQ from a computer based on 20 questions or so. It just doesn’t happen like that. It might show that yes you can read and yes yuo can add up 2+2=4 but it will not tell you what your IQ is. That is for the people who actually put togehter tests that can give results that don’t change everytime you take it in 5 min.
I agree with Bart that they may not be completely useless. They might give you a result fairly close to the one you actually have. However, there are tests that just don’t fit. Intelligence isn’t something to be found, at least not by 20 questions. Maybe some of the questions do show intelligence but I’m sorry I don’t think they are accuarte enough for me to base my intellectual on.
After finishing the IQ tests, I’m kind of on the fence about what to think about it. On one side, it does measure your intelligence on some level but lacks to recognize other aspects of intelligence. I don’t think the tests were very adequate because I fully finished two and they were very different with a wide range of results. It seems like different IQ tests focus more on different aspects and are very different but in the end claim to have the right IQ for you. Also, I don’t think good grades necessarily always have a very strong correlation with your IQ as grades come mainly from tests and that is basically for a lot of classes memorizing a lot of material, which doesn’t truly reflect your intelligence. For IQ tests to be more close and accurate I think there should be several of them specified for a certain area like logic, maths, reading comprehension etc., to be able to capture a persons intelligence as accurately as possible since all these different tests give a range much too vast to get a good idea of what your IQ is.
I just finished an IQ test, and I’m not sure which side to g on because, I think it does measure someones IQ to a certain extent, but it only measures logical and mathematical intelligence. There is more to intellectuality than math and logic, a person can be intelligent in different areas such as: music, socially, or even in a sport. But since most IQ tests are testing your logics and mathematical skills it can measure that type of intelligence, but this all depends on the persons environment depending on if the person has had any education, it would be difficult for someone with out any mathematical education to solve an equation or something like that. I also found some of these IQ tests to have more knowledge based question such as can u reorganize this word so that it fits into some of these categories, and word would be like pacific and the category was ocean and this is not based on IQ its more knowledge based.
IQ tests in themselves are probably useful if applied correctly, they can be useful when trying to figure out levels of logical intelligence and such but they would not be useful when assessing creative intelligences. However how we use IQ tests in todays society is off the mark, as the name implies IQ tests are used to test the intelligence quotient… which leads us to ask, do we have quotas to fill? I don’t think they are completely useless I just don’t think we’re using them right, or calling them by the right name. By calling these tests IQ tests, therefor implying that they test the only levels of intelligence it can severely limit some people who may seem stupid based on these tests. If it was recognized that these tests are limited to logical and mathematical areas of intelligence it may open up for a more rounded and less static view of what intelligence is.
So with this I am saying that I believe that there is more than one kind of intelligence, someone who is strong logically might be weak in the creative area of intelligence.
I don’t think that any IQ test can evaluate my IQ or anyone else’s. IQ tests what I took gave me silly questions what every person should know. How can these questions show how intelligence I am? Before starting one of these tests it said”If English (American) is not your native language, then your reported IQ score will probably be lower than it would be if you took an IQ test in your own language”. I thought that it would be interesting to see if it actually affects my score. I took another test, what was in Estonian, but I really didn’t found that it was any different since the main questions were still about squares and triangles. One of the test I took seemed to test how fast I am, but not how intelligence. This test gave me almost the same questions as other tests, but I had to answer really fast and it made everything much harder. I can’t see how this was connected to Intelligence. : S I think that IQ tests what I took didn’t show how intelligence I am.
Good idea to compare the American English and Estonian tests! Very interesting that it didn’t seem to affect your score . . . but your English is good, so that’s probably why.
I don’t think that IQ tests even give us a remotely accurate indication of our intelligence. Firstly, I’ve never had the same result twice from IQ tests, while, if the tests were really telling us what they claim they’re telling us, I would get the same score, or atleast a fairly similar score, every time. The tests also do not cover different types of intelligence – they tend to focus on intelligence related to mathematics.
The results of IQ tests also have very little relevance to our lives. From what I’ve gathered, IQ quite often does not correlate with grades or success outside school. It also gives us the idea that our intelligence is static, and cannot be improved, which could limit our learning.
In conclusion, I think IQ tests are pretty much a waste of time, and that their results are irrellevant.
I agree with your comment to some extent Ceris, but I do believe that IQ tests can be useful if it is recognized that they give a limited view of intelligence. However I also agree that there should be more standardized IQ tests, so that results did not vary so much, since they probably vary because of many reasons, but if they were standardized to only test logical capabilities then that would limit the fluctuations in points given out for each individual since each test would be more similar in topics and “grading”.
