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

Still using safari or IE?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Still using safari or IE? Means you're probably not too bright.

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[Darkness404]

That is odd though, I have installed Firefox on many computers when I have done technical work, and most if not all still use IE as their primary browser usually filling it back up with spyware for me to remove again... About the only ways I know how to make people use Firefox is either A) switch Firefox to an IE icon, or B) delete all evidence of IE except for the .EXEs hidden in system folders. I highly, highly doubt that most Windows users using Safari are just the iTunes users, now, I would expect most of the downloads of Safari for Windows to have come from iTunes but downloads usually don't equal use of the browser.

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)

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[nbarriga]

So extensibility is your main/only reason for choosing a browser? What about speed, ease of use, % of pages rendered OK, safety? (Yes, I use Opera)

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[MadnessASAP]

Me too! I guess that makes us the entire opera market share.

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).

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[flink]

CMD+Option + on the mac gives that to you on the system level and virtual resolutions does the same under X windows. I guess it's useful under MS Windows though. I've found that Firefox will usually respond to Ctrl++ if you hit it enough times though, so I've never really found myself missing zoom on WinNT.

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[Herby Sagues]

Actually, the timer function is apparently not working in IE with Vista (which counts as IE over NT). I get the same results if I wait a minute as if I get the answers immediately (which are pretty easy, though just in case I checked my answers were right with reliable sources). That would explain low Windows NT scores. I would actually be surprised if there was actually any significant correlation between browser use and IQ, given that most computer users use whatever someone else installed on their computers (IT, OEM or some friend). And if you think otherwise, you are probably confusing intelligent with computer savvy.

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[dafrazzman]

I would actually be surprised if there was actually any significant correlation between browser use and IQ, given that most computer users use whatever someone else installed on their computers (IT, OEM or some friend). And if you think otherwise, you are probably confusing intelligent with computer savvy. I wouldn't be so doubtful. I'm sure there's a link between critical thinking and tendency to use Firefox over IE.

Assume you have a group of people of relatively moderate computer savviness. They all use IE, and you tell them all about Firefox. Some of them will say "Pssh... whatever" and conclude that IE is both adequate and familiar, making it easy to rationalize not considering a change. Others will note the benefits along with your shining recommendation and consider a switch.

If we conclude from this that the ones who blew it off think less critically (a debatable, but reasonable assumption), we will indeed see more critical thinking people using IE.

It isn't much of a leap then to say that Firefox users are in some way "smarter" than IE users.

If you can't say that, you can at least say that they're more likely to give a hoot about the test and try harder than the others.

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.

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[pecosdave]

I've used this tactic on more than one person. Just hiding the crud out of IE does it for me. Once I've done this and they get used to the "other icon" they're fine. They don't even realize the difference since they were never power users to begin with.

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[aliquis]

More like: IE was included in the OS and Opera cost money / had ads, firefox didn't.

Opera would have been a bigger player than firefox if it wasn't that you had to see the fucking ads in Opera back in the day. Of course people prefer something free over adware/shareware if they the later one aren't much better.

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[aliquis]

Back in the day atleast firefox zoom changed the page layout and didn't worked for embedded content. Operas webpages still looked like the original, only bigger, same zoom everywhere.

Re:Still using safari or IE?

[God'sDuck]

If they have an IE-only site (like Netflix Watch-Now) I set the homepage on IE to Netflix, and the homepage on Firefox to whatever their homepage was. I tell them "The orange fox is the internet, the blue E is Netflix." Works fine.

"Curretly"?

[Kickersny.com]

Can we make Slashdot.org the "Smartest Website in the World?" (It's curretly number 2 behind ScienceBlogs.com.) Are they serious?

Re:"Curretly"?

[Anonymous Coward]

And why does the poster think that a larger amount of Slashdot users taking the test will help bring up the score? This does not compute.

Re:"Curretly"?

[The Ancients]

Can we make Slashdot.org the "Smartest Website in the World?" (It's curretly number 2 behind ScienceBlogs.com.) Are they serious?

