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NancyLebovitz comments on 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey - Less Wrong
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Here's one that closely imitates Raven's Progressive Matrices and claims to have been calibrated with a sample of 250,000 people: http://www.iqtest.dk/
Here's another one: http://sifter.org/iqtest/ . I can't find any mention of where the questions came from or how it's calibrated, but it's shorter and doesn't require Flash.
Neither one asks for an e-mail address or any identifying information. They might be too easy for some on LW, but harder ones tend to cost money. As Viliam_Bur pointed out, any free online test's validity is questionable, but the first one is basically a direct copy of a "real" test, and neither one has any apparent ulterior motive. Anecdotally, they were both within 10 points of each other and my "real" score.
I got 107 on the first test (which seems implausibly low), and 138 on the second (which seems reasonable).
I tried the second one after reading this and had similar results: 118 on the first one (implausibly low); 137 (stdev16) on the second one (sounds about right).
Though if I was taking this more seriously I'd probably have to weigh the facts that my kids were being more distracting when I took the first one, and I ate flaxseed shortly before taking the second one.
I took the first one under reasonably good conditions, and the second under about the same conditions a little while afterwards.
The first one seemed like a test of endurance as much as anything-- it was as though my ability to focus was running out on the last ten questions or so, and possibly as though it would have been somewhat easier if I'd been in better physical condition.
General question about that sort of puzzle-- how much can effort help with them? Can they be solved reliably given more time (and probably a chance to write down theories and guesses), or does inspiration have to strike fairly quickly?
Interesting question. On the first test, I went through many of them quickly - some of them obviously pattern-matched to the same kind of a puzzle - but also solved a number by staring at them for a few minutes, refusing to give in to my brain's "I don't see any patterns, this doesn't make any frakking sense, can we do something else now?". I'm certain given 10 or 20 more minutes I'd have done better. And come out with a headache, probably.
My eyes were hurting after the first test, and this continued (less intensely, I think) into the second, even though reading on the monitor isn't generally a problem for me. There may also be sensory issues involved in scores-- I was running into trouble anyway, but having to distinguish between very dark gray squares and black squares in one of the later puzzles didn't help. If I had more of a different sort of intelligence, I would have thought of fiddling with my monitor settings.
I'm inclined to think that practice/information could help a lot with the puzzles-- having a repertoire of possible patterns is going to make solutions easier than trying to find patterns cold.
Possibly as a result of not being entirely pleased at that 107 score, I'm doubting the whole premise of IQ testing-- that it's important to find out what can't be improved about people's minds.
Part of this is the arrogance problem-- how complete is your knowledge of the possibility of improvement, anyway?-- and the other part is wondering whether all those resources could be better put into learning how to improve what can be improved.
The other thing is that I've had some recent evidence that the ways the parts of the mind are interconnected aren't completely obvious. I've been doing some psychological work on fading out self-hatred, and the results have been being less frightened about what I post (I decided before taking the IQ tests to post my scores, but there was still a bit of a pang), easier and faster typing-- not tested, but I do seem somewhat apt to write at greater length (this seems to be the result of feeling less need to over-monitor so that typing can be a low-level habit), less akrasia (still pretty bad, but the desire to do things is happening more often), and the ability to walk downstairs more easily (I have some old knee injuries which can be ameliorated by better coordination-- but I haven't been working on coordination).
In this type of test, I can solve generally about all except about 4 of them almost immediately with some seconds of thought. I skip those few, then return to them at the end, and in the minutes that remain manage to make an educated guess for say two of them, while having to leave two more to complete chance.
Interesting. Did you find the questions in the first test more difficult than the second? I did notice that the first test relies a lot on mental rotation.
I found the last third or so of the questions in the first test much more difficult than almost anything in the second.