just for fun
took an i.q. test online from tickle.com
here's what they had to say:
Your IQ score is:
You scored 136 on Tickle's IQ test. This means that based on your answers, your IQ score is between 126 and 136. Most people's IQs are between 70 and 130.
In fact, 95% of all people have IQs within that range. 68% of people score between 80 and 120.
There's more to intelligence than a single number, a single score or a single label. Tickle uses four distinguishable Intelligence Scales in the Ultimate IQ Test. By analyzing your individual scores on those four scales, we are able to look beyond the raw IQ score into how you process information and thereby determine your Intellectual Type.
Your Intellectual Type Is:
Your mind's strengths allow you to think ahead of the game — to imagine or anticipate what should come next in just about any situation. Because you're equally skilled in the numerical and verbal universes of the brain, you can draw from multiple sources of information to come up with great ideas. The timelessness of your vision and the balance between your various skills are what make you a Visionary Philosopher.
In addition to your strengths in math and linguistics, you have a knack for matching and anticipating patterns. These skills and your uncanny ability to detect the underlying blueprint of most of life's situations add to your Visionary Philosopher mind.
Two philosophers who share the same combination of skills you possess are Plato and Benedict Spinoza. Spinoza had insight into how things worked in the world. He could envision a future based on the patterns he saw in life, and used mathematical logic as a structure within which to present his philosophical arguments. With that base he was able to use logic to formulate his theories. Borrowing from his linguistic strengths he wrote eloquent texts and, therefore, was able to bring his philosophical ideas and structure to the rest of the world. His story exemplifies the talents that are present in the Visionary Philosopher intellectual type.
Whatever you decide to do in life, you've got a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a wide variety of ways. You can expand your mind to understand a situation. Your strong balance of math and verbal skills will help you explain things to others. For example, if you were on an archaeological dig and discovered an object, you could probably use your deductive powers to figure out not only what the object was but also how it was used. Given your ability to put things together, you are more than capable of inventing a life plan that is in synch with your perspective on how things were, how they are, and how they might be one day. Great Jobs For You
Because of the way you process information, these are just some of the many careers in which you could excel:
Archaeologist
Detective
Psychologist
Sculptor
Architect
City planner
Chief executive
Some of Your Greatest Talents
You've got tons of strengths. It wouldn't surprise us if you:
Think of the "big picture"
Can anticipate and predict patterns
Are good at context clues
Can see similarities in seemingly disparate things
Now let's look at the factors that contribute to you being a Visionary Philosopher with a 136 IQ score.
Based on the results of your test, Tickle divided your scores into four distinguishable dimensions — mathematical intelligence, visual-spatial intelligence, linguistic intelligence and logic intelligence.
Here's how each of your intelligence scores break down:
Mathematical Intelligence
Your Mathematical Percentile
You scored in the 100th percentile on the mathematical intelligence scale.This means that you scored higher than 90% - 100% of people who took the test and that 0% - 10% scored higher than you did. The scale above illustrates this visually.
Your mathematical intelligence score represents your combined ability to reason and calculate. You scored relatively high, which means you're probably the one your friends look to when splitting the lunch bill or calculating your waitresses' tip. You may or may not be known as a math whiz, but number crunching might come a little easier to you than it does others.
This is the kind of question that helped to determine your mathematical intelligence score:
A boy is 4 years old and his sister is three times as old as he is. When the boy is 12 years old, how old will his sister be? 16, 20, 24, 28, 32.
answer: 20.
The sister is (3 )three times older than her (4) four-year-old brother. Three times 4 is 12, in other words, when he is four, she is 12. Twelve years old is 8 years older than 4 years old, which makes her 8 years older than him. This never changes. Therefore, when he is 12, she is still 8 years older, or 12+8=20.
Flexing Your Math Muscles
Like anything, keeping or improving your math talents requires practice. Here are some everyday mental exercises that could be particularly helpful to you:
Balancing your checkbook
Figuring out your monthly budget
Predicting what the change will be the next time you buy something
Calculating your waitperson's tip in your head
Visual-Spatial Intelligence
Your Visual-Spatial Percentile
You scored in the 100th percentile on the visual-spatial intelligence scale.
This means that you scored higher than 90% - 100% of people who took the test and that 0% - 10% scored higher than you did. The scale above illustrates this visually.
The visual-spatial component of intelligence measures your ability to extract a visual pattern and from that envision what should come next in a sequence. Your score was relatively high, which could mean that you're the one navigating the map when you're on an outing with friends. You have, in some capacity, an ability to think in pictures. Maybe this strength comes out in subtle ways, like how you play chess or form metaphors.