I do not believe these test can accurately measure intelligence. The IQ tests seem to measure education, not intelligence. As a person who may not have been lucky enough to receive an education can still be intelligent, but wouldn’t perform well on these particular tests. IQ tests present the test taker with various questions that only consider certain types of topics, such as math and English, and also exclude many others. People can be intelligent in so many different ways, some are people-smart, others may be reasoning smart etc. We all have weaknesses and have difficulty understanding certain ideas and concepts, and we also have strengths and skills in different subjects. IQ tests only test on one type of intelligence, leading to only people with this intelligence excelling. I would also like to add that these tests are extremely inconsistent.
I once watched an interesting documentary about a 12 year old boy in India studying with college students to be a doctor; he had already performed successful surgery on a girl when he was seven years old. He was a child prodigy and the boy was obviously very intelligent, but when he was brought to the UK to perform an ordinary intelligence test aimed at children his own age, he didn’t do much better than the average student. He was smart in a different way, and wasn’t used to the type of questions he saw on the test.
the matter of intelligence is an ambiguous one. there’s a wide variation of intelligence, musical, mathematical, linguistic and so on, and even with in these sub-categories of intelligence there are further sub-categories, for instance if we take mathematical intelligence, one might be able to split it into algebraic capabilities, or trigonometric intelligence. The tests available seem far to broad to manage to pin point a persons intelligence any any level of accuracy. so in my experience i found that it did not accurately measure my intelligence. To improve intelligence test there must be a much more extensive test. testing each field of intelligence thoroughly, going through subsections and creating a more holistic image of ones capability. the tests are also very situational, the tests measure your “intelligence” merely in this one situation, where other factors may effect you, for instance it is quite common for people to have an “off day” even this ambiguous variable can have great consequences in determining your intelligence. essentially, intelligence is too broad, too ambiguous to be specifically measured quantitatively.
I think that IQ tests cannot possibly show persons intelligence. There are so many types of intelligence, but all of those tests are very similar and they are basically testing your math, or language skills. Is the academic intelligence all that matters in life? I think there is more important knowledge what you need to live your everyday life. Therefore I think those tests are not accurate, also I don’t like the fact that somebody will give me points to show how smart I am. How could that test possibly know how smart I am, asking questions like: “What number comes next in a line?” What if a person who takes this test is talented in other ways?
I think these test should cover more subjects in life and more basic daily life information, to make them more accurate. They should be analyzed, to make the results more precise, truer and suit for one certain person. Although I think measuring peoples IQ is very incorrect thing to do. Why would we need it? To list who’s smarter and on top of the “list?”
I’m constantly seeing IQ test popping up everywhere (I realise this is a similar beginning to Christina but I have to make a point about it too 🙂 ) and I think this is a good sign as to how reliable and seriously these internet IQ tests are taken; by posting them up all over the internet it’s a clear sign that they may be very very … very unreliable as neither one is inperticularly unique. I actually have a paper copy of an IQ test to test your IQ and in comparison to the online test its clear that they are evaluating more specific areas of the mind, the internet test did some shape tests and a few symmetry questions but mainly focused on the visual. I could tell that the one I have here at home focuses on more areas and is therefore more accurate because it focused on word play some grammar and much more areas of problem solving rather than focusing on the visual as the online quiz did.
In my opinion these tests do not evaluate intelligence, if any very little because first of all from what i found they simply don’t cover enough areas of knowledge (as Christina pointed out there are loads of areas of intelligence) to come to a conclusion about IQ and secondly because there are so many IQ tests out their the validity of all of them is extremely questionable.
I think it would be very rare to find a internet IQ test that is considered adequate to say a psychologists IQ test. Of course this depends a lot on what your comparing it to, internet IQ tests may be valid compared to just a guess but on the other hand in comparison to a IQ book the internet test may not be very valid.
If there were any improvements that could be made to the internet tests it would be to cover more areas on intellect, in comparison to the book the internet tests not only lacked complicated, thoughtful, out-of-the-box questions but some of them simply lacked large areas of knowledge development. I feel that a lot of the internet test are there to get people to put down e-mails, spam and overall benefit themselves rather than others.
I think it is very sad that a lot of these IQ test are invalid and don’t give the person an accurate answer of there true intelligence, I have seen the pop ups before and I stay clear of them because I know they’re in valid and I would be better off simply buying a IQ test book.
