• Question: what is the highest possible human IQ?

    Asked by furno47 to Betul, Bridget, Ceri-Wyn, Laurel, Maria on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Ceri-Wyn Thomas

      Ceri-Wyn Thomas answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      The highest recorded IQ was apparently 228 and belonged to a women named Marilyn vos Savant! That seems incredibly high though and I don’t know if it’s true. I think you need to demonstrate an IQ of over 130 to get into Mensa. However, IQ is not the be-all and end-all of intelligence: people with fairly low IQ’s can still be very intelligent and good at school etc. IQ testing isn’t always done accurately or fairly since testing methods can differ depending on where, when and how you sit the test! To a scientist learning, enthusiasm and asking good questions are more important than having a high IQ.

    • Photo: Laurel Fogarty

      Laurel Fogarty answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I don’t know! But I’m also not sure how much faith I have in IQ tests really… I think the chances are that the people we consider to have truly genius minds might not have done so well at traditional IQ tests. After all, in school Einstein failed his exams and Turing (who went a good way towards inventing computers) was described as average….

    • Photo: Bridget Waller

      Bridget Waller answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Well…don’t forget that IQ is a human invention…we can measure inteligence in different ways and scientists often disagree on how it should be measured! I think some people can be recorded as high as 200 on IQ scores, but what this really means is open to debate!

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