Vision Quest
Like anything, keeping or improving visual-spatial talents requires some practice. Here are some everyday mental exercises that will be particularly helpful to you:
Playing chess, or video games like Tetris
Studying maps and become the navigator on your next trip
Sculpting or photography
Linguistic Intelligence
Your Linguistic Percentile
You scored in the 100th percentile on the linguistic intelligence scale.
This means that you scored higher than 90% - 100% of people who took the test and that 0% - 10% scored higher than you did. The scale above illustrates this visually.
Linguistic abilities include reading, writing and communicating with words. Tickle's test measures knowledge of vocabulary, ease in completing word analogies and the ability to think critically about a statement based on its semantic structure. Your score was relatively high, which could mean you know your way around a bookstore and maybe like to bandy about the occasional 25-cent word to impress friends.
Here's the type of question that contributed to your linguistic intelligence scale score:
Inept is the opposite of:
Answer: Skillful.
The answer is derived by prior knowledge that "inept" means "unskillful" (Oxford Concise Dictionary).
Word Power
Like anything, keeping or improving linguistic talents requires some practice. Here are some everyday mental exercises that will be particularly helpful to you:
Doing crossword puzzles
Start reading just for fun
Befriending your dictionary
The next time something breaks, try reading the instruction book first
Logical Intelligence
Your Logical Percentile
You scored in the 100th percentile on the logical intelligence scale.
This means that you scored higher than 90% - 100% of people who took the test and that 0% - 10% scored higher than you did. The scale above illustrates this visually.
Tickle's logical intelligence questions assess your ability to think things through. The questions determine the extent to which you use reasoning and logic to determine the best solution to a problem. Your logic score was relatively high, which could mean that when the car breaks down, your friends look to you to help figure out not only what's wrong, but how to fix it and how you're going to get to the next gas station.
Here's the kind of question that contributed to your logical intelligence score:
If some Wicks are Slicks and some Slicks are Snicks, then some Wicks are definitely Snicks.
Answer: False
The statement is false because while some Wicks might be Slicks, there is no conclusive proof that any of them might be Snicks.
Logic Lessons
Like anything, keeping or improving logical talents requires some practice. Here are some everyday mental exercises that will be particularly helpful to you:
Trying some brain teasers
Throwing away the instructions and relying on instinct to fix something
Playing chess
What do all these percentiles mean?
For each scale, Tickle determined how many people received scores above and below yours. Your "percentile" represents what percentage of people scored lower than you. In other words, 90th percentile means you scored higher than 80 to 90% of people did.
How are the percentiles determined? These percentiles were determined based on the one million users who have already taken our test. We then adjusted these percentiles based on a nationally representative IQ distribution to make sure that no level of intelligence was over- or underrepresented in the analysis. Thus, the percentiles we present reflect your score compared with people in the United States in general.
What factors helped determine my score?
If your score isn't as high as you thought it would be, remember that there are plenty of external factors that can affect your performance on the test. If you were tired, hungry or distracted, you might have scored lower than you expected because you were less able to concentrate.
Your level of formal education and your familiarity with taking these kinds of tests also influence how well you do. That's part of the reason IQ tests aren't a perfect measure of your intelligence. Your score would probably be quite different if the IQ test was designed to take into account your musical, artistic, emotional and social skills.
On their own, IQ scores can't predict someone's ultimate success or definitive potential for success. Many of the qualities that lead to great achievements are learned through culture, experience and schooling - not solely from doing well on an IQ test.
What your IQ test can help explain, however, is how your brain works best. By looking at the kinds of questions you answered correctly and the kinds of questions you answered incorrectly, we can tell you more about your intelligence type — the type that explains the kind of information that makes sense to your brain.
What is an IQ?
The intelligence quotient (IQ) measures the ratio of a person's intellectual age to his/her chronological age. Most adult intelligence tests are designed for people who are at least 16 years old. For this reason, if you are younger than 16, your Tickle IQ score might be slightly lower than your "true" IQ.
History of IQ Testing
One of the first scientific investigations into the concept of intelligence, came from nineteenth-century British scientist, Sir Francis Galton. Galton believed that mental traits, like physical traits, could be inherited. He published his ideas on hereditary intelligence in his book, Hereditary Genius.
Meanwhile in France, psychologist Alfred Binet was exploring ways of measuring children's' intelligence. Like Galton, Binet was passionate about testing and measuring human capabilities. Binet worked with two groups of children - those who were average students, and those who were less mentally capable. He discovered that average students could complete certain tasks that less mentally capable students could not. Based on those findings, Binet calculated the "normal" abilities for students within different age groups. From there he could estimate how many years above or below the norm a student's mental age was.