Dedly

Re:"Curretly"?

[palegray.net]

You have to understand that traditional metrics of intelligence don't apply to troll populations; they rely on "cumulative intelligence" instead of individual or averaged values. The fact that the average troll's intelligence is in the single digits is offset by their sheer numbers; some have speculated that the rise of SkyNet may actually be precipitated by the combined intellectual contribution of 1.57 billion troll-moderated Slashdot posts.

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.

Re:"Curretly"?

[Anonymous Coward]

A few minutes ago, /. was #8. Now it's #11. Way to go /.ers, you've proven how intelligent you really are.
Edit: In the amount of time it took me to write this and hit preview, /. dropped to #15.

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.)

Re:"Curretly"?

[Awptimus Prime]

Oh it'll go down further once I am done randomly clicking answers, saying I am from /. then deleting my cookie and repeating a few more times.

Re:"Curretly"?

[cigarky]

Super serial

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:"Curretly"?

[witherstaff]

This is a joke of a test. It has some of the basic concepts down - visualization, pattern matching, logic puzzles - but the layout and the other sort of questions is not apt. I was asked about the Chunnel - sure I knew it, but local geography should not be applicable.

If anyone wants a real IQ test, take some of the mensa fun tests. That will show what a real test is like.

Re:"Curretly"?

[arotenbe]

Wait a minute... are you saying there's actually another person on /. who looks at the previews submitting them?

Re:"Curretly"?

[rve]

The advertisement section on this slashdot page says more about the average /. user than an online test:

- Ads by google
- Linux gurus wanted
- Beautiful Russian girls for marriage
- Looking for a junior IT job?

Re:"Curretly"?

[Hal_Porter]

- Linux gurus wanted
- Beautiful Russian girls for marriage
- Looking for a junior IT job? So long as there no adverts for car seats or car upholstery cleaning kits it's not too bad.

Re:"smartness"

[ucblockhead]

Or even spell "intelligence"!

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?

[Coopjust]

Yeah, some of the questions I received were about the Beatles and Russian History. Those seem like historical knowledge tests, not intelligence quotient...

Re:IQ Test?

[gujo-odori]

Mine had a questions about who is the creator according to Hinduism, and for what was Al Capone eventually imprisoned? While I happen to know the answers to those things, it has absolutely nothing to do with my IQ, nor would not knowing them. At this point, I'm only certain of one thing: my IQ is higher than that of anyone who thinks that's an IQ test.

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?

[schon]

I always get a giggle out of these "IQ" tests that require the use of javascript and cookies.

I guess if you visit their site with noscript, your IQ is so high it can't be measured!

Re:IQ Test?

[andy753421]

From Wikipedia on the inventor of IQ tests: "His principal goal was to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum."

Since school curriculums tend to involve things such as Literature, History, and Science it makes complete sense that knowing a lot about earth history and the the most popular book in the world would increase your IQ.

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?

[Bjarke Roune]

The reason IQ tests normally are all about abstract reasoning is that that gives the most reliable assessment of IQ with the least number of questions. There is no reason an IQ test needs to look like that, it just happens to be the most reliable and time-efficient way to measure IQ.

In a way, any test at all is an IQ test, in that it is nearly impossible to devise any kind of mental test that does not measure IQ to some degree. String a lot of these kinds of semi-IQ tests together in the right way, and you can end up with a reliable IQ test that contains only questions that look nothing like traditional IQ test questions do. The only reason that it is not usually done this way is just that then you need many, many questions, which is a waste of time when only a small number of abstract thinking questions can do the job just as well.

Re:IQ Test?

[cgdiaz]

It was alex in the kitchen with a knife.

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (Little Boy) wasn't an H-bomb.

Re:IQ Test?

[Facetious]

Nor was the one dropped on Nagasaki (Fat Man). In fact, an H-bomb has never been used in war. (For the pedantic, "used" doesn't mean proliferation during the cold war. It means intentionally killing people.)

Re:IQ Test?

