Spin off... if your child gifted?

[golfgal]

You went together and got tested??

I'm going to assume that you all had testing done within weeks of each other and didn't actually go in and get tested together since that isn't what IQ testing is.

Interesting that you had a group of friends that were all tested at the same time and all came back with high enough IQ's that you still remember their scores 15+ years later. It might be worth having the water tested in your area because that seems like a statistical anomaly.



Seems like an off the wall question to me. If I came across someone that I thought made a lot of money, I wouldn't ask them how much they made. Why would I ask someone that was smart what their IQ was?

And do you really encounter that many incredibly smart people in your lifetime that you ask about their IQ? Where are you meeting these people that are beyond smart? I know doctors, lawyers, engineers, and I even know the CEO of a major scientific company and I have never once thought to ask them what their IQ is. And honestly, most of these people come across as very normal people, not some highly gifted individuals that must have above average IQ's.

Well, the question was about knowing 4 people or so and over the course of your lifetime you haven't come across 4 people that were exceptionally bright? Like I said, we know DS19's because he was tested, I know my Dad's because I saw his Mensa stuff, I know two of my old neighbor's because we were talking about how smart her DH was but couldn't figure out how to answer a telephone . There are 4 people just in casual "discovery".

 

[MoonFaerie]

Well, the question was about knowing 4 people or so and over the course of your lifetime you haven't come across 4 people that were exceptionally bright? Like I said, we know DS19's because he was tested, I know my Dad's because I saw his Mensa stuff, I know two of my old neighbor's because we were talking about how smart her DH was but couldn't figure out how to answer a telephone . There are 4 people just in casual "discovery".

Right, and if someone is in Mensa or some other group or program for those with very high IQs, then that person is going to know a disproportionately large number with high IQs than other people.

 

[LisaR]

Well, the question was about knowing 4 people or so and over the course of your lifetime you haven't come across 4 people that were exceptionally bright? Like I said, we know DS19's because he was tested, I know my Dad's because I saw his Mensa stuff, I know two of my old neighbor's because we were talking about how smart her DH was but couldn't figure out how to answer a telephone . There are 4 people just in casual "discovery".

I certainly know smart people but they have never felt the need to reveal their IQ nor have I ever been inclined to ask.

 

[Magpie]

I find it incredibly strange that adults would feel a need to share their IQ with other adults. Seriously, who does that?

Well, if you've got an interest in a subject of intelligence, you talk about it. And if your friends have an interest in the subject, too, they're likely to compare notes with you.

This post summed up all of my feelings about this thread. I don't know what's in the water where some of you guys live, but the fact that some of you know multiple people with these 140+ IQs is statistically very improbable.

Not in a major city with several institutions of higher learning, government and a flourishing technology industry. Smart people tend to move here.

You went together and got tested??

I'm going to assume that you all had testing done within weeks of each other and didn't actually go in and get tested together since that isn't what IQ testing is.

Interesting that you had a group of friends that were all tested at the same time and all came back with high enough IQ's that you still remember their scores 15+ years later. It might be worth having the water tested in your area because that seems like a statistical anomaly.

That's a heck of a illogical leap!

I said I've personally known at least four people who tested in the highly to profoundly gifted range. I didn't say they were all tested together, in the same place.

I suspect there are many highly gifted people in my town, especially in the local gov't and tech industry, but I can't say for sure as I've never talked about IQ with anyone else. But we DO have a program for "profoundly gifted" children in the English public system. In order to get in the child has to test above the 99.8th percentile of intelligence over all, which equates to an IQ somewhere over 140 (ie, highly gifted). The crazy thing is, there's actually a waiting list to get in, and they rank the kids according to who scored the highest!

So it stands to reason - if there are enough kids in my town with testable scores over 140 to make up two full classes of 25 kids each, from grades 1-4, with a waiting list... well it stands to reason there MUST be several who are over 150.

As for remembering scores... well, it makes an impact, doesn't it? And in at least one case, the paperwork still exists.

