The Smartest Browser and OS

The IQ League maintain a "60 Second IQ Test" online. Interestingly, they correlate the results of this test with a number of statistics available from their server logs. Along with the geographical distinctions like city and country, the referrer and OS/Browser user-agent strings are also mined, to determine the Smartest Browser and OS. Cutting to the chase, the very smartest is Firefox on Unknown (which internal evidence suggests is MacOS-Intel), and the dumbest, as of this writing, is IE on WinNT. Quick! Test out and move the bars on the pretty graph! Can we make Slashdot.org the "Smartest Website in the World?" (It's currently number 2 behind ScienceBlogs.com.)

Comments

"smartness"

[bobwrit]

OK, first off, how does IQ determine "smartness" or intellegence.It doesn't. Tt determines how well you can solve problems . Second, define "smart" or "intellegence" .

Re:"smartness"

[MisterBlueSky]

Second, define "smart" or "intellegence" .

Intelligence encompasses, amongst other factors, the ability to solve problems.

Tt determines how well you can solve problems .

Exactly. See above.

IQ Test?

[homer_s]

Since when do IQ tests contain questions about the bible, dinosaurs, etc?

Not that I'm disappointed that I did so badly or anything...

Re:IQ Test?

[mrbluze]

Since when do IQ tests contain questions about the bible, dinosaurs, etc?

If you were intelligent enough, you wouldn't be asking such a question ;)

Re:IQ Test?

[mrbluze]

the most popular book in the world The most published, but I doubt even 1% of bibles have actually been read.

Re:IQ Test?

[Oktober Sunset]

Sorry, but how does knowing what date the H-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima measure any kind of intelligence?

That's general knowledge, and the ability to answer is dependent on culture, US or Japanese people would be be more likey to know the answer as it's a part of thier history. Linguistic inteligence is measured by things like the word logic ones (Retarded monkey, brain damaged baboon, the person who wrote that IQ test, Rocket scientist, which one is the odd one out?), all IQ tests should be answerable without any outside knowledge. What it is measuring is whether I can work out the calculation in my head, not if I was paying attention in history lessons 10 years ago.

Re:IQ Test?

[TubeSteak]

all IQ tests should be answerable without any outside knowledge. What it is measuring is whether I can work out the calculation in my head, not if I was paying attention in history lessons 10 years ago. I'm sorry to tell you this, but you're wrong.
Not a little wrong, but really wrong.
IQ tests don't work the way you think they should, because there are many things they have to measure.
And as a side note, the best shortcut to determining IQ is vocabulary size, not analytical skills.

In this post, I responded to someone else who was equally wrong. I'm not the only one to link to the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, which was (and still is AFAIK) the benchmark IQ test for ages 16+.

And to respond to your criticism that "the ability to answer is dependent on culture"... Well, that's the entire point. If you don't know culture, that reflects a deficiency in your social intelligence.

The Information & Comprehension portion of IQ tests are country/culture specific.
You'd bomb parts of a (translated) Chinese or Indian IQ test because what qualifies as general knowledge for them would be foreign to you.

Re:IQ Test?

[Max Littlemore]

Apparently people smarter than you are have decided that "who is the creator according to Hinduism, and for what was Al Capone eventually imprisoned" are very relevant to your IQ.

Aaaah, that's one of those arguments stupid people make when trying to beat intelligent people in an argument.

The same kind of stupid people who think that intelligence can be assessed world wide from general knowledge questions which are obviously based in narrow cultural bounds. Stupid stupid stupid.

Re:IQ Test?

[Eskarel]

While I agree with you that knowing something about other peoples religions is a useful thing to know, and while I might even agree with you that given that lapsed Christianity is the most prevalent religion in most western societies, knowing the exact contents of the bible, let alone the order of the books is really rather pointless.

Technically speaking you could be one of those folks who believe that every word in the bible is true and memorize every word in the bible so that you know what you believe and you still wouldn't actually have to know the order of the books(though unless someone cut up your bible and gave it back to you in random order as an experiment you probably would). Since even a devout follower doesn't actually need to know what book comes after Genesis, I doubt that someone of another faith(or lack thereof) should need to know that kind of detail.

If they really wanted to test cultural or historical knowledge of the bible they could have asked a whole lot more applicable questions.

Re:IQ Test?

[Simon Brooke]

And to respond to your criticism that "the ability to answer is dependent on culture"... Well, that's the entire point. If you don't know culture, that reflects a deficiency in your social intelligence.

Ok, so if the questions referenced the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran and the Prose Edda - all extremely important cultural artifacts - they would form part of a useful test of your intelligence, would they?

Certainly if you don't know any culture, that reflects on your intelligence. But the fact that you don't know a specific culture does not. There are people in the world who've never read the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Rigsveda, or The Art of War. Those people aren't necessarily stupid.