Just before WWI, German psychologist Wilhelm Stern came up with an alternative to mental age for measuring people's intelligence. He suggested that a more accurate method for assessing someone's intelligence was to measure their capabilities given their chronological age. He proposed that for a true estimate of someone's intelligence, researchers needed to calculate a ratio between the subject's mental age and their chronological age. Since the resulting numbers were represented by decimals, scientists decided to multiply this "quotient" by 100 to get rid of the decimal places. Thus, the formula for an IQ is: IQ = Mental Age/Chronological Age x 100.
Based on the ratio that Stern created, Lewis Terman, an American psychologist at Stanford University, coined the term Intelligence Quotient for Stern's Binet test scoring system.
How People Might Evaluate You Based on IQ Score
IQ tests serve as a useful tool for institutions such as public schools and the military, where great numbers of people must be processed quickly and efficiently, and placed in appropriated classes or positions.
In the United States, kindergarten-aged children are often given IQ tests to evaluate whether they need special attention or services. For example, children scoring 130 or over are often considered "gifted" and placed in programs accordingly. However, in most institutional uses of the test nowadays, the importance placed on the actual IQ score has changed.
Did You Know?
A widely-cited example of possible cultural bias appeared in the Scholastic Aptitude Test in the early 90s:
Runner: marathon
A) Envoy: embassy
B) Martyr: massacre
C) Oarsman: regatta
D) Referee: tournament
E) Horse: stable.
(Herrnstein and Murray, 1994) According to many, the answer, C), is more likely to be answered correctly by upper class children (predominantly white) because they are more inclined to know the definition of regatta.
The military tends to use IQ test results to assess which field a recruit might be best suited to. Instead of relying solely on the intelligence rating, the IQ score, the military will now look at the kinds of questions a recruit answered correctly. Once they know that, they have a better idea of what innate skills the recruit can bring to specific assignments and duties.
And as far as the business world goes, uses of such tests for employment purposes was declared illegal — except in rare circumstances — by the Supreme Court in 1971.
In social life, the IQ test is only really applicable if you're specifically joining an organization based on IQ scores like Mensa, a society founded in 1964 for people who score in the top 2% of the IQ test. But, in general, there are still some misconceptions about the importance of test results. Chances are, people you know are more likely to be judgmental about a high or low score than most institutions are. Luckily, this is usually just a case of misinformation and is easily remedied.
Did You Know?
Robert Jordan, an applicant to the New Haven, CT police force sued the department in 1997 after he was refused entry on grounds that his IQ test score was "too high." A spokesperson for the police department was quoted as saying people with too high of an IQ "tire of police work and leave not long after undergoing costly academy training."
Limitations of IQ Testing
Much debate circulates around the different IQ tests that are administered throughout the country. Many researchers claim that the tests measure cultural knowledge and understanding, not innate intelligence. Critics suggest that both IQ and standardized tests are racially and culturally biased.
According to a 1996 report by the American Psychological Association, "Intelligence scores partially predict individual differences in school achievement, such as grade point average and number of years of education that individuals complete.
Nevertheless, population levels of school achievement are not determined solely or even primarily by intelligence or any other individual-difference variable. Many differences can be attributed primarily to differences in culture and schooling rather than in abilities measured by intelligence tests."
Outside factors, such as where you grow up, what kind of school you attend, and how much school you attend contribute substantially to the development of intelligences. However, it is not yet clearly understood what those factors are, or how they work. It is widely agreed that standardized tests, like an IQ test, do not accurately reflect all forms of intelligence.
Obviously, cultural knowledge, creativity, wisdom, common sense and social sensitivity are not measured in IQ tests, but they certainly contribute to a person's intelligence.
Still, there are some people who feel strongly that IQ tests are the best way to predict future performance at work and in school. They feel that IQ tests are better predictors of future success than even trained personnel experts.
Experts have numerous theories when it comes to explaining, defining and predicting intelligence. Some claim that intelligence is innate and fixed and can be measured with clearly defined statistical methods. Others claim that experience and environment affect intelligence - that intelligence is the composite of many different talents and abilities which continue to improve over time.
Further study of Intelligence
Three researchers have made significant advances in this field in recent years:
1. Robert Sternberg - Has proposed three sub-theories of intelligence: context, experience, and the cognitive components of information processing. In short, intelligence involves either adapting to your environment, moving to another more appropriate environment or changing your environment. Your level of experience with the activities or knowledge being tested gets reduced to intelligence, but intelligence is best measured out of context — when you perform unfamiliar tasks.
