[Eug]

CBC Television : Test the Nation - Canada's National IQ Test

Test the Nation will be the biggest survey ever conducted to see just how smart Canadians are. In this live two-hour special, the whole country can participate in a real-time interactive IQ test. Viewers can take the test in the comfort of their own home, on the internet or with pen and paper, while our seven teams - Tattoo Artists, Millionaires, Fitness Instructors, Surgeons, Mayors, Talk Jocks and Celebrities - are exercising their grey matter in our Toronto studio.

Here is the Test. It is composed of 60 time-limited questions.
If you want some practice, go to the Mental Gym.

Results

Here are the team scores:

Surgeons 119
Millionaires 118
Fitness Instructors 112
Mayors 110
Radio DJs 108
Tattoo Artists 101
Celebrities 98

Blondes were 109.3, compared to 107.8 for those with black hair.
Vegans were 104, compared to 110 for meat eaters.

I got 7452349 on the test. Honest.

[hookem2oo7]

hooray me

[Spliff]

I'm doing the practice IQ quizzes and I seem to have problems with certain math questions, usually word problems and numbers series, like the following one. I just can't figure out the pattern in it.



Nevermind, I just figured it out. D'oh!

[Eug]

I love the fact that the Celebrities team was the only group to average under 100.

Miss Universe 2007 is on that team, BTW:

[Chuckit]

Yeah, it probably does take about that many Canadians to equal my IQ.

[The Mick]

128. Hooray for me!

[Gossamer]

I'll risk embarrassing myself.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Gossamer 

I'll risk embarrassing myself.

Heh. Nice try.

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Yeah, it probably does take about that many Canadians to equal my IQ.

What, one Miss Universe?

[Rumor]

Perhaps I'll try the mental pushups and take the test again some other time.

[centerchannel68]

Pfft. I guess I'm smarter than canada then.

[Ghoser777]

126 - that was really stressful!

[centerchannel68]

Yeah, it was pretty mean how they'd throw in trick questions, and keep trying to throw you off. Oh well. The only other thing that pissed me off was how easy it was to cheat at using screen captures and widgets.

[besson3c]

My wife scored a 138. She is literally the smartest person I know.

[Railroader]

I guess I am smarter than the average Canadian. Surprise. [/YAWN]

[:dragonflypro:]

Age: 35, Aries (I am sure that has a significant weight )


Those logic items are a punk when the clock is ticking and I knew I botched 2 Language ones after I answered. "Doh" moment!

[TheoCryst]

126. Not great, not terrible. Perfect scores on perception and logic, though. There were a few math ones that I knew I had effed up as I clicked them, though.

[iREZ]

man...i didnt hit two answers in time...:/

scored a 126

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by iREZ 

man...i didnt hit two answers in time...:/

Same here. Click just as the timer ran out. Not sure I got them right, but it would be nice to know.

[Miniryu]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Here is the Test. It is composed of 60 time-limited questions.
If you want some practice, go to the Mental Gym.

Results

Here are the team scores:

Surgeons 119
Millionaires 118
Fitness Instructors 112
Mayors 110
Radio DJs 108
Tattoo Artists 101
Celebrities 98

I'm willing to bet there is no statistical significance between the scores- they all look extremely close to me. In other words, these results are meaningless.

[Chuckit]

98 isn't that close to 119.

[Oisín]

Botched a logic question by accidentally clicking the wrong option (damn time-ticker made me nervous and made me click 23% instead of 33%).

Originally Posted by :dragonflypro: 

Age: 35, Aries (I am sure that has a significant weight )

Apparently, it does. Had I been 35, I would have been a 133; had I been over 55, I’d have been a 145; as I’m only 24, however, I’m merely a 130. Discrimination!!!

(Ah well, I’d rather still be 24 than lose 30+ years of my life and be a 145 )

Yeah, it was pretty mean how they'd throw in trick questions, and keep trying to throw you off. Oh well. The only other thing that pissed me off was how easy it was to cheat at using screen captures and widgets.

I didn’t get any ‘trick questions’, per se; just questions where you have to analyse both the question and the answer properly to get it right.

