A little bit about intelligence and IQ

It was approximately 100 years ago when specialists – mainly psychologists – started researching human intelligence using the IQ – intelligence quotient.

We can understand IQ as a ration between the mental and actual age (for children), or better to say by expressing the statistic deviation from the average (for adults). Sometimes, the IQ is confused with intelligence. The truth is that they are closely connected, but they are not the same. To illustrate this, I’ll show an example for the IT field. IQ is like a processor of a computer, which determines the speed and volume of data successfully processed in a time interval, but many other factors decide the total output of the computer (the professionals know and laymen would not understand such terms as HDD, graphic and sound cards, etc. anyway).

There are many definitions (or understanding) of intelligence – from the ability to adjust to a statement that intelligence is an entire set of factors related to the speed of thinking.

My own, simplified definition of intelligence is: Intelligence is the ability to arrive at a true (correct) conclusion (result) from certain presumptions (facts). I define geniality as the ability to conclude correct conclusions also from an insufficient amount of facts.

Not very know is the fact that there are more types of intelligence and, even though there is a certain correlation (mutual relation) between them, the IQ for the individual types of intelligence my significantly vary for every person. I’ll try to list here the individual types of intelligence, as stipulated by various psychologists: Mathematical, 3D, verbal, logic, language (foreign languages), manual, musical, creative, perception, social, abstract thinking, visual imagination, speed of reaction and memory. Each of the listed typed has many subtypes, e.g. according to the convergence criterion – a task always has only one correct solution or divergence – a task has many correct solutions.

Despite the many different opinions about intelligence and its measuring, for already 30 years we have been able to create relatively precise IQ tests from different fields of human intelligence. The results are very important when deciding about the future profession of an individual. It does not mean to determine what somebody should become, as sometimes demagogically declared - in a free society, everybody (at least theoretically) can become anything, but it is an important piece of auxiliary information when choosing a profession.

A specific example: If I weigh 100 kg, my chances of becoming a great jockey or coxswain are minimal. I am not saying it can not happen. With great efforts, I might become a good jockey (coxswain), but my chances for success are certainly smaller than if I devoted my efforts to shot put or discus throwing. Intelligence works similarly. A person with little verbal intelligence will hardly become a successful counsel, but it is possible that this deficiency will not prevent him from being a good notary… and so on.

Good IQ tests are independent of gender, education, social environment, etc. The result is the measured ability of the brain to quickly and correctly make a decision in the pertinent field. The one inconvenience is that an individual without knowledge (only with high IQ) may be a total moron.

Now I’ll demonstrate a simple example when a person with a high IQ might also be wrong. Here is a mathematical sequence: 2 4 6 8 ? - in the place of the question mark should probably be 10. Let’s skip the number 6 and the sequence looks like this: 2 4 8 ? - we will assume that in the place of question mark should be 16. The result changed only due to skipping a single piece of information (6); in real life we usually have much more information and, despite that, we are forced to make correct decisions.

I’ll be happy if the results of your IQ tests and psychological tests improve thanks to the tests, texts and manuals on this server. But I’ll be even happier, if you also add sufficient knowledge and experience to your IQ, and, therefore improve the thing complexly called intelligence.