2. Howard Gardner - Has proposed his "Theory of Multiple Intelligences" where there are seven independent but related intelligences: logical-mathematical, linguistic, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. Gardner is one of the biggest proponents for developing new methods for testing intelligence. He speculates that intelligence is culturally and experientially based. One's experience will influence how much each of these can be expressed.
3. John Horn - Horn had proposed that there are two factors to intelligence: fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is one's ability to reason and solve problems in novel or unfamiliar situations. Crystallized intelligence is the extent to which an individual has attained knowledge of her culture.
In general, recent research has focused on intelligence as something that can be changed — not as something that is fixed in childhood and as something culturally and experientially based. Most current researchers agree that there are multiple forms of intelligence, although there is no consensus on how many.
Your Tickle IQ Score
Your Intelligence Type
Your Intelligence Scales
IQ Answer Key
What is an IQ?
Average Tickle IQ Scores By State
IQ Test Development
Additional Reading
Certificate of Intellectual Achievement
Tickle's IQ Test Development
Over the last two years, Tickle's psychologists developed this IQ test using proven, high-quality IQ test questions such as those in the Mensa Workout tests and the Shipley Institute of Living Scale — an intelligence test that focuses on both vocabulary and verbal abstract reasoning. Those are the skills that are associated with problem-solving ability and social comprehension/judgement.
Reliability of the IQ Score
Once we built the Tickle IQ test, Tickle performed a large-scale study to compare the results of people who had taken both the Tickle IQ test and the established Shipley Institute of Living Scale (by Walter C. Shipley). The Shipley test has been used for more than 50 years to assess facets of intelligence. We did this to ensure that the way we constructed our test would yield reliable and valid IQ results.
We used scores calculated by the Shipley test as a basis for calibrating Tickle's IQ test. That ensured a high association between the two tests and, because of that, the validity of our IQ scores. In fact, the Tickle IQ test is highly reliable—the Chronbach's alpha is .81. In other words, the questions on Tickle's IQ test are internally consistent and they all measure intelligence accurately.
How Tickle Calculates Intellectual Types
In the past, researchers who have constructed IQ tests have discovered additional patterns that relate to the categories of questions a particular test-taker answered correctly — categories such as mathematical, visual, verbal and logical. When these researchers analyzed peoples' results, they found that, for instance, a test-taker might have answered the math-oriented and verbal questions correctly, yet tended to answer the logical questions incorrectly. From such patterns, experts were able to define some internal scales of intelligence to the overall IQ test. Thus, using those internal scales, they could offer an actual IQ score, such as 105, as well as a measurement of how well the test-taker did within each question category.
After 1 million people took the Tickle IQ test, we ran what is called a "factor analysis" on the answers those people gave. This statistical analysis identified the similarity between groups of questions in our test. The analysis demonstrated that this particular IQ test accurately measured four underlying dimensions of intelligence: mathematical, visual-spatial, linguistic and logical.
Each of the questions in the Tickle IQ test relates to one dimension of intelligence. How reliable are these dimensions? Well, for the scientists and statisticians out there, their reliability coefficients were .85, .84, .81 and .50, respectively. The gist of all of that is that Tickle's scales of intelligence are highly valid and we can accurately tell you how high you scored on each of those scales relative to the other test-takers—thus yielding an accurate intellectual type.
Your Tickle IQ Score
Your Intelligence Type
Your Intelligence Scales
IQ Answer Key
What is an IQ?
Average Tickle IQ Scores By State
IQ Test Development
Additional Reading
Certificate of Intellectual Achievement
Average Tickle IQ Scores By State
Over 30 million people have taken Tickle's Classic IQ Test. Here's a look at the average Tickle IQ scores, broken out by state.
State Average Tickle IQ Score
Mississippi 110
West Virginia 110
Alabama 111
Arkansas 111
Kentucky 111
Louisiana 111
Florida 112
Georgia 112
Indiana 112
Maine 112
Michigan 112
Missouri 112
Nevada 112
New Mexico 112
North Carolina 112
North Dakota 112
Ohio 112
Oklahoma 112
Rhode Island 112
South Carolina 112
South Dakota 112
Tennessee 112
Texas 112
Wyoming 112
Alaska 113
Arizona 113
California 113
Connecticut 113
Delaware 113
Hawaii 113
Idaho 113
Illinois 113
Iowa 113
Kansas 113
Maryland 113
Montana 113
Nebraska 113
New Hampshire 113
New Jersey 113
New York 113
Pennsylvania 113
Vermont 113
Virginia 113
Wisconsin 113
Colorado 114
Massachusetts 114
Minnesota 114
Oregon 114
Utah 114
Washington 114
District of Columbia 115
here's what they had to say:
Your IQ score is:
You scored 136 on Tickle's IQ test. This means that based on your answers, your IQ score is between 126 and 136. Most people's IQs are between 70 and 130.