Using widgets might work in some cases (the language ones, for instance—not that I would use widgets; that would kind of defeat the whole purpose of taking the test in the first place). But screen captures? You must be very fast on your fingers if you can make a screen capture, open it, switch back and forth between your browser and the screendump, and determine the correct answer, all within those 10 seconds you get to answer the question.

[Mithras]

130. The time was stressful indeed!

[Dakar²]

So somehow this entire forum is well above average.

I do feel proud of myself for guessing they were going to ask me the what the color of the chicks sweater was going to be. It seemed like an obvious trap.

[red rocket]

I made the same type of error as Oisín, clicking the wrong answer by accident a few times. Fucking nerves.

[osiris]

122.

Are those Imperial IQ units? Every time I take one of these supposed alleged 'IQ Tests", the range varies like the weather. Will the one true IQ Test please stand up!

[itistoday]

Originally Posted by Spliff 

I'm doing the practice IQ quizzes and I seem to have problems with certain math questions, usually word problems and numbers series, like the following one. I just can't figure out the pattern in it.



Nevermind, I just figured it out. D'oh!

Wow that's harder than any of the ones I got. I wouldn't have been able to answer that given the amount of time. For those who don't see it: 12 * 2 + 3 = 27, 14 * 2 + 2 = 30, So therefore 16 * 2 + 1 = 33. C.

Edit: lol. That's the hard way. I guess the easy way is to see that 27 + 3 = 30, 30 + 3 = 33.
I don't think they give you enough numbers though to easily see that...

[Dakar²]

Originally Posted by itistoday 

Wow that's harder than any of the ones I got. I wouldn't have been able to answer that given the amount of time. For those who don't see it: 12 * 2 + 3 = 27, 14 * 2 + 2 = 30, So therefore 16 * 2 + 1 = 33. C.

Odd, I just read it like this:
27, 12, 30, 14, *, 16, 36
Those in bold seem to be increasing by 3, while the alternating numbers increase by 2.

Edit: Ha, you made my comment while I was typing it up

[itistoday]

If an IQ test is timed it means it's compensating for the poor quality of the questions it's asking. Such tests are a poor indicator of intelligence because, for example, persons A and B could both know how to solve the problem, but it takes person B 10 seconds longer. This doesn't mean that person A is smarter than person B, it could mean one of many things, most likely that person A had more experience doing these kinds of problems. So if person B had practiced that kind of problem many times before hand, he would have gotten it just as fast or faster than person A (as much research has shown, practice makes perfect).

As an example take the same computer program and run it on two different processors, one will finish in a shorter amount of time, but the actual software (the intelligence of the algorithm, what have you), is the same.

True IQ tests are those that give you a generous amount of time to solve a problem so that the question becomes no longer whether you had enough time to provide the correct answer, but whether you were capable of giving it in the first place.

Finally, you can change your IQ (though it becomes more difficult with age). The whole idea behind IQ tests is that your IQ should not change from test to test, it should be an "objective" measure of your intelligence. So far I don't think a single IQ test has been demonstrated to provide these kinds of results.

So yeah, if you got a 120 on this test and somebody else got a 130, don't despair, that doesn't really mean much (you should start worrying if the difference is much greater though, I'm looking at you, Paris Hilton). These tests fail to measure many aspects of your intelligence, for example your ability to synthesize a great solution to some abstract problem (like writing an essay, giving a speech, designing a house, etc).

But I guess most people already know all this, I just wanted to throw it out there anyway.

[Dakar²]

I might save that to a text file for the next IQ thread, if I were you.

[Chuckit]

I think I did all right.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by itistoday 

So yeah, if you got a 120 on this test and somebody else got a 130, don't despair, that doesn't really mean much (you should start worrying if the difference is much greater though, I'm looking at you, Paris Hilton).

I think she’s excluded from this one: there are no negative values.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

I think she’s excluded from this one: there are no negative values.

She'd probably just be like, "60 or above is passing, right?"

[itistoday]

[JoshuaZ]

And in America we have the game "Are you smarter than a 5th grader." Or something like that. (As I don't live in the US and haven't downloaded it)

If only Miss Universe was a smart hotty.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by JoshuaZ 

And in America we have the game "Are you smarter than a 5th grader." Or something like that. (As I don't live in the US and haven't downloaded it)

If only Miss Universe was a smart hotty.

