What is Intelligence Quotient (IQ)?

IQ is a concept that is often mistakenly assumed to have begun with a desire to limit peoples' freedom by classifying their intellectual capacity. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the early part the last century, a Frenchman, Stanford Binet, observed that virtually all students attending universities were from the upper classes.

Feeling this to be intrinsically unfair, he attempted to devise tests that would be 'class free', and that would enable any child to advance through the academic system on intellectual merit alone. In a work of deep social conscience and considerable intellectual rigour, he selected basic abilities such as vocabulary knowledge, ability to manipulate numbers and short-term memory, testing massive sections of the population in each of these skills.

Those who scored averagely for any age group were given a score of 100, those scoring below or above being given scores below or above 100 depending on how far they were from average. Thus a score of 70 was particularly low, a score of 130 especially high (in the 'genius' range).

Only in the last few decades has the IQ test begun to form, against the obvious wishes of its originator, its own class system. For a number of years it has been assumed that intelligence quotients are a reflection of an innate ability and are unchanging. Work by many researchers has shown that the IQ score can be seen much like a high-jump bar.

Whatever score you achieve may be considered the 'height you can jump at the moment'. With appropriate training your score can go, should you wish, either down or up!

The current world record holder in the two very important IQ categories of vocabulary and recognition and manipulation of similarities, is Brain Club member Sean Adam with Weschler scores of 152, translated into Catell scores of 180. These scores are the maximum available for the test.