In fact, 95% of all people have IQs within that range. 68% of people score between 80 and 120.
There's more to intelligence than a single number, a single score or a single label. Tickle uses four distinguishable Intelligence Scales in the Ultimate IQ Test. By analyzing your individual scores on those four scales, we are able to look beyond the raw IQ score into how you process information and thereby determine your Intellectual Type.
Your Intellectual Type Is:
Your mind's strengths allow you to think ahead of the game — to imagine or anticipate what should come next in just about any situation. Because you're equally skilled in the numerical and verbal universes of the brain, you can draw from multiple sources of information to come up with great ideas. The timelessness of your vision and the balance between your various skills are what make you a Visionary Philosopher.
In addition to your strengths in math and linguistics, you have a knack for matching and anticipating patterns. These skills and your uncanny ability to detect the underlying blueprint of most of life's situations add to your Visionary Philosopher mind.
Two philosophers who share the same combination of skills you possess are Plato and Benedict Spinoza. Spinoza had insight into how things worked in the world. He could envision a future based on the patterns he saw in life, and used mathematical logic as a structure within which to present his philosophical arguments. With that base he was able to use logic to formulate his theories. Borrowing from his linguistic strengths he wrote eloquent texts and, therefore, was able to bring his philosophical ideas and structure to the rest of the world. His story exemplifies the talents that are present in the Visionary Philosopher intellectual type.
Whatever you decide to do in life, you've got a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a wide variety of ways. You can expand your mind to understand a situation. Your strong balance of math and verbal skills will help you explain things to others. For example, if you were on an archaeological dig and discovered an object, you could probably use your deductive powers to figure out not only what the object was but also how it was used. Given your ability to put things together, you are more than capable of inventing a life plan that is in synch with your perspective on how things were, how they are, and how they might be one day. Great Jobs For You
Because of the way you process information, these are just some of the many careers in which you could excel:
Archaeologist
Detective
Psychologist
Sculptor
Architect
City planner
Chief executive
Some of Your Greatest Talents
You've got tons of strengths. It wouldn't surprise us if you:
Think of the "big picture"
Can anticipate and predict patterns
Are good at context clues
Can see similarities in seemingly disparate things
Now let's look at the factors that contribute to you being a Visionary Philosopher with a 136 IQ score.
Based on the results of your test, Tickle divided your scores into four distinguishable dimensions — mathematical intelligence, visual-spatial intelligence, linguistic intelligence and logic intelligence.
Here's how each of your intelligence scores break down:
Mathematical Intelligence
Your Mathematical Percentile
You scored in the 100th percentile on the mathematical intelligence scale.This means that you scored higher than 90% - 100% of people who took the test and that 0% - 10% scored higher than you did. The scale above illustrates this visually.
Your mathematical intelligence score represents your combined ability to reason and calculate. You scored relatively high, which means you're probably the one your friends look to when splitting the lunch bill or calculating your waitresses' tip. You may or may not be known as a math whiz, but number crunching might come a little easier to you than it does others.
This is the kind of question that helped to determine your mathematical intelligence score:
A boy is 4 years old and his sister is three times as old as he is. When the boy is 12 years old, how old will his sister be? 16, 20, 24, 28, 32.
answer: 20.
The sister is (3 )three times older than her (4) four-year-old brother. Three times 4 is 12, in other words, when he is four, she is 12. Twelve years old is 8 years older than 4 years old, which makes her 8 years older than him. This never changes. Therefore, when he is 12, she is still 8 years older, or 12+8=20.
Flexing Your Math Muscles
Like anything, keeping or improving your math talents requires practice. Here are some everyday mental exercises that could be particularly helpful to you:
Balancing your checkbook
Figuring out your monthly budget
Predicting what the change will be the next time you buy something
Calculating your waitperson's tip in your head
Visual-Spatial Intelligence
Your Visual-Spatial Percentile
You scored in the 100th percentile on the visual-spatial intelligence scale.
This means that you scored higher than 90% - 100% of people who took the test and that 0% - 10% scored higher than you did. The scale above illustrates this visually.
The visual-spatial component of intelligence measures your ability to extract a visual pattern and from that envision what should come next in a sequence. Your score was relatively high, which could mean that you're the one navigating the map when you're on an outing with friends. You have, in some capacity, an ability to think in pictures. Maybe this strength comes out in subtle ways, like how you play chess or form metaphors.