 

[LisaR]

Well, if you've got an interest in a subject of intelligence, you talk about it. And if your friends have an interest in the subject, too, they're likely to compare notes with you.



Not in a major city with several institutions of higher learning, government and a flourishing technology industry. Smart people tend to move here.



That's a heck of a illogical leap!

I said I've personally known at least four people who tested in the highly to profoundly gifted range. I didn't say they were all tested together, in the same place.

I suspect there are many highly gifted people in my town, especially in the local gov't and tech industry, but I can't say for sure as I've never talked about IQ with anyone else. But we DO have a program for "profoundly gifted" children in the English public system. In order to get in the child has to test above the 99.8th percentile of intelligence over all, which equates to an IQ somewhere over 140 (ie, highly gifted). The crazy thing is, there's actually a waiting list to get in, and they rank the kids according to who scored the highest!

So it stands to reason - if there are enough kids in my town with testable scores over 140 to make up two full classes of 25 kids each, from grades 1-4, with a waiting list... well it stands to reason there MUST be several who are over 150.

As for remembering scores... well, it makes an impact, doesn't it? And in at least one case, the paperwork still exists.

That there 'splains it. Me and my peeps ain't be talkin' 'bout smart things. Naw, we's only talks 'bout reality TV. Once we talked 'bout how that there picture got inside that there little screen but it was way too hard for our tiny brains so we just stick to talkin' 'bout reality TV.

I wonder where my town stands on the IQ front. With NASA & DOD engineers on every block, I'm going to bet they the IQ level is pretty high. Amazing how none of them feel the need to let others know what their scores are. Must just be my area, I guess.

 

[Magpie]

That there 'splains it. Me and my peeps ain't be talkin' 'bout smart things. Naw, we's only talks 'bout reality TV. Once we talked 'bout how that there picture got inside that there little screen but it was way too hard for our tiny brains so we just stick to talkin' 'bout reality TV.

I wonder where my town stands on the IQ front. With NASA & DOD engineers on every block, I'm going to bet they the IQ level is pretty high. Amazing how none of them feel the need to let others know what their scores are. Must just be my area, I guess.

If you say so...

Did you watch the last Toddlers and Tiaras? I thought the parents seemed almost sane for a change, although that one little girl is shaping up to be a real brat. I couldn't believe her mother is planning to keep on doing pageants with her!

 

[cornflake]

While I am sure that may be the case sometimes, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that people here in general know several people that fall into the high IQ range. The general demographic of the people here are from professional careers in the upper middle class or higher income scale. That demographic alone will lend itself to naturally knowing people with higher IQ's. There are a fair number of doctors, lawyers, business executives, etc. (either posting or spouses of posters) here.

Higher IQs, sure. People with IQs in the 120s and up generally hold those types of professions. People with IQs at the very top of the scale, who are statistically one in tens or hundreds of thousands to literally one in a million or more, I doubt people know several of them. It's statistically highly improbable. If we're talking about someone with a 1 in a million IQ, there'd be like 300 of them in this country, and there'd be all of like 25 of them in Canada, across all age ranges. That one person on here would know more than one of them and not work at the NSA or what have you seems ... highly unlikely.

Those unreal types of scales, that put the 130s-140s at like, above average, give a highly inaccurate general notion of what a true higher IQ score is. A 136 I think it is, is the 98th percentile - only two of every hundred people score that high. Two standard deviations is quite significant.

Of course dyslexia will affect typing and spelling and writing, but has nothing to do with intellect. And sure some people with extremely high IQs have perfectly fine social skills - but they're not 'normal' by definition. They are as abnormal as someone on the low end of the scale is and can have as much difficulty relating to people, having serious conversations, etc., it can be just as frustrating as if you tried to have a serious conversation with someone with an IQ of 40. It's not that they're freaks, any more than people with an IQ of 40 are freaks, but there's an intellectual gap that informs a lot of stuff and covers a lot of ground that ends up making things difficult.

