FAQ

IQ stands for Intelligent Quotient. It is the measure of a person’s intelligence. An intelligence quotient (IQ) is a total score derived from several standardized tests designed to assess human intelligence. The abbreviation "IQ" was coined by the psychologist William Stern for the German term Intelligenzquotient, his term for a scoring method for intelligence tests at University of Breslau he advocated in a 1912 book. Historically, IQ is a score obtained by dividing a person's mental age score, obtained by administering an intelligence test, by the person's chronological age, both expressed in terms of years and months. The resulting fraction is multiplied by 100 to obtain the IQ score.

IQ measures various areas of intelligence such as memory, spatial recognition and analytical thinking. It does not measure any specific area of knowledge, instead it measures your ability to learn.

Generally, IQ tests fall between a 5-6 point variance when administered consistently, meaning that they are quite accurate. Of course, there are outside factors like personal stress that may impact a person’s performance, but by and large popular tests like our iq tests are viewed as accurate.

The existence of culture free IQ tests lends credence to the fact that many intelligence tests contain cultural bias. But what does this mean exactly? There are differences across cultures where certain groups may or may not be exposed to certain language, grammar, folklore, etc. When IQ tests include elements that are familiar to members of one culture but not to others, it may provide overly positive or negative results depending on the test taker’s culture. As such, many tests like the Culture Fair IQ Scale developed by Raymond B. Cattell largely focus on non-verbal tasks using mazes and symbols to try to assess and score intelligence with as culturally neutral approach as possible.

IQ tests like the Wechsler Intelligence Scale are generally designed to have a mean score of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. You can check our iq score page.

The first IQ test was created in 1904 by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon.

The general consensus around this question is yes, you can in fact increase your IQ. However, there are many factors to consider when assessing this statement. First, studies have shown that IQ can change drastically when people are younger. That said, an IQ test is an imperfect psychometric method for assessing a biological IQ. So, in a sense people can train themselves in certain ways to improve neural efficiency or practice methods of thinking that will help you perform better on an IQ test.

A normal distribution of data means that most of the examples in a set of data are close to the "average," while relatively few examples tend to one extreme or the other. All normally distributed data will have something like a "bell curve" shape.

The standard deviation is a statistic that tells you how tightly all the various examples are clustered around the mean in a set of data. When the examples are pretty tightly bunched together and the bell-shaped curve is steep, the standard deviation is small. When the examples are spread apart and the bell curve is relatively flat, that tells you you have a relatively large standard deviation.

Although IQ is not a perfect measure of intelligence, it represents a good proxy of general intelligence. You can read this page: What is the importance of IQ?