Vision Quest
Like anything, keeping or improving visual-spatial talents requires some practice. Here are some everyday mental exercises that will be particularly helpful to you:
Playing chess, or video games like Tetris
Studying maps and become the navigator on your next trip
Sculpting or photography
Linguistic Intelligence
Your Linguistic Percentile
You scored in the 100th percentile on the linguistic intelligence scale.
This means that you scored higher than 90% - 100% of people who took the test and that 0% - 10% scored higher than you did. The scale above illustrates this visually.
Linguistic abilities include reading, writing and communicating with words. Tickle's test measures knowledge of vocabulary, ease in completing word analogies and the ability to think critically about a statement based on its semantic structure. Your score was relatively high, which could mean you know your way around a bookstore and maybe like to bandy about the occasional 25-cent word to impress friends.
Here's the type of question that contributed to your linguistic intelligence scale score:
Inept is the opposite of:
Answer: Skillful.
The answer is derived by prior knowledge that "inept" means "unskillful" (Oxford Concise Dictionary).
Word Power
Like anything, keeping or improving linguistic talents requires some practice. Here are some everyday mental exercises that will be particularly helpful to you:
Doing crossword puzzles
Start reading just for fun
Befriending your dictionary
The next time something breaks, try reading the instruction book first
Logical Intelligence
Your Logical Percentile
You scored in the 100th percentile on the logical intelligence scale.
This means that you scored higher than 90% - 100% of people who took the test and that 0% - 10% scored higher than you did. The scale above illustrates this visually.
Tickle's logical intelligence questions assess your ability to think things through. The questions determine the extent to which you use reasoning and logic to determine the best solution to a problem. Your logic score was relatively high, which could mean that when the car breaks down, your friends look to you to help figure out not only what's wrong, but how to fix it and how you're going to get to the next gas station.
Here's the kind of question that contributed to your logical intelligence score:
If some Wicks are Slicks and some Slicks are Snicks, then some Wicks are definitely Snicks.
Answer: False
The statement is false because while some Wicks might be Slicks, there is no conclusive proof that any of them might be Snicks.
Logic Lessons
Like anything, keeping or improving logical talents requires some practice. Here are some everyday mental exercises that will be particularly helpful to you:
Trying some brain teasers
Throwing away the instructions and relying on instinct to fix something
Playing chess
What do all these percentiles mean?
For each scale, Tickle determined how many people received scores above and below yours. Your "percentile" represents what percentage of people scored lower than you. In other words, 90th percentile means you scored higher than 80 to 90% of people did.
How are the percentiles determined? These percentiles were determined based on the one million users who have already taken our test. We then adjusted these percentiles based on a nationally representative IQ distribution to make sure that no level of intelligence was over- or underrepresented in the analysis. Thus, the percentiles we present reflect your score compared with people in the United States in general.
What factors helped determine my score?
If your score isn't as high as you thought it would be, remember that there are plenty of external factors that can affect your performance on the test. If you were tired, hungry or distracted, you might have scored lower than you expected because you were less able to concentrate.
Your level of formal education and your familiarity with taking these kinds of tests also influence how well you do. That's part of the reason IQ tests aren't a perfect measure of your intelligence. Your score would probably be quite different if the IQ test was designed to take into account your musical, artistic, emotional and social skills.
On their own, IQ scores can't predict someone's ultimate success or definitive potential for success. Many of the qualities that lead to great achievements are learned through culture, experience and schooling - not solely from doing well on an IQ test.
What your IQ test can help explain, however, is how your brain works best. By looking at the kinds of questions you answered correctly and the kinds of questions you answered incorrectly, we can tell you more about your intelligence type — the type that explains the kind of information that makes sense to your brain.
What is an IQ?
The intelligence quotient (IQ) measures the ratio of a person's intellectual age to his/her chronological age. Most adult intelligence tests are designed for people who are at least 16 years old. For this reason, if you are younger than 16, your Tickle IQ score might be slightly lower than your "true" IQ.
History of IQ Testing
One of the first scientific investigations into the concept of intelligence, came from nineteenth-century British scientist, Sir Francis Galton. Galton believed that mental traits, like physical traits, could be inherited. He published his ideas on hereditary intelligence in his book, Hereditary Genius.
Meanwhile in France, psychologist Alfred Binet was exploring ways of measuring children's' intelligence. Like Galton, Binet was passionate about testing and measuring human capabilities. Binet worked with two groups of children - those who were average students, and those who were less mentally capable. He discovered that average students could complete certain tasks that less mentally capable students could not. Based on those findings, Binet calculated the "normal" abilities for students within different age groups. From there he could estimate how many years above or below the norm a student's mental age was.