[exitmoose]

I.Q. has a very precise meaning and is not the same as the vernacular term "intelligence". It's instructive to note that neither the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - III nor the Stanford-Binet IQ test (the one used by Mensa) use general knowledge questions in their test, as I.Q. is supposed to be a test of mental acuity, not a test of "smartness". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wechsler_Adult_Intelligence_Scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford-Binet

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?

[c-reus]

Would your opinion be different if the question were about the contents of Quran? Islam has 1.5 billion followers, making it the second popular religion.

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.

Re:IQ Test?

[Das Modell]

I received a question about some character in Winnie the fucking Pooh. I didn't know the answer to this important piece of cultural trivia, so I guess that means I'm stupid. I also liked all the questions where the answer is completely up to personal interpretation, which is something I've seen in other tests too. Intelligence tests, in my experience, are complete bullshit, and this one is no different.

Using knowledge of culture and history to measure intelligence is dubious. If I can't answer some questions about Western culture, but I can answer several questions about Japanese culture (I know a few things), does that make me stupid or intelligent? Is it more "intelligent" to have deep knowledge of one area or broad knowledge of several areas? And so on.

Great.

[One Childish N00b]

Is there any way this is not going to turn into a flamewar and/or an excuse to bash IE?
Come on, guys, we know it sucks. Let's have some news already.

Re:Great.

[FooAtWFU]

I dunno. We could distract people for a bit by bashing another of their spectacularly stupid entries, though, Googlebot/2.1 on Unknown! Stupid Googlebot. :(

The Beatles and IQ

[allanw]

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

Your IQ is 100.44

[Miffe]

You are #5971 Smartest Human in the World

Oh well, it's at least lower than my slashdot-id.

Doesn't matter what you've scored...

[Jorophose]

I've received the perfect score. =)

http://www.iqleague.com/certificate/n9LjytSYn0y5JZqoAVDafg

No matter what you score..

[QuantumG]

they'll tell you that you're not very intelligent and that they can fix you.

Oh wait, that's Scientology.

Re:Smartest, eh?

[maxume]

Your score isn't showing up. Perhaps if you get more people to switch.

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!

Dropping Score

[blavallee]

/. has dropped to number 11

Guess no one took into account the large sector of (insert field) managers that read slashdot.

"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:"IQ" test?

[Bill Wong]

even worse than you think. i wrote a short script and went through ~1500 questions and there were only 138 uniques.
it's trivial for anyone to just create a database of answers for that few a number of questions.
i'm already working on writing a bot to take the quiz automatically

Blind leading the blind?

[liegeofmelkor]

I'm sorry, but anyone who can't manage to put x-y axes on their plots isn't fit to analyze the intelligence of others.

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.

Pffffffffftttttt

[Mattniche]

What a load of rot. I didn't read any questions and just did some random clicking. 85.26% is WAY higher than my IQ.

Very drunk right now

[Anonymous Coward]

... and happened to score 101. I don't know how I should take such information, but the following scares me:

16th in Raleigh
32nd in North Carolina

I mean, wtf. I can barely see straight right now. I guess that means, on average, my city/state is a bunch of drunkards?

#2? That's why...

[ohxten]

Can we make Slashdot.org the "Smartest Website in the World?" (It's curretly number 2 behind ScienceBlogs.com.)

*That's* why it's #2.

Re:#2? That's why...

[ohxten]

*cough* Also, the smartest is Mozilla on Unknown, not Firefox. And where the heck did you get the figure for the dumbest users? On the website it says 'AppleMAC-Safari on WinNT' with a score of 89.89. Technically it's 'IE on Unknown' that's the dumbest but apparently there's no IQ data for that...

I know, I'm being picky.

Random numbers smarter than median human?

[geekgirlandrea]

Apparently, Perl's PRNG is the 6883rd smartest human on earth with an IQ of 101.36. Why do people pay attention to tests like this again?

Not exactly accurate

[theeddie55]

I didn't bother with the test but looking at the stats, it says the smartest person in the world has an IQ of 142, which in an actual IQ test is just below the minimum requirement for mensa.

