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MrXxx
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09 Jul 2010, 2:24 pm

Mdyar wrote:
MrXxx wrote:
I'm not going to pretend to know what the exact formulas are for determining IQ, but here's what I do know and understand:

IQ scores are fluid. Your scoring on a test (right against wrong answers as a percentage) are absolute, but that is not your IQ. Your IQ comes from comparing your score with scores from everyone else in your age group.

For example, if you are 20 years old, and score 75% correct answers on the test, and the average score is 75% for everyone 20 years old, then your IQ is 100. If you take the test again, at 25 years and your score is 80%, and the average 25 year old's scores are also at 80%, your IQ is still 100.

What this means is that if between the age of twenty and twenty-five, your score doesn't increase, but everyone else's does, your score will drop below 100. It's all about averages within particular age groups. If your absolute score remains the same while the average score increases, your IQ score drops. If your absolute score increases by more than the average absolute score increase, your IQ will increase.

It's all about balancing your score against the average of people in your age group. I have no idea how the age groups are divided up (it could be by exact age, or by age ranges, I honestly don't know.)

The whole idea behind scoring in this manner presumes that everyone learns more as they age. Therefore, balancing scores from 50 year old's against 20 year old's doesn't make sense. Because of the way IQ's are determined, someone with an IQ of 120 at fifty years old is presumably "smarter" than someone at 20 years old with the same IQ.

For someone with an IQ of 120 at age twenty to share the same intelligence as someone at fifty with IQ of 120 would mean that the average twenty year old shares the intelligence level of the average fifty year old.

As I said, I DO NOT know what the formulas are that are used. I only know that these are the principles behind the scoring.


To simplify if I may :

The psychologist( U.S.A.) take a random sample of subjects, lets say it is 2,330, and test "these" with questions that tap into cognitive ability .
They norm this sample by taking the mean score and the highest score. Arbitrarily, the highest score in this scenario is converted to an I.Q of 150, as the ceiling of this test , due to a 1 in 2,330 rarity or 99.9570883466 percentile . It doesn't matter how many were answered correctly , what is relevant is it was the highest number of correct answers whatever that may be. The mean score is the person exactly in the middle score range and this is assigned a score of 100 or a rarity in 1 out 2 or 50th percentile.

Let's say I come along now at the ripe old middle aged fellow that I am ,and want to know I clever or not I am , and spend $500 to be tested .
They then tally up my "correct answers" and it matches with someone who scored in the mean or center of this sample.
They then tell me you are " AVERAGE " and your I.Q. is 100.

There is not an age adjustment.

What is more , if you were to take this test to Israel ; the mean score there would correspond to someone in the 85 percentile in the U.S.
(This is something that is published in a book I own : " A question of intelligence"- and this is probably controversial , but so is this concept of intelligence testing ,as it has morphed into a juggernaut that it is).

The test would have to be re-normed again in Israel to find the mean score ,and make the new Bell Curve..


Interesting! I found the following page that probably explains why I heard what I did:

Mega Foundation link

According to them, until fifty years ago, age was factored into it. The fact that it had barely changed around my own birth probably explains why I was told that it did factor age. I can only presume that those who explained it to me were unaware that age was no longer being used.

That said, if age is no longer a factor, I would have to say that decreases in IQ can probably now be explained by an overall increase in performance on tests, regardless of age. If improved schooling is a factor, that would certainly explain it.


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zer0netgain
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12 Jul 2010, 8:27 am

IQ is a measurement of your intelligence FOR YOUR AGE.

It's easy for a young person to have a high IQ. It's harder for an older person to do the same as the score is indexed by age.

This is the primary reason it goes down. You don't spend as much time learning new stuff after 20-25, and that impacts how "smart" you are.