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I agree about MBTI - until I understood that I was allowed to have a personality preference for perceiving over judging (preferring to live in the moment than p

I agree about MBTI - until I understood that I was allowed to have a personality preference for perceiving over judging (preferring to live in the moment than plan ahead in detail) I was stressing myself worrying about why I was so rubbish at planning, rather than trying to find a career where it was less important! (the only careers I've come up with so far are stock exchange trading and politics - if anyone has any others I'd be interested to hear. I like coding, especially in sprints, but I am absolutely terrible at estimating how long it will take me to write things.) I find that every time I take an IQ test I get a higher score - I presumed because I'm learning what sort of questions IQ tests ask and how to answer them faster - so when required I just quote the first ever test I took as my IQ (which was a very unscientific one, unfortunately, by answering questions along with a TV program. I also had a score bump for age, because I was only 16.) I was, at the time, delighted that I got higher than my maths teacher! remember too, though, that IQ is heavily biased towards people with a "western" education. IQ isn't very important though, once you get above 130 - the differences don't correlate to greater performance in any real test cases. The difference in performance at those levels is to do with attitude, experience, vocabulary (outside of technical fields I've studied/worked in, mine is awful), and all sorts of soft factors. (apologies if I'm wrong, but I assume that anyone with karma on hacker news is IQ >= 130 or so.)

mgkimsal 13y ago
IQ numbers vary based on tests, to some degree, so "130" doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot. What I'd found is that I was in the same percentile on all tests (took 3 a few years ago) compared to tests from 30 and 20 years ago. The raw score numbers might have changed up or down slightly, but same percentile in my case.
- tehwalrus 13y ago
  ... IQ is supposed to be a normal distribution, ">= 130" === "3 sigma above the mean," i.e. top 0.1%. (bearing in mind that the test is inescapably biased towards people with our background - US/UK/etc, certainly English speaking, probably university educated.)
  - mgkimsal 13y ago
    To be fair, I wasn't university educated at 9, when I took my first tests, although I was born in the US and spoke English.
    - tehwalrus 13y ago
      fair point indeed - the tests are highly weighted (and thus rather unsatisfactory - the skewing reduces the resolution of the test, if you like) for young people.
      - mgkimsal 13y ago
        I suspect the tests I had at 9 were age-specific, but I've still kept in the same percentile. What was interesting to me was tests a couple years ago - the questions were sometimes things like "I'll say a number, you repeat it back to me with the digits reversed". They kept going until you couldn't do it anymore. I think I conked out around 9 or 10 digits. "Give me as many names as you can in 10 seconds" (something like that). "Spot the differences between these two pictures". I'm wondering in what ways questions like these can be (or are) culturally biased? I can think of ways myself, but curious as to what others think.

mgkimsal 13y ago

IQ numbers vary based on tests, to some degree, so "130" doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot. What I'd found is that I was in the same percentile on all tests (took 3 a few years ago) compared to tests from 30 and 20 years ago. The raw score numbers might have changed up or down slightly, but same percentile in my case.

tehwalrus 13y ago
... IQ is supposed to be a normal distribution, ">= 130" === "3 sigma above the mean," i.e. top 0.1%. (bearing in mind that the test is inescapably biased towards people with our background - US/UK/etc, certainly English speaking, probably university educated.)
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  To be fair, I wasn't university educated at 9, when I took my first tests, although I was born in the US and spoke English.
  - tehwalrus 13y ago
    fair point indeed - the tests are highly weighted (and thus rather unsatisfactory - the skewing reduces the resolution of the test, if you like) for young people.
    - mgkimsal 13y ago
      I suspect the tests I had at 9 were age-specific, but I've still kept in the same percentile. What was interesting to me was tests a couple years ago - the questions were sometimes things like "I'll say a number, you repeat it back to me with the digits reversed". They kept going until you couldn't do it anymore. I think I conked out around 9 or 10 digits. "Give me as many names as you can in 10 seconds" (something like that). "Spot the differences between these two pictures". I'm wondering in what ways questions like these can be (or are) culturally biased? I can think of ways myself, but curious as to what others think.