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"

Spelling

[SoundGuyNoise]

(It's curretly number 2 behind ScienceBlogs.com.)

You won't make #1 by spelling "currently" wrong.

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!

[RpiMatty]

You don't have 60 seconds total.
If you answer in less than 5 seconds, you get 1 point.
If you answer in more than 45 seconds, you get 0.5 points.
If you answer somewhere in between, you get somewhere in between 0.5 and 1 point.

If your score is equal to the median, your IQ is 100.
For each standard deviation away from the median, your IQ changes by 15 pts.

From http://www.iqleague.com/iq-scores

Re:Lower is better!

[Toonol]

So you're saying that, although it fails as an IQ test, approaching the test intelligently will lead to a better score?

Hmm...

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!

[g4b]

the first question i got was:

could not insert: [IQLeague.BusinessLayer.User .... [SQL: INSERT INTO IQLeague.dbo.UserAndGroup (AuthSignature, Email ... VALUES (... so on so on

and i could not answer it, even if i KNEW its a database error.

Re:Lower is better!

[fbjon]

A completely language-independent test that gives the score based on statistics of how previous people did. The "questions" get more difficult the more you answer correctly, and when I say difficult, I mean really fscking difficult. Don't worry if you have no idea what the answer is, you'll get an easier one if you wait for the 45 seconds per question to expire.

Note that, as should be, the test only measures a specific kind of intelligence. No language or numerical stuff.

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.

Who cares?

[denzacar]

Eunice is the only girl in a group of five teenagers (unless Alex is a girl too) - who cares how tall she is?

This "IQ" test needs to take an IQ test

[majorgoodvibes]

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

Unanswerable?

[TheSkyIsPurple]

From the site:
Five teenagers are of various heights. Alex is taller than Dennis, who is shorter than Eunice. Chris is shorter than Bob, but taller than Alex. Who among them is the third tallest? [1. Chris 2. Alex 3. Dennis 4. Eunice]

To rewrite:
Alex > Dennis
Dennis < Eunice (but we don't know if Eunice is taller than Alex or not, etc)
Chris < Bob
Chris > Alex.

Smushing these together (and getting all >'s in the same direction), you get:
Bob > Chris > Alex > Dennis
Eunice > Dennis

These are the combinations I came up with that still fit the teenagers relative heights:
Bob > Chris > Alex > Eunice > Dennis
Bob > Chris > Eunice > Alex > Dennis
Bob > Eunice > Chris > Alex > Dennis
Eunice > Bob > Chris > Alex > Dennis

Who is the third tallest?
Well, Alex, Chris or Eunice. (Answers 1, 2, or 4.)

What did I miss?

[Even if I read "who is shorter than Eunice" to mean Alex < Eunice I still end up with 2 of the answers]

Re:Unanswerable?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was probably meant to say "...who is taller than Eunice." Flip that one word, and the question becomes answerable.

Given that there were only 4 options to choose from, and none of them were Bob, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that "Bob" was "Eunice" before the surgery, which establishes a fixed ordering (Alex is third) and maintains the alternating taller than/shorter than flow of the question.

(Posting anon to avoid mod canceling.)

In the old system, unless you jump through hoops (I think logging out and even clearing cookies wasn't enough, you had to switch to a new IP) posting as anonymous would still get you messages indicating all your mods are undone (though you can still mod other threads in the conversation afterwards, go figure.) The new posting system doesn't provide any such feedback that I can see (beyond "you must wait a while before using this") so I really don't know if my mods have been undone or not.

Re:Unanswerable?

[mwigmani]

This was the best one I got:*

Question 8 of 10
Which is the odd one out: lead, brass, tin, copper?

1). lead
2). aluminum
3). brass
4). copper

* copied verbatim

Re:Unanswerable?

[Denial93]

"In Hinduism who is the Creator? [1. Vishnu 2. Brahma 3. Siva 4. Ganesha]" is just as bad. Depending on which Hindu tradition you look at, either of the first three could be "true". And there are sure to be a few guys who think number 4 is correct... somewhere in the chaotic bunch of sects commonly and grossly misunderstood to be a monolithic religion called "Hinduism".