Just before WWI, German psychologist Wilhelm Stern came up with an alternative to mental age for measuring people's intelligence. He suggested that a more accurate method for assessing someone's intelligence was to measure their capabilities given their chronological age. He proposed that for a true estimate of someone's intelligence, researchers needed to calculate a ratio between the subject's mental age and their chronological age. Since the resulting numbers were represented by decimals, scientists decided to multiply this "quotient" by 100 to get rid of the decimal places. Thus, the formula for an IQ is: IQ = Mental Age/Chronological Age x 100.
Based on the ratio that Stern created, Lewis Terman, an American psychologist at Stanford University, coined the term Intelligence Quotient for Stern's Binet test scoring system.
How People Might Evaluate You Based on IQ Score
IQ tests serve as a useful tool for institutions such as public schools and the military, where great numbers of people must be processed quickly and efficiently, and placed in appropriated classes or positions.
In the United States, kindergarten-aged children are often given IQ tests to evaluate whether they need special attention or services. For example, children scoring 130 or over are often considered "gifted" and placed in programs accordingly. However, in most institutional uses of the test nowadays, the importance placed on the actual IQ score has changed.
Did You Know?
A widely-cited example of possible cultural bias appeared in the Scholastic Aptitude Test in the early 90s:
Runner: marathon
A) Envoy: embassy
B) Martyr: massacre
C) Oarsman: regatta
D) Referee: tournament
E) Horse: stable.
(Herrnstein and Murray, 1994) According to many, the answer, C), is more likely to be answered correctly by upper class children (predominantly white) because they are more inclined to know the definition of regatta.
The military tends to use IQ test results to assess which field a recruit might be best suited to. Instead of relying solely on the intelligence rating, the IQ score, the military will now look at the kinds of questions a recruit answered correctly. Once they know that, they have a better idea of what innate skills the recruit can bring to specific assignments and duties.
And as far as the business world goes, uses of such tests for employment purposes was declared illegal — except in rare circumstances — by the Supreme Court in 1971.
In social life, the IQ test is only really applicable if you're specifically joining an organization based on IQ scores like Mensa, a society founded in 1964 for people who score in the top 2% of the IQ test. But, in general, there are still some misconceptions about the importance of test results. Chances are, people you know are more likely to be judgmental about a high or low score than most institutions are. Luckily, this is usually just a case of misinformation and is easily remedied.
Did You Know?
Robert Jordan, an applicant to the New Haven, CT police force sued the department in 1997 after he was refused entry on grounds that his IQ test score was "too high." A spokesperson for the police department was quoted as saying people with too high of an IQ "tire of police work and leave not long after undergoing costly academy training."
Limitations of IQ Testing
Much debate circulates around the different IQ tests that are administered throughout the country. Many researchers claim that the tests measure cultural knowledge and understanding, not innate intelligence. Critics suggest that both IQ and standardized tests are racially and culturally biased.
According to a 1996 report by the American Psychological Association, "Intelligence scores partially predict individual differences in school achievement, such as grade point average and number of years of education that individuals complete.
Nevertheless, population levels of school achievement are not determined solely or even primarily by intelligence or any other individual-difference variable. Many differences can be attributed primarily to differences in culture and schooling rather than in abilities measured by intelligence tests."
Outside factors, such as where you grow up, what kind of school you attend, and how much school you attend contribute substantially to the development of intelligences. However, it is not yet clearly understood what those factors are, or how they work. It is widely agreed that standardized tests, like an IQ test, do not accurately reflect all forms of intelligence.
Obviously, cultural knowledge, creativity, wisdom, common sense and social sensitivity are not measured in IQ tests, but they certainly contribute to a person's intelligence.
Still, there are some people who feel strongly that IQ tests are the best way to predict future performance at work and in school. They feel that IQ tests are better predictors of future success than even trained personnel experts.
Experts have numerous theories when it comes to explaining, defining and predicting intelligence. Some claim that intelligence is innate and fixed and can be measured with clearly defined statistical methods. Others claim that experience and environment affect intelligence - that intelligence is the composite of many different talents and abilities which continue to improve over time.
Further study of Intelligence
Three researchers have made significant advances in this field in recent years:
1. Robert Sternberg - Has proposed three sub-theories of intelligence: context, experience, and the cognitive components of information processing. In short, intelligence involves either adapting to your environment, moving to another more appropriate environment or changing your environment. Your level of experience with the activities or knowledge being tested gets reduced to intelligence, but intelligence is best measured out of context — when you perform unfamiliar tasks.
