41 ms·

IQ scores in relation to web browser choice

70 points by exterm 15y ago

jleader 15y ago
This is the first time I've ever heard of ads for a "free IQ test" actually leading to the real thing! The paper uses the word "significant" quite a few times, but never mentions the significance level, or confidence intervals, or any other indication of the statistical quality (or lack thereof) of this data. The large number of subjects (100K) suggests that the results may be valid, but it would be nice to see this quantified. Also, the author says "the test worked properly in all of the major browsers", but doesn't explain how he established that, which is important to rule out the possibility that a problem with the test in some browsers skewed the results. Still, the graph at the end (showing distribution of browser usage across IQ percentiles) is entertaining.
- exterm 15y ago
  Yeah, the "free IQ test" thing made me wonder too. I always thought that intelligent people would not be very likely to click on those ads.
  - glimcat 15y ago
    To click or not to click...that is the test.
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    Furthermore, what would the usage of adblock be by IQ percentile? Opera's high showing may be due to it's adblock extension still not being as mature as those of Chrome and FF, and so the average Opera user might be less likely to use it. There's no doubt that Opera users would tend to be geeks and nerds anyway, but you could say the same thing of the top FF users. I'm not convinced that the methodology supports the apparent conclusion that the smartest people use Opera, just that of those who took the test, Opera users scored best.
    - waterlesscloud 15y ago
      I bet adblock usage peaks between 120-130 iq and drops off on either side. This is a wild, completely speculative hunch for which I have no evidence.
      - redthrowaway 15y ago
        So I get putting a lower bound on it, as it would take exposure to technical communities (even if it's just 4chan) that usually comes from inquisition and information-seeking, but what do you propose as the means by which there would exist an upper bound?
        niels_olson 15y ago
        Experts in other domains who simply don't give a hoot about web browsers.
        dorkwagon 15y ago
        I imagine that people of high intelligence would be more likely to understand the greater implications of using ad blockers (driving the creations of paywalls, etc.) and so would be less likely to block ads, even when they know how to do so. It's hard to draw conclusions, though--who knows if this chain of speculation actually leads back to a significant confounding factor?
        redthrowaway 15y ago
        They would also be aware of game theory, and may choose to use adblock but not tell anyone, or even actively campaign against it while using it themselves. I'm not suggesting smart people are unethical, but rather that ethicality and intelligence are fairly orthogonal, and that your proposed means seems to have more to do with the former than the latter. As to the speculation, you are of course right. I'm just putting off studying. Speaking of which...
        alexgartrell 15y ago
- CognitiveLens 15y ago
  There's a major validity problem with the sampling method, and exterm points out a pretty glaring bias, so high numbers don't necessarily improve validity, only reliability. Random sampling would be much better than opt-in sampling, but it's obviously pretty difficult to do that in practice.
  - Steko 15y ago
    Would be nice if they could control for household income as well, you'd see much of the differences disappear.
    - code_duck 15y ago
      All browsers are provided free of charge and will run equally well on an average piece of hardware. Why do you think browser use is related to income?
      - Steko 15y ago
        First we know IQ is correlated with income. We might guess Mac (hence Safari) users are correlated with income. We might guess Opera users are correlated with income for several reasons. We might guess Chrome users are correlated with income. We might guess Firefox users are correlated with income. We could guess the same of Lynx or any other niche browser more likely to be popular with well educated, higher income bracket people.
        code_duck 15y ago
        We might guess those things, I suppose. I was wondering why specifically. Are you saying you think it is mainly related to education, and education is correlated to high income, this that's the link and not something else?
blackboxxx 15y ago
I would think IQ in relation to websites being visited would be a better. Rupert Murdock websites = lower score, that sort of thing.
- hugh3 15y ago
  Thankyou, sir, for misspelling Rupert Murdoch's name, and treating us all to this delicious dose of irony.
  - blackboxxx 15y ago
    I don't care.
rachelbythebay 15y ago
