IQ, and How to Make Yours as High as Einstein’s －IQ、そしてアインシュタインと同じだけ高くする方法－

IQ tests are a way of trying to measure someone’s intelligence.  They test skills such as the ability to use numbers, or to recognise similarities between words.  After doing the test, you are given a score.  The human average is set at 100, so a score of lower than 100 suggests a lower than average intelligence, a score of more than 100 a higher than average intelligence.

But average human IQ scores have changed over time.  I read an article recently which talked about how people’s IQ scores have changed over the last 100 years.  It said that if people who took the test in the past were judged against today’s average IQ, they would be considered to have lower than average intelligence.  From the 1920s to the 1990s, the average human IQ was increasing by about 3 points every ten years.  If an IQ test really is a good measure of your intelligence, then you would look very smart to almost everyone around you if you could go back to 1920 in a time machine.

The article also said, however, that IQ scores stopped going up in the 1990s, and in some places have started to go down.  It made me wonder what changed in the 1990s to make everyone stupider?

Could it have been calculators?  In the 1980s, people had to use their brain to make calculations.  Increasingly from the 1990s, people just had to push some buttons.

Could it have been the internet?  Did we stop bothering to learn things because we thought, “I can always ask Google later”?

Could it have been tamagotchi, Pokemon, or the Spice Girls?  I’m not quite sure why, but I just have the feeling that these things might have been making the world stupider.

I talked about this topic with one of my Japanese friends.  To begin the conversation, I asked her if she knew anything about IQ tests.

“Ah, IQ tests.  You mean, like, Einstein had a high IQ, right?”

“Right,” I said.  “I’m sure Einstein must have had a very high score, since he was so intelligent.”

“But then again, maybe his intelligence balanced itself out,” she said.  “Like, maybe he was a genius in maths, but he couldn’t do simple things, such as put on matching socks.”

“I don’t think IQ tests have a question about whether your socks are matching,” I said.

I think it is a nice idea.  To give ordinary people a chance to keep pace with great scientists like Einstein, the questions should be tweaked a little:

Q1

1, 3, 6, 10.  What is the next number in the sequence?

Q2

On your left foot is a black sock.  What coloured sock should be on your right foot?

Q3

Which two words have the same meaning?

Tiny; faded; large; true; big


Q4

You have a slice of toast for breakfast.  Which of these things should you spread on it?:

Ice-cream; dynamite; butter; caviar

How did you do?  Are you as smart as Einstein?

Vocabulary:

for two things to balance out – for two opposite things to be roughly equal in size, power etc., or for the strength of two things to match and cancel each other

ordinary – not unusual

to tweak something – to change something just slightly