After taking it and reading these comments I took this IQ test mentioned in this comment.
If it is accurate I’ve lost 20 IQ points since I was 17 (the date of my one and only IQ test). That’s kind of depressing. Then again, I feel like I’m a much better thinker now...
I had been under the impression that IQ = mental age / physical age. I’m not sure how to understand a test that doesn’t ask how old one is.
I also just tried that test and got a score that I am pretty sure is ~20 lower than the one I took as a small child (though I can’t be sure since my parents declined to tell me exactly how I scored at the time).
Different tests have used different definitions of IQ. Lately most tests use 15 IQ points = 1 standard deviation. You can’t compare IQ scores without converting them to the same standard.
Depends on the test. E.g. some IQ tests measure the size of your vocabulary. IIRC, the reason why this works is that people with a higher IQ tend be to quicker at learning the meaning of a word from its context, and therefore accumulate a larger vocabulary. That makes the size of your vocabulary adequate as a rough proxy for IQ—but only within your age group, since people older than you have had more time to accumulate a large vocabulary.
Took the survey.
After taking it and reading these comments I took this IQ test mentioned in this comment.
If it is accurate I’ve lost 20 IQ points since I was 17 (the date of my one and only IQ test). That’s kind of depressing. Then again, I feel like I’m a much better thinker now...
I had been under the impression that IQ = mental age / physical age. I’m not sure how to understand a test that doesn’t ask how old one is.
I also just tried that test and got a score that I am pretty sure is ~20 lower than the one I took as a small child (though I can’t be sure since my parents declined to tell me exactly how I scored at the time).
Different tests have used different definitions of IQ. Lately most tests use 15 IQ points = 1 standard deviation. You can’t compare IQ scores without converting them to the same standard.
That’s true for children, but as intelligence solidifies at ~16-20 it doesn’t make sense to include age after that.
Depends on the test. E.g. some IQ tests measure the size of your vocabulary. IIRC, the reason why this works is that people with a higher IQ tend be to quicker at learning the meaning of a word from its context, and therefore accumulate a larger vocabulary. That makes the size of your vocabulary adequate as a rough proxy for IQ—but only within your age group, since people older than you have had more time to accumulate a large vocabulary.