Perhaps some browsers are particularly hard to use and you need to use those extra IQ points figuring out how to get them installed or running. In other words, this might be a dubious accomplishment.
- upthedale 15y ago
  Highly speculative. Conversely, maybe there's some subtle, innate quality that higher IQ people appreciate about certain browsers. Either way, as an Opera user, I have some ammunition next time I find myself in a childish browser argument ;)
davidbitter 15y ago
This study almost seems believable until you read the last paragraph. Since when are Web Standards "common knowledge"? How does understanding how IQ relates to browser choice help IT companies save the extra money they spend making websites work in IE? And does this conclusion mean that only IT companies have websites, or only IT companies invest the extra money to make them work in IE? I didn't click on the IQ test... but I did click on the study. Dang.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
katieben 15y ago
Who uses Opera and why?
- foob 15y ago
  It has some features that are fairly unique and I appreciate their experimentation. For example, Unite makes it very easy for your average person to share music, files, a streaming webcam, or whatever from within their browser. It's a great way to do something like let a friend listen to a cool album you just discovered without either of you ever leaving the browser. I still prefer Chrome on the desktop but I respect the developers and what they're trying to do. On the other hand, I do use Opera on my phone. I find tab switching to be much more natural than it is with the default Android browser and I also appreciate the option of proxying traffic through their servers where it is compressed and stripped down to a mobile format. It cuts down on bandwidth and cpu usage which I like, particularly if the data connection is being spotty.
  - westicle 15y ago
    Coming soon to a courtroom near you: RIAA has Opera shut down as an "illegal filesharing program".
- balakk 15y ago
  I've been using Opera for about 11 years now. When I started, there was nothing that was better. Even with that huge advertisement widget. It still is extremely competitive, if not leading in most things. For casual browsing it is unmatched. It's not about one feature; it's the completeness of the whole browser. Things that you'd expect in Firefox/Chrome in extensions are built in here. It's still as fast as Chrome to the user, never mind silly benchmarks. Give it a spin some time.
  - jigs_up 15y ago
    I gave it shot for a while because I needed the Turbo feature. I liked using Opera, it was fast and the new chrome-like GUI is nice. However... as soon as my internet was back at full capacity I changed back to Chrome. You say you like it because of the completeness, but I found that it was missing quite a few small things which I cannot live without. Off the top off my head I can only remember two things - Tabs cannot be dragged in and out of windows Text cannot be selected and dragged into the URL bar
georgieporgie 15y ago
It is common knowledge, that Internet Explorer Versions to 6.0 to 8.0 are highly incompatible with modern web standards. In order to make websites work properly on these browsers, web developers have to spend a lot of unnecessary effort. This results in an extra financial strain on web projects, and has over the last decade cost millions of man-hours to IT companies So, dumb people keep IT employed.
- eftpotrm 15y ago
  Or, dumb people reduce functionality for the rest of us because work has to go into handling their mistakes rather than coding the better product the devs really wanted to make.
neilk 15y ago
Amusing, but it's kind of a truism. Changing your browser requires cognitive capacity. Those who change it the fastest have the highest cognitive capacity. Even without other explanations, that explains variations of version within a single browser, and to some extent Chrome and Firefox. The really surprising thing for me was Opera. You can't explain that with mere willingness to update or try something new.
- locci 15y ago
  Popular browsers are "dragged down to 100" by the mass of people who install the browser because of techie friends, or fashion. In the second graph you can notice there are many more high IQs individuals using firefox and chrome rather than opera.
  - w1ntermute 15y ago
    > In the second graph you can notice there are many more high IQs individuals using firefox and chrome rather than opera. You can also notice that as IQ increases, the numbers of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari users eventually peak, but the number of Opera users never does.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  The really surprising thing for me was Opera Agreed. If what being smart gets me is Opera, I'd rather be dumb! I kid, I kid!
- thricedotted 15y ago
