BBC Test the Nation

[lovingboth]

I saw about two minutes of this year's 'IQ test' when it was on. It is online:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/testthenation/takethetest/ (Needs Flash 5)

Tough :)

Well, here's the section scores:

Language 12/12
Memory 12/12
Logic 21/22
Numbers 11/12
Perception 10/12

Most interesting bit of the national results was the average scores by salary:

non-earner - 107

below £20,000 - 104

£20,000 - £30,000 - 101

£30,001 - £50,000 - 99

£50,000 + - 93


Oh, I got 186 in the relationship one that's also on the site (http://www.bbc.co.uk/testthenation/ttnarchive/relationships/) and I'd expect most readers of this to get that sort of score...

Comments

[uran.livejournal.com]

the frightening thing is, thats an average...
how many people scored higher than that? Probably quite a few. so just as many were hitting the 70 mark, I suppose. Man, that's bizarre.

ah yes, but ...

[vampwillow]

"the thing is" ... we ended up watching it (no idea why - pointless exercise and, well, anyway) the thing is that the 'analysis' that was done by salary, by location, by birth weight, by WHATEVER was not reasonable for a simple reason: the people taking the 'test' (and I'd dispute that it was a 'test' by normal understanding as way too easy - better would have been no multiple choice but actually having to work out the right answer, but of course that wouldn't make for good tv, if this *was* good tv?) thus the likely audience profile would be biased downscale anyway and there would be far fewer people in the £50k+ bracket taking the test and they're more likely to be plumbers than captains of industry (neither of which is, of course, guaranteed to have a high or low IQ).

If the numbers in each segment were profiled correctly then would expect to see a reasonable positive-slope line or curve. Plus, of course, the 'non-earner' category in this case would include pensioners, so making it a pointless comparison - better would have been to use 'salary when last employed' rather than 'current'. Plus there was no confirmation of salaries anyway (self-certifying!) so anything could have been entered - date invalid!

Re: ah yes, but ...

[lovingboth]

Oh yes, validity almost as bad as the test some prospective employer got me to take that thought a light bulb's brightness was measured in Watts...

Re: ah yes, but ...

[vampwillow]

lumens or candelas, iirc .... of course the power that it takes if it is *electric* could be measured in Watts, but better would be VA ...

I think I'll stop there before I seem too ^H^H^H^H^H^H

Re: ah yes, but ...

[lovingboth]

Right first time - compare the wattage of incandescent and florescent bulbs with their relative brightness :)

My other favourite physics error, even more basic, from that test was the question that made it clear they thought velocity = speed, rather than speed + direction.

You're so clever...

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

I found the number questions hard, but mostly because there was English phrases like "quarter" and "what's the biggest" to process at the same time as the arithmetic.

Pavlos

Re: You're so clever...

[lovingboth]

Yep, IQ 'tests' are notoriously culturally specific.

Re: You're so clever...

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

But I got the language questions right (and found them the easiest in the test). In the arithmetic I couldn't both read and answer the question in time.

Pavlos

Re: You're so clever...

[vampwillow]

I felt that this year's 'test' was much worse in that respect than last year's; if your first/natal language wasn't english and you weren't used to english idioms and cantractions then you seemed to be clearly penalised.