People think 'gifted' kids or adults have it made but they are just as far from normal as someone with mental retardation and can have as much trouble navigating the world. They generally have more options, as they can take advantage of different educational opportunities and there are things specifically set up to benefit them, though that's true on the low end too, but... as for seeming totally normal day to day and just being an everyday person - at a seriously high end, once you're three or more s-d's off a curve, you're not normal.

 

[cornflake]

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I find it incredibly strange that adults would feel a need to share their IQ with other adults. Seriously, who does that?

The only people I've ever met who do it are Mensa members (I knew someone in school who showed me her resume which had Mensa listed at the bottom with what they told her was her IQ score listed next to it), who are also generally people who tout bogus scores (that they think are genuine) because they took the Mensa test (fun fact, the Canada Mensa IQ test is an employment screener, could not be further from an actual IQ test if it tried).

As for kids telling each other, we had the testing in school too, which was not actual IQ testing (an actual IQ test takes hours to administer and must be done one-on-one with a trained psychologist), but a derivative to give a theoretical range to allow for pulling kids on either end of the curve who need more testing. However - the kids were never, ever told their scores and the people who told the parents warned them never to reveal the scores to the kids. Which is the same advice most every psychologist who does testing that I've heard of will give.

 

[Magpie]

Higher IQs, sure. People with IQs in the 120s and up generally hold those types of professions. People with IQs at the very top of the scale, who are statistically one in tens or hundreds of thousands to literally one in a million or more, I doubt people know several of them. It's statistically highly improbably. If we're talking about someone with a 1 in a million IQ, there'd be like 300 of them in this country, across all age ranges. That one person on here would know more than one of them and not work at the NSA or what have you seems ... highly unlikely.

Those unreal types of scales, that put the 130s-140s at like, above average, give a highly inaccurate general notion of what a true higher IQ score is. A 136 I think it is, is the 98th percentile - only two of every hundred people score that high. Two standard deviations is quite significant.

Of course dyslexia will affect typing and spelling and writing, but has nothing to do with intellect. And sure some people with extremely high IQs have perfectly fine social skills - but they're not 'normal' by definition. They are as abnormal as someone on the low end of the scale is and can have as much difficulty relating to people, having serious conversations, etc., it can be just as frustrating as if you tried to have a serious conversation with someone with an IQ of 40. It's not that they're freaks, any more than people with an IQ of 40 are freaks, but there's an intellectual gap that informs a lot of stuff and covers a lot of ground that ends up making things difficult.

People think 'gifted' kids or adults have it made but they are just as far from normal as someone with mental retardation and can have as much trouble navigating the world. They generally have more options, as they can take advantage of different educational opportunities and there are things specifically set up to benefit them, though that's true on the low end too, but... as for seeming totally normal day to day and just being an everyday person - at a seriously high end, once you're three or more s-d's off a curve, you're not normal.

I think you're seriously underestimating the numbers.

The Weschler measures up to 15 standard deviations from the norm. The Stanford-Binet does 16 standard deviations.

Roughly speaking...


1 in 2 people have an IQ of 100 (actually 1.99999 something, but close enough)

1 in 9 have have an IQ of 120

1 in 161 have an IQ of 140

1 in 11,307 have an IQ of 160

1 in 3,483,046 have an IQ of 180

In any town of, let's say, a million people, you can count on having at least 100 people of all ages with IQs over 150. But that statistic will be skewed, of course, if you have "NASA & DOD engineers on every block", as a previous poster said. And since gifted people tend to have gifted kids, it's not that surprising that in such a technology-oriented town there'd be enough children around to make up a whole program for kids with *tested* IQs over 140.

Also... kids do tend to score higher on these tests these days, than they ever did when we were kids, which is another topic altogether. (There was a Newsweek article awhile back which asked "Are our kids getting smarter?", but concluded they weren't as much as modern society primes them for them kind of thinking styles that score highly on IQ tests.)

P.S. I completely agree about the difficulties that often come with extreme giftedness.

 

[princessmom29]

You went together and got tested??

I'm going to assume that you all had testing done within weeks of each other and didn't actually go in and get tested together since that isn't what IQ testing is.