  Here's the trend I see: all the browsers after IE pretty much go in order of market share. Safari isn't that special because it's the default on Macs, so even though its market share is only slightly above Opera's, the score there is dampened because there's still greater diversity in the people using it. But way fewer people are using Opera rather than Chrome or Firefox...I bet if you went back to the times Chrome/Firefox had a similarly sized market share, you'd see the same spike. So it's not sampling bias, per se, but...I guess it's something along those lines?
JoshTriplett 15y ago
The study mentioned that they collect operating system data as well; the subsequent writeup on that might prove quite interesting.
younata 15y ago
Excellent. Now I can convert all of the people I know who still use IE to opera. "SMART PEOPLE USE OPERA, YOU WANT TO BE CONSIDERED SMART, DON'T YOU?!"
- astrofinch 15y ago
  Did you see the second graph? Firefox is the most popular browser among people who were in the 99th percentile.
  - waterlesscloud 15y ago
    But Opera had almost no users below 50th percentile.
grandalf 15y ago
IQ will be lower the more market share, so this is silly.
- CognitiveLens 15y ago
  not necessarily. Let's say my browser is targeted toward people with low IQ, and I get 10% of the market, biased heavily toward low IQ. Suddenly, people with high IQ realize that it's a great browser for them as well, and they all start using it - I increase market share AND raise correlated IQ levels. It is more accurate to say that increasing market share will tend to shift average IQ score toward the population mean.
  - grandalf 15y ago
    Your last statement is indeed the phenomenon I was intending to describe. However access to the internet (and tools) has gone to the wealthy and educated first, who tend to have higher IQ (as measurable by most tests) than the poor and uneducated. Hence adoption of new browser technology is often among the cognitive elite (for access reasons) and penetration toward the masses (average IQ) depends on the overall appeal and not just a small fad among those with early access.
MetaMan 15y ago
HAHAHAHAHA - I can't believe anyone is taking this seriously !!!
CognitiveLens 15y ago
> it is a clear indication that individuals on the lower side of the IQ scale tend to resist a change/upgrade of their browsers. AptiQuant needs to review their correlation/causation definitions. Resisting change is one plausible explanation, but the only thing the data clearly show is that the people who scored low on this IQ test tended to be using out of date browsers at the time they took the test. "Resistance" implies agency, which correlation studies do not establish. I choose to go with the reverse explanation: older browsers actively reduce user intelligence.
- w1ntermute 15y ago
  > I choose to go with the reverse explanation: older browsers actively reduce user intelligence. Do you have any reason for that? Because frankly it just sounds ridiculous. It would make sense that someone with a higher IQ would be able to consider the possibility that their browser was replaceable and take the necessary steps to replace it. But I don't see how which browser you use could have an appreciable effect on your intelligence.
  - inconditus 15y ago
    It was a joke, along the lines of xkcd comics. See: http://xkcd.com/925/ http://xkcd.com/925/
  - CognitiveLens 15y ago
    you and inconditus are both correct - the 'reverse' explanation is ridiculous.
chopsueyar 15y ago
Lynx? Or using telnet on port 80?
- smoove 15y ago
  I for one exclusively use GNU wget for my surfing needs! Through GNU Emacs of course.
dbdoug 15y ago
A couple of points. First: In the paper, Aptiquant claims that over 100,000 took a Weschler (IV) test in 4 weeks. According to wikipedia, a Weschler test takes about 15 minutes. That's an awful lot of people looking for free IQ tests, and spending 15 minutes each on the site. Second: Check out Aptiquant's site. Maybe I'm stupid, but I was unable to find a single active 'Free IQ Test' link. And another - Aptiquant's results (if they are real) are from a self-selected group. Does the need to take a free online IQ test relate to your IQ?
- jleader 15y ago
  I couldn't find a time estimate on Wikipedia, but Pearson (the publisher of the WAIS-IV) says that it takes 60-90 minutes (http://www.pearsonassessments.com/HAIWEB/Cultures/en-us/Productdetail.htm?Pid=015-8980-808 http://www.pearsonassessments.com/HAIWEB/Cultures/en-us/Prod...). It's also not clear to me how they determined correlations between scores on their on-line version and on the standard pencil-and-paper version.
dlss 15y ago
hahaha... judging by the IQ score, only the Opera devs are still using Opera :p
buckwild 15y ago
<sarcasm> In a similar study, they do an association study between IQ and shower frequency... </sarcasm>
jleader 15y ago
The aptiquant.com site now says this was all a hoax.