2. Howard Gardner - Has proposed his "Theory of Multiple Intelligences" where there are seven independent but related intelligences: logical-mathematical, linguistic, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. Gardner is one of the biggest proponents for developing new methods for testing intelligence. He speculates that intelligence is culturally and experientially based. One's experience will influence how much each of these can be expressed.
3. John Horn - Horn had proposed that there are two factors to intelligence: fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is one's ability to reason and solve problems in novel or unfamiliar situations. Crystallized intelligence is the extent to which an individual has attained knowledge of her culture.
In general, recent research has focused on intelligence as something that can be changed — not as something that is fixed in childhood and as something culturally and experientially based. Most current researchers agree that there are multiple forms of intelligence, although there is no consensus on how many.
Your Tickle IQ Score
Your Intelligence Type
Your Intelligence Scales
IQ Answer Key
What is an IQ?
Average Tickle IQ Scores By State
IQ Test Development
Additional Reading
Certificate of Intellectual Achievement
Tickle's IQ Test Development
Over the last two years, Tickle's psychologists developed this IQ test using proven, high-quality IQ test questions such as those in the Mensa Workout tests and the Shipley Institute of Living Scale — an intelligence test that focuses on both vocabulary and verbal abstract reasoning. Those are the skills that are associated with problem-solving ability and social comprehension/judgement.
Reliability of the IQ Score
Once we built the Tickle IQ test, Tickle performed a large-scale study to compare the results of people who had taken both the Tickle IQ test and the established Shipley Institute of Living Scale (by Walter C. Shipley). The Shipley test has been used for more than 50 years to assess facets of intelligence. We did this to ensure that the way we constructed our test would yield reliable and valid IQ results.
We used scores calculated by the Shipley test as a basis for calibrating Tickle's IQ test. That ensured a high association between the two tests and, because of that, the validity of our IQ scores. In fact, the Tickle IQ test is highly reliable—the Chronbach's alpha is .81. In other words, the questions on Tickle's IQ test are internally consistent and they all measure intelligence accurately.
How Tickle Calculates Intellectual Types
In the past, researchers who have constructed IQ tests have discovered additional patterns that relate to the categories of questions a particular test-taker answered correctly — categories such as mathematical, visual, verbal and logical. When these researchers analyzed peoples' results, they found that, for instance, a test-taker might have answered the math-oriented and verbal questions correctly, yet tended to answer the logical questions incorrectly. From such patterns, experts were able to define some internal scales of intelligence to the overall IQ test. Thus, using those internal scales, they could offer an actual IQ score, such as 105, as well as a measurement of how well the test-taker did within each question category.
After 1 million people took the Tickle IQ test, we ran what is called a "factor analysis" on the answers those people gave. This statistical analysis identified the similarity between groups of questions in our test. The analysis demonstrated that this particular IQ test accurately measured four underlying dimensions of intelligence: mathematical, visual-spatial, linguistic and logical.
Each of the questions in the Tickle IQ test relates to one dimension of intelligence. How reliable are these dimensions? Well, for the scientists and statisticians out there, their reliability coefficients were .85, .84, .81 and .50, respectively. The gist of all of that is that Tickle's scales of intelligence are highly valid and we can accurately tell you how high you scored on each of those scales relative to the other test-takers—thus yielding an accurate intellectual type.
Your Tickle IQ Score
Your Intelligence Type
Your Intelligence Scales
IQ Answer Key
What is an IQ?
Average Tickle IQ Scores By State
IQ Test Development
Additional Reading
Certificate of Intellectual Achievement
Average Tickle IQ Scores By State
Over 30 million people have taken Tickle's Classic IQ Test. Here's a look at the average Tickle IQ scores, broken out by state.
State Average Tickle IQ Score
Mississippi 110
West Virginia 110
Alabama 111
Arkansas 111
Kentucky 111
Louisiana 111
Florida 112
Georgia 112
Indiana 112
Maine 112
Michigan 112
Missouri 112
Nevada 112
New Mexico 112
North Carolina 112
North Dakota 112
Ohio 112
Oklahoma 112
Rhode Island 112
South Carolina 112
South Dakota 112
Tennessee 112
Texas 112
Wyoming 112
Alaska 113
Arizona 113
California 113
Connecticut 113
Delaware 113
Hawaii 113
Idaho 113
Illinois 113
Iowa 113
Kansas 113
Maryland 113
Montana 113
Nebraska 113
New Hampshire 113
New Jersey 113
New York 113
Pennsylvania 113
Vermont 113
Virginia 113
Wisconsin 113
Colorado 114
Massachusetts 114
Minnesota 114
Oregon 114
Utah 114
Washington 114
District of Columbia 115

