September 19th, 2007
Smarting intellect
Just be smart enough not to waste your time with IQ tests, and repeat the phrase, ‘I am not a number, I am a free man’*.
*I only used man for the sake of the quote, feel free to replace it with the gender signifier/species of your choice.
Technorati Tags: IQ, test, tests, webcomic, comic, funny, rant
Sean on 
Maddie on
I dunno, I always score very high on those tests.
But then I am the guy who you see driving around with coffee on their roof.
Here in Korea people are big on numbers. There’s IQ, EQ, and most recently CQ. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the tests one takes in high school will pretty much determine the rest of one’s life.
Parents like numbers because they give a sense of having achieved something. It’s much better when results are expressed as big numbers.
I’m great at IQ tests though I agree they mean essentially nothing.
Regardless, though, I do consider myself to be smarter than everyone I know and most people that I meet and about 95% of everyone else. It may not be true but it keeps my self-esteem up (except when it doesn’t.)
And if you watch football, there is also that wonderful test called the Wonderlic which only goes up to 50.
Ben, I know a few people like that… in fact one of the smartest people I know, a genuine genius, destroyed a car because he drove around with the handbrake on.
EQ and CQ? Wow, what are they for?
In my experience, testing only shows you how good people are at taking tests, nothing more than that. Put them in the real world doing everyday things and even the highest scorers will struggle and make rookie mistakes.
Joe, as a reader of The Flowfield Unity, you’re smarter than at least 98% of the population (the other 2% being other readers of this comic ).
And that includes you, MC, and thanks for joining in…
Wonderlic is a personel test, and quite good fun to do if you have a spare moment, folks. It’s far more based on adaptation and how quickly you pick things up and as such may be more of a test of real intelligence than IQ tests.
The correct answer is, yes there is a test that can do that.
But like PE Ratios, Heart Monitors and the United Nations,
it is only a tool. It has application.
i scored very well in an IQ test when i was about 4, my brother and sister did one as well and i scored better than them. i resent this fact because it makes me parents expect a whole lot of smartness out of me that just isnt actually there. also, my IQ test result said my attention wanders quickly. how true it is in that respect.
IQ is just a measuring cup. What you put into it depends on you.
EQ is Emotional Quotient; this came into vogue just after the IMF crisis, when people noticed that all the pressure being put on Korean students might not be so good for their mental health. I’ve only started seeing CQ, Creativity Quotient, mentioned recently. I don’t know whether it will catch on in the same way.
My husband has no IQ. His scores on two different parts of the test were so far apart that the test couldn’t give a result. The IQ test can be a useful tool, but it’s designed for people who fit in the biggest part of the bell curve.