70 points by exterm 15y ago

This is the first time I've ever heard of ads for a "free IQ test" actually leading to the real thing! The paper uses the word "significant" quite a few times, but never mentions the significance level, or confidence intervals, or any other indication of the statistical quality (or lack thereof) of this data. The large number of subjects (100K) suggests that the results may be valid, but it would be nice to see this quantified. Also, the author says "the test worked properly in all of the major browsers", but doesn't explain how he established that, which is important to rule out the possibility that a problem with the test in some browsers skewed the results. Still, the graph at the end (showing distribution of browser usage across IQ percentiles) is entertaining.

exterm 15y ago
Yeah, the "free IQ test" thing made me wonder too. I always thought that intelligent people would not be very likely to click on those ads.
- glimcat 15y ago
  To click or not to click...that is the test.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  Furthermore, what would the usage of adblock be by IQ percentile? Opera's high showing may be due to it's adblock extension still not being as mature as those of Chrome and FF, and so the average Opera user might be less likely to use it. There's no doubt that Opera users would tend to be geeks and nerds anyway, but you could say the same thing of the top FF users. I'm not convinced that the methodology supports the apparent conclusion that the smartest people use Opera, just that of those who took the test, Opera users scored best.
  - waterlesscloud 15y ago
    I bet adblock usage peaks between 120-130 iq and drops off on either side. This is a wild, completely speculative hunch for which I have no evidence.
    - redthrowaway 15y ago
      So I get putting a lower bound on it, as it would take exposure to technical communities (even if it's just 4chan) that usually comes from inquisition and information-seeking, but what do you propose as the means by which there would exist an upper bound?
      - niels_olson 15y ago
        Experts in other domains who simply don't give a hoot about web browsers.
      - dorkwagon 15y ago
        I imagine that people of high intelligence would be more likely to understand the greater implications of using ad blockers (driving the creations of paywalls, etc.) and so would be less likely to block ads, even when they know how to do so. It's hard to draw conclusions, though--who knows if this chain of speculation actually leads back to a significant confounding factor?
        redthrowaway 15y ago
        They would also be aware of game theory, and may choose to use adblock but not tell anyone, or even actively campaign against it while using it themselves. I'm not suggesting smart people are unethical, but rather that ethicality and intelligence are fairly orthogonal, and that your proposed means seems to have more to do with the former than the latter. As to the speculation, you are of course right. I'm just putting off studying. Speaking of which...
        alexgartrell 15y ago
CognitiveLens 15y ago
There's a major validity problem with the sampling method, and exterm points out a pretty glaring bias, so high numbers don't necessarily improve validity, only reliability. Random sampling would be much better than opt-in sampling, but it's obviously pretty difficult to do that in practice.
- Steko 15y ago
  Would be nice if they could control for household income as well, you'd see much of the differences disappear.
  - code_duck 15y ago
    All browsers are provided free of charge and will run equally well on an average piece of hardware. Why do you think browser use is related to income?
    - Steko 15y ago
      First we know IQ is correlated with income. We might guess Mac (hence Safari) users are correlated with income. We might guess Opera users are correlated with income for several reasons. We might guess Chrome users are correlated with income. We might guess Firefox users are correlated with income. We could guess the same of Lynx or any other niche browser more likely to be popular with well educated, higher income bracket people.
      - code_duck 15y ago
        We might guess those things, I suppose. I was wondering why specifically. Are you saying you think it is mainly related to education, and education is correlated to high income, this that's the link and not something else?

blackboxxx 15y ago

I would think IQ in relation to websites being visited would be a better. Rupert Murdock websites = lower score, that sort of thing.

hugh3 15y ago
Thankyou, sir, for misspelling Rupert Murdoch's name, and treating us all to this delicious dose of irony.
- blackboxxx 15y ago
  I don't care.

rachelbythebay 15y ago

Perhaps some browsers are particularly hard to use and you need to use those extra IQ points figuring out how to get them installed or running. In other words, this might be a dubious accomplishment.