Yeah, and maybe Mr. Universe could be a jabberwocky.

No such thing!

[Dakar²]

I'm usually better after I've had my coffee.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Dakar² 

I'm usually better after I've had my coffee.

That almost looks like one of the perception questions.

Originally Posted by Miniryu 

I'm willing to bet there is no statistical significance between the scores- they all look extremely close to me. In other words, these results are meaningless.

Like Chuckit says, 98 isn't very close to 119. In fact, it's a 21% difference.

Thus, I also suspect the test results are in fact valid, since there were 36 people per team. So while there is no statistical difference between the Surgeons (119) and the Millionaires (118), I'm confident that if you ran the stats there would definitely be a significant difference between the Surgeons and the Celebrities. Well... caveat... That's assuming there were actually 36 celebrities on the Celebrities team. I'm not sure if that's true or not. If there are only say 10 celebrities, then maybe you're right. I don't know because I didn't actually see the show. The website says it was 36 per team, but doesn't give a formal description of the Celebrities team.

To change things a bit then, I'll say that the Surgeons' team (119) is probably smarter (or at least better at doing these tests) than the Tattoo Artists' team (101). (Both had formal teams of 36.)

While I did quite well on this test, I agree that much of it is luck. I was pissed off because they phone rang a few times at the end of the test and thus I did more poorly there, and I missed a question or two elsewhere because I didn't select the answer in time. OTOH, I got a couple of guesses right so it evens out. I also did the practice questions before hand. If I hadn't, I think I would have done worse on the real test.

BTW, I find it interesting that every single time this test or a similar one has been done, women have done a bit worse than men. It doesn't say why, or in exactly what part of the test, but it is consistent.

Australia 2002
Men 112
Women 108

The Netherlands 2002
Men 115
Women 114

Belgium
Men 112
Women 110

Germany
Men 119
Women 113

France
Men 112
Women 108

UK 2002
Men 112
Women 105

UK 2006
Men 112
Women 109

[Miniryu]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

98 isn't that close to 119.

That's the largest gap between any of the results- even on the entire results page.

And have you ever studied statistics? We have no idea what varience is.

I have been giving IQ tests for the U.S. goverment for the past two years, just so you know.

[Miniryu]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Like Chuckit says, 98 isn't very close to 119. In fact, it's a 21% difference.

Again, like I just said, this is the most extreme example on the test- that may be the one comparison that is actually significant.

As for the gender bias, you'd have to look at the various compositions of the tests: admittedly, since your results were reached using more than one test (right?) they look more valid. However, we still don't know- you'd have to use a validated instrument that has been well tested. Perhapse these IQ tests are using a lot of Mathematics, and area women have statistically been shown to not perform as well.

Maybe I should take this Canadia test, just to see what type of items are on it.

[Dakar²]

Look at the pics posted:

Language
Memory
Logic
Math
Visual memory
Perception

[SVass]

The type of "math" problem that asks one to pick the best number in a series serves to differentiate IQ of those trained to answer that question, having an IQ between 90 and 140, and having limited knowledge of real mathematics. Actually, there is no best answer to that question as the selected digits could be (and probably are) in the sequence for the value of pi or e. "Correct" answers are selected by testing large numbers of people and looking for consistent results; i.e., matching answers from those who get high scores on answers to other questions from persons from a similar milieu.

I believe that Bertrand Russell had a simple one question test that could not be answered correctly by teachers. sam

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Miniryu 

Again, like I just said, this is the most extreme example on the test- that may be the one comparison that is actually significant.

The Celebrities (98) or the Tattoo Artists (who got 101), vs. the Surgeons (119) or the Millionaires (118).

As for the gender bias, you'd have to look at the various compositions of the tests: admittedly, since your results were reached using more than one test (right?) they look more valid. However, we still don't know- you'd have to use a validated instrument that has been well tested. Perhapse these IQ tests are using a lot of Mathematics, and area women have statistically been shown to not perform as well.

Maybe I should take this Canadia test, just to see what type of items are on it.

If you don't feel like taking the whole 60-question test, you can take one of the practice tests. There are 5 sets of practice tests, of 10 questions each.