I don’t think that IQ tests can accuratly define our intelligence. Intelligence has different levels. Social, Academic and perhaps Day to Day Knowledge, such as cleaning, cooking etc. IQ tests only evaluate our Academic knowledge and sometimes IQ tests have hidden messages or questions that require alot of imagination and creativity, like the questions with shapes and such. Both Linguistic, scientific and mathematical intelligence also needs to be taken into account not only mathematical skills. Also as Brianna mentioned the correlation between good grades and a high IQ score. I believe there is a correlation but it can varry. A person may not put input into their work because of other problems they face in life, but they may be very intelligent.. so there are other factors that can pull down your grades.
IQ quiz ads pop up all the time on the internet, it’s impossible to escape from them. I hardly ever take them; sometimes I’ll answer a question or two before moving on. I think that these tests could be used to give someone an idea of what kinds of questions are used to measure someone’s IQ, but do not give accurate results. Intelligence is very complex, every human being is intelligent, but in different ways. The different forms of intelligence may include; Musical Intelligence, Logical-Mathematical Intelligence , Interpersonal Intelligence , Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence , Linguistic Intelligence and so on. When we think of someone with a “high IQ” we think of Einstein and E=mc², just because a test says you have a high IQ, that doesn’t mean you could build a spaceship or solve the most difficult equation. Einstein may have had a high logical intelligence, but I seem to remember from somewhere that he wasn’t such a people person and being good at interacting with people is a type of intelligence. Therefore I think that these IQ tests are made for people who just want to be told that they’re smart, which ironically can indicate low intelligence in some form. Intelligence isn’t really something that can be graded; no test should be able to tell you that you fail at being intelligent.
I took a free IQ test with four pages of questions with about 6 questions per page. The result was that I have a 140 IQ, which according to their scale is “Gifted (2.3% of test takers)” and only 20 points below Einstein. It took me about 15- 20 minutes to take this. I find it silly to judge my intelligence based on 25 questions which ask silly things such as: if a fallafel is a foogle and a foogle is a lulla then a fallafel is definitely a lullas, true or false. These cannot possibly accurately demonstrate my ability, also as this indicates I would be above average intellect and my grades do not indicate the same in all areas I believe this could nto be correct. Although these questions are good for reasoning they do not test all areas of intellect. The brain has several different areas which are used for different functions. Not all intelligence can be determined by one part of the brain as there are several different types of intelligence. However IQ tests only seem to test one type of intellect. I would not consider them an accurate judgment of your intellect level. On one of the websites there was even a caution sign which stated: ” 1. If English (American) is not your native language, then your reported IQ score will probably be lower than it would be if you took an IQ test in your own language.
2. If you feel you may have an educational problem, a learning disability, or a psychological problem, then you should consult with a professional psychologist or psychiatrist before you take this test. It is quite possible to have superior intelligence and yet still have difficulties that may require professional help. Scoring well on any IQ test is no guarantee of success in life. Professional psychological help can sometimes make all the difference between partially or fully realizing your potential.” (http://www.iqtest.com/prep.html). Which on top of being somewhat comical, I found that if the website is saying that it is inaccurate there is no way it could possibly be accurate. A way to improve these tests would be to include a variety of questions which test all the aspects of your intellect, and all parts of your brain. Then analyze each of the aspects separately to indicate your strong and weak suits followed by a compilation of the cumulative results to estimate your overall intelligence level.
It’s interesting to think about the correlation between intelligence and grades — sometimes they DON’T correlate. What do you think that might mean?
I do not feel that these tests appropriately evaluated my intelligence level. Yes, the tests are a way of determining a person’s skills in mathematics and language arts, but they are not an accurate representation of all the skill sets a person may possess. For the tests to be adequate and completely measure a person’s intelligence, they would have to encompass a wider variety of questions from virtually every field a person may find themselves specializing in. Not every person is the best at academic studies such as math and reading, and may have skills in other areas- the same goes for people who specialize in academic studies. They may perform very well on academic tests, but lack other skills such as basic social skills. An example of this could be people with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of austism. While many of people with Asperger’s Syndrome will perform very, very well on IQ tests, they may struggle with rudimentary social skills that the rest of us take for granted. This in itself explains how IQ tests are not an accurate representation of a person’s IQ level. To make the tests more effective, it would be necessary to examine a person’s skils in more areas, including ones that they feel they specialize in and in which fields they feel they struggle in.