upthedale 15y ago
Highly speculative. Conversely, maybe there's some subtle, innate quality that higher IQ people appreciate about certain browsers. Either way, as an Opera user, I have some ammunition next time I find myself in a childish browser argument ;)

davidbitter 15y ago

This study almost seems believable until you read the last paragraph. Since when are Web Standards "common knowledge"? How does understanding how IQ relates to browser choice help IT companies save the extra money they spend making websites work in IE? And does this conclusion mean that only IT companies have websites, or only IT companies invest the extra money to make them work in IE? I didn't click on the IQ test... but I did click on the study. Dang.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

katieben 15y ago

Who uses Opera and why?

foob 15y ago
It has some features that are fairly unique and I appreciate their experimentation. For example, Unite makes it very easy for your average person to share music, files, a streaming webcam, or whatever from within their browser. It's a great way to do something like let a friend listen to a cool album you just discovered without either of you ever leaving the browser. I still prefer Chrome on the desktop but I respect the developers and what they're trying to do. On the other hand, I do use Opera on my phone. I find tab switching to be much more natural than it is with the default Android browser and I also appreciate the option of proxying traffic through their servers where it is compressed and stripped down to a mobile format. It cuts down on bandwidth and cpu usage which I like, particularly if the data connection is being spotty.
- westicle 15y ago
  Coming soon to a courtroom near you: RIAA has Opera shut down as an "illegal filesharing program".
balakk 15y ago
I've been using Opera for about 11 years now. When I started, there was nothing that was better. Even with that huge advertisement widget. It still is extremely competitive, if not leading in most things. For casual browsing it is unmatched. It's not about one feature; it's the completeness of the whole browser. Things that you'd expect in Firefox/Chrome in extensions are built in here. It's still as fast as Chrome to the user, never mind silly benchmarks. Give it a spin some time.
- jigs_up 15y ago
  I gave it shot for a while because I needed the Turbo feature. I liked using Opera, it was fast and the new chrome-like GUI is nice. However... as soon as my internet was back at full capacity I changed back to Chrome. You say you like it because of the completeness, but I found that it was missing quite a few small things which I cannot live without. Off the top off my head I can only remember two things - Tabs cannot be dragged in and out of windows Text cannot be selected and dragged into the URL bar

georgieporgie 15y ago

It is common knowledge, that Internet Explorer Versions to 6.0 to 8.0 are highly incompatible with modern web standards. In order to make websites work properly on these browsers, web developers have to spend a lot of unnecessary effort. This results in an extra financial strain on web projects, and has over the last decade cost millions of man-hours to IT companies So, dumb people keep IT employed.

eftpotrm 15y ago
Or, dumb people reduce functionality for the rest of us because work has to go into handling their mistakes rather than coding the better product the devs really wanted to make.

neilk 15y ago

Amusing, but it's kind of a truism. Changing your browser requires cognitive capacity. Those who change it the fastest have the highest cognitive capacity. Even without other explanations, that explains variations of version within a single browser, and to some extent Chrome and Firefox. The really surprising thing for me was Opera. You can't explain that with mere willingness to update or try something new.

locci 15y ago
Popular browsers are "dragged down to 100" by the mass of people who install the browser because of techie friends, or fashion. In the second graph you can notice there are many more high IQs individuals using firefox and chrome rather than opera.
- w1ntermute 15y ago
  > In the second graph you can notice there are many more high IQs individuals using firefox and chrome rather than opera. You can also notice that as IQ increases, the numbers of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari users eventually peak, but the number of Opera users never does.
sliverstorm 15y ago
The really surprising thing for me was Opera Agreed. If what being smart gets me is Opera, I'd rather be dumb! I kid, I kid!
thricedotted 15y ago
Here's the trend I see: all the browsers after IE pretty much go in order of market share. Safari isn't that special because it's the default on Macs, so even though its market share is only slightly above Opera's, the score there is dampened because there's still greater diversity in the people using it. But way fewer people are using Opera rather than Chrome or Firefox...I bet if you went back to the times Chrome/Firefox had a similarly sized market share, you'd see the same spike. So it's not sampling bias, per se, but...I guess it's something along those lines?

