Sunday, September 29, 2013

Why I voted for M.A.N. Tests?

Yesterday I published on my site that I consider Marc-Andre Nydegger's tests to be the best IQ tests known to me. Now I also want to explain my reasons.

1) I liked those tests on the first sight.
2) My scores on Numerical and Spatial subtests of NIT-Form I were very close to expected values.
3) Marc is an Elite Genius member of Real IQ Society.
4) M.A.N. Tests Quality Matrix confirms that this story is not only about my feelings.

Conclusion:
I started ambitiously with LSHR, Numerus and Triplex achieving only 50% high range quality. With Light and Classic tests I improved this to 60% quality. In my premium class tests I hope for a 70% quality. And this young man from Switzerland achieved that with his first tests. Well done, Marc-Andre!

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Why are there so many high IQ societies.​..

I have found this question on ISI-Society discussion board, and found it very interesting.
The problem is that we actually have small number of them with reputation.

Although my societies (Grand and Ultima) look like pure lists, I decided to work on their reputation.
I do not claim that my norms are perfect, but I explained here my norming methods and I'll so accept only those tests whose norms do not differ too much from my estimates.

I also invite others to explain their methods, especially if they do not agree with mine.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Hi everyone!

Here I shall not talk much about myself. You can find some things about me on my web site. Instead, I want to say some things about high range IQ tests and their norms. More precisely, I want to say how I started solving, making and norming IQ tests.

But first, what are high range IQ tests actually? They try to measure intelligence quotient above the ceiling of standardized tests, which is normally IQ=145 or three standard deviations above average. High range IQ tests are regularly untimed because of there structure: they contain some indeed hard items. Besides, I guess that nobody likes time pressure.

One of the pioneer of high range IQ testing is certainly Paul Cooijmans. He started his work in 1995. I started 10 years later.

In 2004, I took Mensa test and joined Mensa Croatia. On Mensa forum I found link to excellent spatial IQ test by Robert Lato: Logima Strictica 36 or popularly LS36. I scored 21/36 which was roughly IQ 162 according to the norm by Paul Cooijmans. That score was in perfect correlation with my performance in mathematical competitions: I was one of the best in my generation in Croatia (among 50.000 pupils) and I achieved a bronze award for Croatia in the 35th International Mathematical Olympiad (Hong Kong, July 1994).

On Mensa forum I also met Mislav Predavec who scored extremely high on LS36: 27/36 in the first attempt. Nevertheless, his IQ score was only a few points higher than mine. We both concluded that Paul's norm is not realistic above IQ 160 and we started to think on how to improve it.

My score on LS36 was among top 10 percent and so my first assumption was that top 10% percent of scores on each high range IQ test should be at IQ 160 level, or higher. The second assuption was actually a well known fact that average scorer on high range tests has approximately IQ 145. Finally, my last assumption was that interest for taking high range IQ tests increases with IQ.

Then I modeled my assumptions with particular exponential and logarithmic functions and new LS36 norm appeared. You can find the final norm report here.

After taking several more IQ tests I started to create my own high range tests. One of them, Numerus Light, was best suited to test my assumptions. Even with that pretty easy IQ test I didn't receive more submissions from "average" persons and scores correlated well with scores on other IQ tests. Of course, my assumptions are not "the Bible" of high range norming and slight deflections are expected from test to test. So, I regularly ask for scores on other tests and calculate various statistics to predict such deflections.

Conclusion:
Today my norms seem pretty stable, and I'm offering norming services for other tests too.