To reply to Siri’s comment, I agree with her idea that “the result of these intelligence quotient tests relies on class and race.” Many of the questions on the tests could only be answered by someone who has had several years of academic study in the mathematics and language arts field. Someone who has not been fortunate enough to have the same level of education as others will not perform as well as someone who has attended school for many years, no matter how intelligent or logical that person who has not attended school may be.
Thanks for responding to Siri. You and she might both be interested to learn more about the intelligence tests carried out by Yerkes in 1917. Shocking!
http://www.holah.karoo.net/gouldstudy.htm
The dictionary definition of Intelligence is the “manifestation of a high mental capacity”, but the IQ tests that we did online only referred to our calculation abilities and grammar. The test results of IQ tests, i believe, are completely inconclusive. A person may have a large capacity for grammatical problems and grammatical errors, but do we count him as more intelligent than one who is a musical genius? We cannot compare different intelligences because of their unproportional variety. I believe that these tests only comply to one classification of intelligence, so that the outcome is so ambiguous that it is impossible to be able to assess a persons intelligence. I don’t think that there ever will be a universal test that ALL could take and the outcome would declare a persons intelligence in a way that can be compared to all others. The human brain is so difficult to comprehend, how are we supposed to be calculate a persons ability to perceive and analyze the world around us? Intelligence cannot be measured up to another to “see who’s smarter”. Intelligence is individual from person to person, and if we set guidelines to what intelligence is how would we have those scientific breakthroughs by those who dared to think out the box? Intelligence can never be calculated and analyzed and IQ tests only results in arrogance or low self-esteem. IQ tests do not accomplish anything that will improve our learning or our mental capacity, it is only there so we can compare ourselves to others in academical categories.
You might be interested to read a bit about Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences. It relates to what you’re thinking about, saying that there are different types of intelligences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences
I personally do not believe that these tests can truly evaluate my personal IQ. Firstly, the tests I took gave me some squares, triangles and circles which I would associate something to do with maths and that just auto-matically lowered my level of interest. Secondly, these tests is based on some sort of knowledge which not everyone has or seen/learnt about before which also creates an idea that if you do not know these things the test show you you will do bad. The person might be a genius but just do not understand what the question is asking and therefore lowered their IQ. Something i thought of while doing these tests is that a lot of the “fill in the missing *whatever*” has a lot to do with observation. For the people that are not that observative will definably not do well on these tests because he/she simply cannot see what is missing or what the patteren is. In conclusion I personally could not see how these IQ tests can be generalized to every single person in the world due to the things that are said above. I could not see my score because the IQ test which i spent 15 minutes on said that it was a “free IQ test” but did not say that you would get the results for free 😦
Intelligence can, I believe, come in many different forms. You may have a low intelligence quotient, but be very skilled in more practical ways of displaying intelligence. A person with an exceptionally high IQ may lack basic knowledge like how to do their laundry or open a tin of beans. I believe that intelligence quotient tests appropriately evaluate my ability to reason and understand and to identify relationships, facts and meanings, but that the inclusion of the word “intelligence” in the title is misleading.
My opinion of whether or not these tests were adequate depends on if the multiple choice questions only had one correct answer, or if your IQ depended on the degree of correctness of your answer, implying that there was more than one correct answer, but that one was indicative of higher reasoning and logic. From what I have read, it appears that the result of these intelligence quotient tests relies on class and race, in which case I feel that the questions do not adequately take into account confounding variables.
See Elizabeth’s comment below, in relation to yours.
A summary of Gould’s and Yerkes’ studies can be found here:
http://www.holah.karoo.net/gouldstudy.htm
yeah but when learning to operate a tin opener you need to be able to identify relationships and patterns, and the IQ test evaluates you ability to do that. Sorry for playing devils advocate but I just don’t think these tests are completely useless. Well the good one’s at least; those give you a pretty good idea of where you stand in matching sequences and using tin opener’s:P.
I have to agree with Siri about the practical views of IQ. Some person may not be academcially skilled but still exceed others on a social, or athletic level. This is what can definetly scew the image of someone’s Intelligence Quotient. The online tests that i took only test for the academic or the practical thinking to measure someone’s cognitive/critical thinking. It is genuinely stupid to classify someone as “underintelligent” or “excelling itelligence”. By creating these tests it groups people into a catagory they may not feel approriate for them, and will eventually lead to prejudice/discrimination. It is a basic human right to be socially accepted, but our culture is now affecting it in a way that could be substantially destructive.