JoshTriplett 15y ago

The study mentioned that they collect operating system data as well; the subsequent writeup on that might prove quite interesting.

younata 15y ago

Excellent. Now I can convert all of the people I know who still use IE to opera. "SMART PEOPLE USE OPERA, YOU WANT TO BE CONSIDERED SMART, DON'T YOU?!"

astrofinch 15y ago
Did you see the second graph? Firefox is the most popular browser among people who were in the 99th percentile.
- waterlesscloud 15y ago
  But Opera had almost no users below 50th percentile.

grandalf 15y ago

IQ will be lower the more market share, so this is silly.

CognitiveLens 15y ago
not necessarily. Let's say my browser is targeted toward people with low IQ, and I get 10% of the market, biased heavily toward low IQ. Suddenly, people with high IQ realize that it's a great browser for them as well, and they all start using it - I increase market share AND raise correlated IQ levels. It is more accurate to say that increasing market share will tend to shift average IQ score toward the population mean.
- grandalf 15y ago
  Your last statement is indeed the phenomenon I was intending to describe. However access to the internet (and tools) has gone to the wealthy and educated first, who tend to have higher IQ (as measurable by most tests) than the poor and uneducated. Hence adoption of new browser technology is often among the cognitive elite (for access reasons) and penetration toward the masses (average IQ) depends on the overall appeal and not just a small fad among those with early access.

MetaMan 15y ago

HAHAHAHAHA - I can't believe anyone is taking this seriously !!!

CognitiveLens 15y ago

> it is a clear indication that individuals on the lower side of the IQ scale tend to resist a change/upgrade of their browsers. AptiQuant needs to review their correlation/causation definitions. Resisting change is one plausible explanation, but the only thing the data clearly show is that the people who scored low on this IQ test tended to be using out of date browsers at the time they took the test. "Resistance" implies agency, which correlation studies do not establish. I choose to go with the reverse explanation: older browsers actively reduce user intelligence.

w1ntermute 15y ago
> I choose to go with the reverse explanation: older browsers actively reduce user intelligence. Do you have any reason for that? Because frankly it just sounds ridiculous. It would make sense that someone with a higher IQ would be able to consider the possibility that their browser was replaceable and take the necessary steps to replace it. But I don't see how which browser you use could have an appreciable effect on your intelligence.
- inconditus 15y ago
  It was a joke, along the lines of xkcd comics. See: http://xkcd.com/925/ http://xkcd.com/925/
- CognitiveLens 15y ago
  you and inconditus are both correct - the 'reverse' explanation is ridiculous.

chopsueyar 15y ago

Lynx? Or using telnet on port 80?

smoove 15y ago
I for one exclusively use GNU wget for my surfing needs! Through GNU Emacs of course.

dbdoug 15y ago

A couple of points. First: In the paper, Aptiquant claims that over 100,000 took a Weschler (IV) test in 4 weeks. According to wikipedia, a Weschler test takes about 15 minutes. That's an awful lot of people looking for free IQ tests, and spending 15 minutes each on the site. Second: Check out Aptiquant's site. Maybe I'm stupid, but I was unable to find a single active 'Free IQ Test' link. And another - Aptiquant's results (if they are real) are from a self-selected group. Does the need to take a free online IQ test relate to your IQ?

jleader 15y ago
I couldn't find a time estimate on Wikipedia, but Pearson (the publisher of the WAIS-IV) says that it takes 60-90 minutes (http://www.pearsonassessments.com/HAIWEB/Cultures/en-us/Productdetail.htm?Pid=015-8980-808 http://www.pearsonassessments.com/HAIWEB/Cultures/en-us/Prod...). It's also not clear to me how they determined correlations between scores on their on-line version and on the standard pencil-and-paper version.

dlss 15y ago

hahaha... judging by the IQ score, only the Opera devs are still using Opera :p

buckwild 15y ago

<sarcasm> In a similar study, they do an association study between IQ and shower frequency... </sarcasm>

jleader 15y ago

The aptiquant.com site now says this was all a hoax.