The Beatles and IQ

[allanw]

How does knowing facts about the Beatles (2/10 questions) have anything to do with IQ?

Re:"Curretly"?

[RuBLed]

And as of now, we're ranked 6 and falling... someone didn't get the memo and RTFA. I guess we could now prove the inverse of Moore's Law.

A theory...

[Junta]

Perhaps the inability of someone to answer such a question when they are obviously taking the test through an internet connected browser could reflect badly on their intelligence ;)

That said, it scored me the lowest any such test has ever done.

their jscripts aren't particularly robust

[kurthr]

I discovered on one page load I couldn't select any answer. I tried loading the page using Greasemonkey and found that the page failed to load properly/completely within 1 minute 2% of the time.

Using Firefox 2.0.0.14 on W2K from Google-Wireless, it would appear that pre-fetch and other browser/connection attributes could have a significant effect on overall outcomes.

It's certainly interesting the that the 10th smartest country (UK) is barely above 100 IQ.

Everyone above average, indeed!

"IQ" test?

[ucblockhead]

Whoever wrote this "IQ" test is apparently not smart enough to understand how an IQ test works.

You can debate whether a real IQ test measures anything other than the ability to do well on IQ tests, however, real IQ tests don't depend on real world knowledge. That's the whole point of them. By my measure, 8 of the 10 questions it gave me are not even remotely worthy of being on an IQ test. For instance, knowing the date of the first olympiad is pretty much the definition of a question requiring real world knowledge.

Re:"IQ" test?

[JustinOpinion]

Yeah it seems more like a test of how quickly you can Google for answers.

Re:"IQ" test?

[electric joy boy]

Whoever wrote this "IQ" test is apparently not smart enough to understand how an IQ test works.

You can debate whether a real IQ test measures anything other than the ability to do well on IQ tests, however, real IQ tests don't depend on real world knowledge. It appears that many people on /. apparently don't actually how an IQ test works. The most common, authentic, IQ test, the WAIS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wechsler_Adult_Intelligence_Scale) is used by psychometrecians to assess the "The global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his/her environment."

We use it in my clinical training program to do neuropsychological assessment and cultural/historical information is certainly relevant to dealing effectively with one's environment...

now a more interesting question (in the last 20 or so years) comes up here about IQ test bias. Which types of people, demographically, are the ones who get to decide what is the most relevant cultural information to have? Which types of people, demographically, are most likely to obtain lows scores on these indices?

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the people using Safari on Windows unwittingly had it forced upon them on iTunes, and they don't know the difference.

Re:"Curretly"?

[JustinOpinion]

And as of now, Slashdot is ranked 15.

To me, this says more about sample size (or lack thereof) in these stats. The sample sizes are probably so small that the ranks are just statistical artifacts of the scores of the few people coming from each site. Also I'm sure the average scores are highly skewed by people who start taking the test and then just get bored and randomly guess some answers to get it over with. For small samples, small aberrations (e.g. a few smart, stupid, or lazy users) can obviously greatly skew the average.

Stats are nearly meaningless without some estimation of the error bars (or at least mention of the sample size!). All that to say: I wouldn't take these stats too seriously! Moreover, it's likely that as more and more Slashdotters take the test, the average will drop further and further from its statistically-anomalous level, to a more reasonable average. (As would the other listed categories, if only more people took the test.)

(Note: that's all assuming the test itself is even a valid measure of IQ, which I find rather dubious.)

Annoying bible book ordering questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Er... nice for the non-Christians and non-Jews in the crowd:

"Genesis is the first book of the Bible. Which of the following is the second book? (a) Genesis (b) Kings (c) Exodus (d) Numbers"

Uh, surely a proper intelligence measuring question would be:

"Which of the following books is not a work of fiction? (a) Genesis (b) Kings (c) Exodus (d) Origin of Species"

Lower is better!

[Joce640k]

I looked at the questions and I think dropping to to 11th place is a good sign.

IQ test it ain't.

Re:Lower is better!

[physicsnick]

It's even worse than that. I got penalized for only answering ten questions. They suggested I answer twenty more to remove the penalty. IN 60 SECONDS!!!

The test gives you about two seconds per question. That's not even enough time for general knowledge (read: culturally dependant) questions which don't belong on an IQ test, let alone complex pattern matching. I'm sorry, but that's no kind of IQ test.

Re:Lower is better!

[DeadChobi]

Apparently these guys don't know what an IQ test is. The first question I got was a "general knowledge" question, which doesn't require any type of intellectual inference. It's just a matter of whether or not you've absorbed the knowledge somehow.

Re:Lower is better!

[cp.tar]

Not only that, but the knowledge is both language-specific and, worse, America-specific.

Let's assume that even the anagrams ("Which of these is not an anagram of an animal?" type of questions) don't pose a problem to non-native English speakers. But what about the question on the serial numbers of dollar bills? I haven't handled a dollar bill in my entire life; how would I know anything about serial numbers?

