What is your IQ? Test it yourself!

You hear it a lot and it is seen as one of the most important measurements of someone’s capacities: your IQ. But what exactly is IQ? Where does it come from? And is it truly such a good predictor it is claimed to be?
 
In scientific circles, intelligence is often seen as academic or cognitive intelligence. A definition of intelligence: “All the cognitive or mental capacities that are needed to acquire knowledge and to make good use of it, to solve problems that have a described goal and structure” (Resing and Drenth, 2007). Basically, intelligence is just how smart or clever a person is.
 
The term IQ is an abbreviation of Intelligence Quotient. It’s a measure for intelligence that is expressed in a number. Someone’s IQ is calculated by a so-called IQ-test, also known as an intelligence test. The average IQ is 100. If you have a higher score than 100, you probably are somewhat smarter than the average person and when you have a score below 100, you are probably a little less smart than average. The average always has the number 100.
 
People used to think that intelligence could be measured by measuring the size of someone’s skull. How bigger the skull, how smarter the person. But this was not entirely correct. The first test that actually tested someone’s intelligence was developed in 1904 by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon. Commissioned by the French Ministry of Education they made a test to distinguish mentally handicapped children from children with “normal” intelligence (but who were too lazy to study). They developed the Simon-Binet IQ-test. The test consisted of different components, such as logic reasoning, rhyming and naming objects. Some of these components are still used in today’s IQ test. The score on the test in combination with the child’s age gave information about the intellectual development of the child. The IQ was calculated with the following formula: (Mental age / actual age) * 100. (So if your mental age is the same as your actual age, your score will be 100). The test was a huge success and can be seen as the founder of the IQ-test that we use today, with some adjustments of course.
   
Nowadays IQ-tests still consists of several components, such as logic reasoning, calculating, diagrams, synonyms, antonyms and abstract reasoning. The different components together test for general intelligence. Braingymmer has developed some tests for you to practice with the different components of a real IQ test. You can practice as much as you can! Check out our test page for interesting and fun tests.