ScienceBlogs.com

[aplusjimages]

I've never heard of this site, but now that I have I'll never return to /.

Re:ScienceBlogs.com

[travbrad]

Not only is this "IQ Test" completely useless, it doesn't seem to be particularly smart itself

"ThisTest IsBullshit competes in following groups

Smartest Human in New Jersey"

I live in Minnesota..

This IQ test is really, really real...

[coinmac]

Copyright (C) 2008 IQLeague. Our IQ tests are for entertainment purposes only.

Always read the fine print, assuming the bad grammar didn't tip you off first...

I am afraid...

[gwolf]

We are going to have you taken away on the basis of disclosing...
Wait, wasn't he disclosing?
No, no, this post is in no way an acknowledgement that we might or might not have thought about pursuing a course of action against QuantumG for allegedly attempting to coerce us into disclosing what could or could not have been seen as information on our Secret Proceedings, in case they exist.

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.

The Test is Stupid

[jbrader]

It said I live in Herndon, VA. I live in Pullman, WA. It's pretty far fom here. It also said I'm something like the 3300th smartest person in the world. Since I'm really drunk right now that's pretty sad.

Worst... IQ... Test... Ever...

[Endareth]

That would have to be the worst attempt at an IQ test I've ever seen... A combination of general knowledge and some pattern recognition in only ten questions is so far from qualifying as an IQ test that it's not funny.

bad browser detection

[capoccia]

it marked me as "user of Firefox on WinXP" even though i'm using iceape on debian.

List updated

[velen]

After being Slashdotted, the statistics for this site as below.

1. Opera on UNIX 103.40
2. Firefox on MacPPC 103.35
3. AppleMAC-Safari on MacPPC 103.27
4. Mozilla on UNIX 103.13
5. Mozilla on MacPPC 103.05
6. AppleMAC-Safari on Unknown 102.77
7. Firefox on UNIX 102.75
8. Firefox on Unknown 102.53
9. Mozilla on Unknown 102.21
10. Firefox on Win2000 101.93
11. Firefox on Win98 101.48
12. Opera on MacPPC 101.26
13. Firefox on WinXP 101.14
14. Mozilla on WinXP 101.09
15. Firefox on WinNT 100.99
16. Opera on WinXP 100.17
17. Opera on Win2000 99.97
18. Opera on WinNT 98.99
19. IE on WinNT 98.09
20. Mozilla on Win2000 98.09

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.

but where is IE under wine under linux?

[neonsignal]

...or is no-one that dumb :-)

for foreign people it is a language test

[someone1234]

Real IQ tests should be language independent.

my IQ is falling

[burdalane]

After the first 10 questions, my IQ was 20 points lower than my score from other IQ tests. A half hour later I answered another 10 questions, and my IQ dropped by 10 points.

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.

FFox is a hack job.

[Foerstner]

I have a Mac, and I do web development. Previously, I used Firefox, with the User Agent Switcher, Venkman, Firebug, and Adblock. I considered these plugins indespensible.

Since the release of Safari 3, I use that, with SafariBlock. Why?

- Safari's Web Inspector makes Firebug, Venkman, and the DOM Inspector look like crude hacks.
- Safari's Develop menu has over a dozen popular UA strings pre-populated. It would take half an hour to look them all up and enter them into User Agent Switcher.
- SafariBlock is not quite as versatile as Adblock Plus, but it accepts the same filterset subscriptions and works pretty seamlessly.
- Safari feels faster (and is faster, when comparing released versions, at benchmarks.)
- Release versions of Safari tend to be at least as standards-compliant, and frequently moreso, than released versions of FFx.
- For the above two reasons, pretty much everone (Nokia, Adobe, Google, GNOME-Epiphany, etc.) looking for a browser engine recently has chosen WebKit over Gecko.

Your needs may vary, but in my case, all the add-ons in the world only serve to make Firefox look like a bloated, kludged-together shadow of Safari.