Doom wrote:
IQ stands for 'intelligence quotient', now the word 'quotient' implies 'division', so two numbers are being divided, the question is 'what two numbers?'
The two numbers in question are the following:
Your current state of intellectual development
An estimate of where your intellectual development 'should be' given your age
If these numbers are equal, then your IQ is 1, but they add two zeroes to make it '100'. An IQ of 100 is defined to be 'average'. If your actual development is ahead of where it should be, your IQ will be over 100, which is 'above average' and if you are behind where you need to be, your IQ will be below 100, which is 'below average.'
When I was in school, around the third grade, my teachers were concerned that I was a moron who wasn't capable of learning anything, so to determine the truth, I was given an IQ test. I was tested in reading and math.
As a third grader, it was judged that my reading skills were approximately as good as a 10th grader, and my math skills were ranked as being equal to an 8th grader.
But here is the thing, everything levels off over time, let's say by age 25, eventually, the top number and the bottom number become equal and your IQ turns out to be about 100, which is average. After all, eventually you can do everything at an adult level and you can't go any higher, it doesn't make sense to say, for example, that I am 40 but I have the reading skills of a 50-year-old.
In other words, IQ tests are of very limited value, but to the degree that they can be useful, they are only useful for children, not adults. In a very narrow set of circumstances, it can be useful to answer the question 'is this child's intellectual development proceeding at a normal pace, or a little faster or little slower than normal?' Those who are judged to be developing slower than normal can be given extra help, while those who are developing faster can be put into accelerated classes (which is what eventually happened to me).
In short, at this point, it is really not possible to give you a meaningful IQ test.
Mostly this is correct. Especially the last two points. Double dipped on the ultimate sentence. According to my memory. But there does exist the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS).
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GKC, survivor of both undergraduate and graduate psych course on testing, trained in the (then current) Stanford-Binet and WAIS and WISC tests, inter alia. I don't remember what the WAIS was really good for. But it was for adults. And it still exists.
In the fourth grade, some standardized reading test was administered, I was reading at college sophomore level. That was likely more impressive in 1954. My math skills were untested, but probably were equal to those of a snail.
