How to Know Your I.Q. Level without Taking the Test & Brainy Stories by Billy J. Burton - HTML preview

THREE

The test itself consisted of discovering many numerical, geometrical and letter patterns within a time limit. Frank started as if his very life depended on the results, faking self-assurance, commenting his work with ‘too easy’ or ‘piece of cake’. Joshua’s behavior was more subdued as if he was surprised to be able to solve anything. When time was up he looked apologetic, he had been unable to answer every single question.

The next day, as I was calculating the two brother’s results, something hit me. Frank was really intelligent as both he and his mother suspected. His verbal IQ was the highest with 140 which accounted for his conversational ease. However, in spite of his good math grades, his numerical ability was ‘only’ 130, and his spatial ability was not that impressive either with a mere 120. Overall he boasted a global IQ of 130, 30 points above the mean (conventionally held at 100), very impressive but not worth feeling superior to nearly everyone. He was within gifted range, but barely. His over-confidence was to be attributed to something else, probably his mother’s unabashed admiration.

On the contrary, Joshua’s category was higher than what I had ever seen. Almost all of his indexes were in the 3rd or 4th standard deviation, so 45 to 60 points above the mean. His Verbal IQ was the lowest with 140, the same as his brother’s. In addition, Joshua was nearly fluent in French. It could artificially lower his performance in English since a lot of what he was reading was in a foreign language. He had confessed to often having English words on the tip of his tongue when emotionally disturbed. His numerical skill reached nearly 150, with very good pattern recognition. But most importantly, his spatial proficiency was through the roof with 165. Sadly, with such subtests scatter his global I.Q. would be meaningless, the indexes being too far apart. I surmised his verbal level would have been higher were he monolingual and decided to favor the most accurate grades. Wow, Joshua’s IQ was at genius level with a number probably ranging from 150 to 160, and on the adult scale at that, since he was already 16. He was smarter than 99.9 % of the general population.