Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

IQ is short for Intelligence Quotient, and purports to signify how smart someone is. Historically, IQ is obtained by dividing a person's mental age by their true age; 100 is average, meaning mental age is the same as physical age. IQ tests were original designed for children for placement into educational settings, and young draftees into the military. Its use on adults is highly questionable. Unfortunately, it seems IQ doesn't increase but does goes down as people age. Its use in early eugenics literature has tainted the concept almost beyond usefulness.

Whether any test can accurately measure someone's intelligence is an issue of intense debate, most calling it biased. Certainly, some of the questions on the IQ test are education oriented: for example, which country on the map is Greece? Most questions are not: repeat this series of 20 numbers, and put these puzzles together. Any IQ measure above 130 is highly suspect: first, the takers are usually under-18, so the trivia questions can be gamed; second, there is quite a bit of eye-hand coordination in putting together the puzzles and they’re timed and the pieces have to be touching; that's a lot of variability with nothing to do with intelligence and can be practiced. IQ is fun to talk about but seems to have no practical purpose.