Indeed, an IQ test it ain't.

Oh, and another thing: I realized -- belatedly, though -- that it was 60 seconds per question. Now I must track down the damned cookie to re-take the test.
Hm. 8 am. After class, then.

Re:Lower is better!

[Free the Cowards]

There was one question I got which talked about a guy who was 30 years old when he married his wife, who was 25 at the time. She died at age X, he died at age Y, how long was he a widower?

These no-talent ass clowns apparently were unable to realize that these ages give you a range of a year minus a day to either side, so that the "right answer" is going to a range including three years. Then they go and give you a choice between two years in that range, with one of them somehow being "wrong".

What a bunch of jerks. It's fine to be clueless, but not to parade your clueless in front of everybody while acting as though you were really smart.

Re:Lower is better!

[Free the Cowards]

Let me elaborate a bit on what I meant. And thanks for the original numbers, that makes it easier.

So step one, she married him when she was 25 and died at 50. They were not, in fact, necessarily married exactly 25 years. There's a whole year in which she is 25, and a whole year in which she is 50. If she got married on her 25th birthday and died one day before her 51st birthday, she was married 26 years minus one day. If she got married one day before her 26th birthday and died on her 50th birthday, she was married 24 years plus one day. To put it more simply, the range of years during which she was married was (24, 26) where the parentheses are the mathematical construct meaning "up to, but not including, this number".

Now, how old was he when she died? He started out at 30. This is actually [30, 31). Add (24, 26) and you get (54, 57).

Then he died at age 79, which is of course actually [79, 80). Subtract (54, 57) from [79, 80) and you get (22, 26). So he could have been a widower anywhere from 22 (plus a bit), to 25 (plus nearly a year) years.

The trouble here is that they, and you, are assuming that "X years" is an exact integer. But when we say that someone is X years old, this covers a period of an entire year. A person whose birthday is January 1, 1983 was 25 on January 1 of this year, is 25 now, and will be 25 on December 31.

Thus the question does not include nearly enough information to answer to the precision they require. If their choices were, say, 20, 25, 30, 35 then you could choose the one that's in range. But when multiple answers are in range and they don't count them all as being correct then they're just ridiculous.

And yes, I have seen our President, and he makes me sad.

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[Gewalt]

I have a mac. Safari is a decent browser, but it fails epicly compared to FF as it does not have extensibility as a primary function. It's the plugins that make firefox awesome. IE and Safari just dont even compare. (Opera? not even in the same league as IE, let alone safari)

This "IQ" test needs to take an IQ test

[majorgoodvibes]

One question begins "The Beatles' original drummer was 'George Best'..."

Re:"Curretly"?

[egomaniac]

As for the validity of the IQ test, it had two nearly identical Bible questions (which book comes after Genesis). Is such simple factual knowledge even relevant to IQ?

There's a slight correlation between basic knowledge like this and IQ, but it's hardly a useful type of question. Especially if the person you're testing isn't Christian.

For example, it asked me the date on which we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima... I knew it was 1945, but don't know the particular date. I wasn't even born until thirty years later. I'm not sure that the fact that I didn't happen to know the exact date off the top of my head means I'm not as smart as somebody who did.

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[Sparr0]

I disagree. I was an Opera user for years. I switched to Mozilla when it started to mature, but I still user Opera on occasion. Opera is the innovator in the field. They had GOOD full page zoom years before anyone else had anything even remotely close. They provided user-accessible stylesheet switching that rocked, including some default stylesheets that were a godsend for web development (label and outline block elements, etc). Don't forget user-agent switching. Also, Opera is damn fast, and it runs on more handheld devices than any other browser (although "gecko" is close if you count all the browsers that use it including minimo).

My Bad

[Max Littlemore]

I got stuck on the first question.

It said "Who is Winnie the Pooh's depressive donkey friend?" and I spent too long looking for the "How the fuck does knowing something about British children's fiction later bastardised by Disney tell you anything about my intelligence?" option.

Sorry everyone, I should have known better than to try and answer a question with a question.

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[The Master Control P]

You should charge. Otherwise there's no consequence for being stupid and no incentive to not be stupid.

NOT an IQ test

[slydder]

It's actually a trivia test. and a poorly contrived trivia test at that. anyone else get the rubiks cube question? there was no correct answer as the bottom face of the cube is yellow (per the second picture in the sequence) and not light blue.

for foreign people it is a language test

[someone1234]

Real IQ tests should be language independent.

Not really an IQ test

[mariushm]

I'm not sure if this is really a good IQ test.

The complexity of the questions seems to vary with each test, one the first one I got 85.2 and on the second I got 105.8 but the second one was really easy.
Also, it seems to favor speedy replies which doesn't mean a thing, anyone can switch tabs and do a quick search on google anyway for some questions and cheat, or maybe disable javascript.