IQ

During lunch at school, I like to spend time in the library reading, or on a computer taking IQ tests. The students there must think I’m strange to be taking IQ tests all the time. I don’t know why I like doing them, they’re just fun. Like puzzles, they challenge your mind to find the missing pieces. Unlike puzzles, they offer more variety, making them more fun. Plus, that ego boost when you get a high score is always good.

Some of the online tests are so inaccurate that I can’t take them seriously. On some you can randomly click on answers and still have your result be higher than 100. The most popular one is a true-false test that will tell you you’re IQ is 150, yet you could get a “highly above average” score of 110 just be randomly clicking the answers. Tests like that should be banned from the internet. The better ones have at least 5 possible choices per problem and aren’t culturally biased. These tend to be exclusively visual or mathematical, and I usually to do better on them. 

The average score on all the tests I’ve taken is about 130. I can usually see a pattern on all but one or two problems on any given test. And since these tests are pretty short, I wouldn’t be surprised if my IQ was too high for standard testing. The highest score I’ve ever gotten is 180, on this really cool interactive one that was most challenging. There were shapes on this test that actually moved and changed color- one problem had a whole grid of them.

I understand that one’s IQ is not the greatest indicator of intelligence, but I do think it’s the closest we’ve come to testing logical abilities. It should be called LQ, not IQ, for logicality quotient. IQ makes it sound like it’s the only true indicator of how intelligent you are, when really it’s only testing your analytical skills. The thing is people have different skills that make them smart. I’m sure there’s a social or emotional IQ test out there that I would probably fail miserably. My EQ would probably tell me I am emotionally retarded.