Interesting that you had a group of friends that were all tested at the same time and all came back with high enough IQ's that you still remember their scores 15+ years later. It might be worth having the water tested in your area because that seems like a statistical anomaly.

You are assuming a lot form the statement I made. Testing for gifted services is done during the same week for all students in a particular school becuase they have to send someone to the school to do the testing, so that is what I meant when I said tested together. We were all tested for gifted services in the same week and got our results about the same time so we naturally talked aobut those results. I also never said they all had the same IQ or close to the same IQ. The 4 of us that qualified for gifted that year went through the whole program together from that point on and still keep in touch. There is a large IQ range within that group however, anywhere from 120-160+. No, I don't remember everyone's exact number but do have an idea of what thier range was. 4 out of about 200 in our grade to qualify is really NOT an anomaly. That is actually about spot on at 2% of the population.

 

[Magpie]

The only people I've ever met who do it are Mensa members (I knew someone in school who showed me her resume which had Mensa listed at the bottom with what they told her was her IQ score listed next to it), who are also generally people who tout bogus scores (that they think are genuine) because they took the Mensa test (fun fact, the Canada Mensa IQ test is an employment screener, could not be further from an actual IQ test if it tried).

As for kids telling each other, we had the testing in school too, which was not actual IQ testing (an actual IQ test takes hours to administer and must be done one-on-one with a trained psychologist), but a derivative to give a theoretical range to allow for pulling kids on either end of the curve who need more testing. However - the kids were never, ever told their scores and the people who told the parents warned them never to reveal the scores to the kids. Which is the same advice most every psychologist who does testing that I've heard of will give.

This is usually true - I didn't find out my scores until I was 18, and digging through my mother's filing cabinet looking for my old report cards.

A friend of mine, however, had parents who were very open with her about her scores. Probably because she was a premie, often sick, and very tiny, so they wanted her to know she had something going for her. She was also an army brat, so every time they moved the question of where to place her in school would come up again.

I am not, nor is anyone I know personally, a Mensa member. I thought the whole idea of a club for smart people sounded rather silly, to be honest. Of all the things I like to have in common with my friends, an IQ score doesn't really rate up there.

Now a sense of humour...! That's gold.

 

[MoonFaerie]

The only people I've ever met who do it are Mensa members (I knew someone in school who showed me her resume which had Mensa listed at the bottom with what they told her was her IQ score listed next to it), who are also generally people who tout bogus scores (that they think are genuine) because they took the Mensa test (fun fact, the Canada Mensa IQ test is an employment screener, could not be further from an actual IQ test if it tried).

As for kids telling each other, we had the testing in school too, which was not actual IQ testing (an actual IQ test takes hours to administer and must be done one-on-one with a trained psychologist), but a derivative to give a theoretical range to allow for pulling kids on either end of the curve who need more testing. However - the kids were never, ever told their scores and the people who told the parents warned them never to reveal the scores to the kids. Which is the same advice most every psychologist who does testing that I've heard of will give.

Huh, I didn't know Mensa did their own testing. I thought you had to submit official scores from a psychologist's testing. I'm not really sure why I thought that though.

 

[princessmom29]

The only people I've ever met who do it are Mensa members (I knew someone in school who showed me her resume which had Mensa listed at the bottom with what they told her was her IQ score listed next to it), who are also generally people who tout bogus scores (that they think are genuine) because they took the Mensa test (fun fact, the Canada Mensa IQ test is an employment screener, could not be further from an actual IQ test if it tried).

As for kids telling each other, we had the testing in school too, which was not actual IQ testing (an actual IQ test takes hours to administer and must be done one-on-one with a trained psychologist), but a derivative to give a theoretical range to allow for pulling kids on either end of the curve who need more testing. However - the kids were never, ever told their scores and the people who told the parents warned them never to reveal the scores to the kids. Which is the same advice most every psychologist who does testing that I've heard of will give.

