I need help from a genius

[Poopadoop]

@Oskar: IQ tests are extremely biased by their nature. They are designed to test what you are capable of learning during the test. I.e. they assume you have a certain skillset going in to take them, and they play on your ability to learn other skills which are presented in the test.

This may be true for the question presented ITT, but it's not generally true of IQ test questions I don't think. But maybe we've been given different tests.

This is supremely difficult because different cultures (even within the same geographical area) can favor very different modes of thought as "intelligent." A test which assumes you've been to school and studied information from books is not going to test a person's IQ who dropped out of school at a young age. That is no reflection on that person's intelligence, merely an indication that the test is broken by their circumstances. They do not meet the assumptions of the test-designer as per their background.

Similarly, a test which adequately and fairly described the dropout's intelligence would almost certainly fail at assessing a college graduate's intelligence. These people consider very different behaviors to be expressions of intelligence.

While it's true a person who drops out of school may be learning things the bookworm isn't, it's very unlikely they're going to be as objectively 'smart' unless you drastically change how you define 'smart'. E.g., if you change a question about maths into a question about what bus to catch to the unemployment office, then maybe the dropout will do fine. But that to me isn't testing their IQ just because you've tailored the question to their circumstances.

You could argue the dropout becomes more street-smart but no IQ test I know of purports to measure that.

If you are studying for the test, you're literally breaking it. Any results would be moot. I mean... it'd be a pretty stark critique of your study habits otherwise.

Pretty fair up to a point. I wouldn't say the results would be moot though. Some people could study maths until their heads exploded and still not get a good score on a test.