BTW, a big chunk of the test was actually more vocabulary than anything.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by SVass 

The type of "math" problem that asks one to pick the best number in a series serves to differentiate IQ of those trained to answer that question, having an IQ between 90 and 140, and having limited knowledge of real mathematics. Actually, there is no best answer to that question as the selected digits could be (and probably are) in the sequence for the value of pi or e. "Correct" answers are selected by testing large numbers of people and looking for consistent results; i.e., matching answers from those who get high scores on answers to other questions from persons from a similar milieu.

That’s not really a valid argument. By that argument, any answer to any logic question is immediately invalidated.

Q: “Which word comes next in this list: «one, two, three, ...»?”
A: “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”

After all, the first three words are just random combinations of a random amount of letters, and so is the last. Or rather, there is most likely a way of making the first three words fit into a pattern of combinations and numbers of letters that would expect “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” as a logical fourth word in the sequence.

That doesn’t mean it’s the right answer. It’s just a bit too cumbersome to put the questions all in legalese in order to make them completely unambiguous:

“Forming a pattern based a comparison and placement in the following list of the most commonly attributed meanings in the modern English language of the words included in the list, which of the four words given as options to answer this question would, according to the same criteria, be most likely to be the word chosen as the fourth constituent in the list, completing the observed pattern?”

That just wouldn’t make sense. Time would run out before you’d read through half the question!

[Eug]

That just wouldn’t make sense. Time would run out before you’d read through half the question!

Heh. If you look at the practice tests, the top scores are all 100%... which isn't surprising... but they're done in less than 1 second.

I guess Christine is getting her jollies doing the practice tests over and over again until she's #1. (The questions don't change.)

[:dragonflypro:]

So, I decided to try the test again… I did better. 133.

But it was the SAME TEST

It means you might be able to fake/cheat on many of the questions.

This opens things up for some severe manipulation of scores. SHAME!

[Dakar²]

I expected as much.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by :dragonflypro: 

So, I decided to try the test again… I did better. 133.

But it was the SAME TEST

It means you might be able to fake/cheat on many of the questions.

This opens things up for some severe manipulation of scores. SHAME!

Maybe for this thread, but not for the national statistics. The results when I posted this thread were based on the same 111587 Canadians as they are now.

So basically, the only way for this test to have any meaning at all is just to look at the results of your first time through the test. However, your results from taking the test online now do not affect the reported statistics.

[:dragonflypro:]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Maybe for this thread, but not for the national statistics. The results when I posted this thread were based on the same 111587 Canadians as they are now.

So basically, the only way for this test to have any meaning at all is just to look at the results of your first time through the test. However, your results from taking the test online now do not affect the reported statistics.

Yeah, I was referring specifically to this thread.

The logic and perception would be harder to cheat on, but the others, especially memory types, would be easier to manipulate.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by :dragonflypro: 

Yeah, I was referring specifically to this thread.

The logic and perception would be harder to cheat on, but the others, especially memory types, would be easier to manipulate.

Actually, it'd be pretty to easy to cheat on all of them. I know most of what I got wrong, so I'd just have to write down/screengrab the questions and figure it out on my own time to give myself a 100% score (which corresponds to a calculated IQ of over 140).

I don't have the patience to go through the entire test again though, and I'd have to do that to cheat effectively since much of what I got wrong was in the last section (when my phones were ringing).

P.S. According to the conversion factor, a perfect score for a 50 year-old is an IQ of 143, but a perfect score for a 55 year-old is an IQ of 156. Doesn't this seem like too much of a jump?

[SVass]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

That’s not really a valid argument. By that argument, any answer to any logic question is immediately invalidated.

Q: “Which word comes next in this list: «one, two, three, ...»?”
A: “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”

Let me simplify your argument to "Which number comes next in this list: two, three, ...?"

The "correct" answer could be four or five with the latter being true if this were a list of prime numbers.

You ignored the premise of my argument that all such tests are valid only within a limited range and only for those raised in a similar environment. Unfortunately, I have seen IQ tests with similar poor questions just as I have seen polls with ambiguous questions. Anyway, does a Canadian have an environment sufficiently similar to a United Statesian to make this test valid for us? sam