No, we had real IQ testing done individually over the course of 3 days. It took multiple hours each day and childrne were pulled form class individually for the tests. It took basically the entire week to get the 4 of us tested. They sat us down in a meeting with our parents and explained th scores on all ofthe areas that were tested and how those areas went together to give an IQ score. It was very much a real IQ test.

 

[HOGFAN]

DD24 is another way of gifted..she sees ghosts and has somewhat psychic ability...from her fathers side..and no, im not kidding....

 

[HelenePA]

DD24 is another way of gifted..she sees ghosts and has somewhat psychic ability...from her fathers side..and no, im not kidding....

ooooh Now i'm jealous!! I've been watching psychic kids on netflix the last few days!

 

[cornflake]

Huh, I didn't know Mensa did their own testing. I thought you had to submit official scores from a psychologist's testing. I'm not really sure why I thought that though.

You can submit actual scores done through a psychologist to Mensa. You used to also be able to get in by submitting SAT scores. They will also give you their test (for a fee, I believe), and if you qualify, you can pay them dues and get their newsletter. I've met a few members, I tend to think that in general they're people who need some reinforcement on a number of levels.

I think you're seriously underestimating the numbers.

The Weschler measures up to 15 standard deviations from the norm. The Stanford-Binet does 16 standard deviations.

Roughly speaking...


1 in 2 people have an IQ of 100 (actually 1.99999 something, but close enough)

1 in 9 have have an IQ of 120

1 in 161 have an IQ of 140

1 in 11,307 have an IQ of 160

1 in 3,483,046 have an IQ of 180

They don't score up to 325, no. They top in the 160s and there is an extrapolation formula but extrapolations are noted as unreliable and, as I said, plenty of people won't do it.

As for the numbers, the stats you've got above would put people with an IQ of 180 as numbering fewer than 100 in the entire U.S. and like 7 or 8 in all of Canada. If there were 100 people @150 in a town of a million, and the 100 is spread across all ages, there'd be something around 60 of them (last I heard, demographic wise, and in general, obviously) that were adults under 65. So knowing bunches of them does seem statistically highly improbable.

Nasa and DOD engineers aren't necessarily people with outsized IQs either, same as the poster saying there are dr.s and lawyers and etc. Plenty of people in those professions have IQs in the 120s.

 

[fimac]

You can submit actual scores done through a psychologist to Mensa. You used to also be able to get in by submitting SAT scores. They will also give you their test (for a fee, I believe), and if you qualify, you can pay them dues and get their newsletter. I've met a few members, I tend to think that in general they're people who need some reinforcement on a number of levels.




As for the numbers, the stats you've got above would put people with an IQ of 180 as numbering fewer than 100 in the entire U.S. and like 7 or 8 in all of Canada. If there were 100 people @150 in a town of a million, and the 100 is spread across all ages, there'd be something around 60 of them (last I heard, demographic wise, and in general, obviously) that were adults under 65. So knowing bunches of them does seem statistically highly improbable.

Nasa and DOD engineers aren't necessarily people with outsized IQs either, same as the poster saying there are dr.s and lawyers and etc. Plenty of people in those professions have IQs in the 120s.

However the gifted population is not evenly spread. Some cities have populations which are out of the norm for various reasons, including high immigrant population. We live in a high tech area and more than half of my oldest sons gifted classes are Chinese. The joke in the school is that you have to have a high IQ to get out of China. So over all this are has a brain gain, with a disproportion part of the population with a high IQ.

 

[Kath2003]

How do people know these days that they are "gifted"?

I was in the top few of my class at school and went to a good college, graduated with several good degrees - but compared to my "peers" (i.e. people with a similar educational background) I would never consider myself "gifted". Even compared to the population as a whole, I would probably only consider myself "slightly above average"? I just liked studying?

 

[Ciao Mickey]

DD24 is another way of gifted..she sees ghosts and has somewhat psychic ability...from her fathers side..and no, im not kidding....

Now that is cool and is a gift.

Your DD has the ability to see other dimensions of space that most cannot see.

 

[alizesmom]

To answer the OP, no.