I had an idea on the aeroplane, as we English English call airplane, namely to do a little survey to find out whether the readers and subscribers of this blog are intelligent or not.
Please put your IQ in the attached survey. TIA.
I do hope this will show that my readers are a bunch of unbridled geniuses, as I might be able to use that to interest advertisers.
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Mine is above 180, but depends on the weather.
Mine’s definitely less than 150, but its precise level depends on the whether, too. Whether I’ve got my brain switched on, mainly.
I feel the choices on this poll are poorly thought out. A commonly cited number for the standard deviation of IQ in the general population is 15 points, with 100 being average. Having choices that span more than one standard deviation (e.g. 120-140) means you lose meaningful resolution in the data. Also, borderline cases (e.g. somebody around IQ 140 — around 97th percentile in the general population) are probably more likely to report in a higher bracket because they don’t want to be lumped in with a person in the low 120s. It may seem arrogant to say so, but that’s human nature.
Furthermore, given that you probably have a moderate to highly educated readership, I’m not sure why you break down the sub-100 scores into such fine detail.
My choice brackets would have been something like this:
85 or below
86-99
100-115
116-130
131-140
141-150
151-160
161 or greater
Full disclosure: I tested at 140 in elementary school and voted in the 121-140 bracket, but I don’t have much faith in the meaning of such metrics. I’ve known plenty of successful dummies and lots of hardluck geniuses over the years. A surprising number of my old friends from MIT are living at home or slaving away at crap jobs, and it’s not for a lack of IQ points.
In spite of my criticism of your polling methods, I love the blog. Keep it up!
Peace from Massachusetts,
Jen
I understand and take on board your points to a certain extent, but bearing in mind the way that in fact the population should be mainly around 100, I wanted a measure that included the areas around 100 without prejudice to people only slightly above or slightly below the average, but which was a bit more discriminating close to the average than further away.
I believe that my readership is educated, but that doesn’t necessarily make them intelligent. I wanted to make sure that if there are any highly educated non-intelligent people here, I want to find out just how unintelligent they are. Thankfully nobody under average has presented so far, and I hope for the sake of our prestige that it remains that way, but I don’t have any control over the outcomes. I didn’t want people unable to confess the true depths of their idiocy just because of a lack of calibrations in the poll.
I’m glad you like the blog, and hope you keep subbed up, reading and commenting for many years.