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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 3226663" data-attributes="member: 177">Oi.  IQ tests are often a contentious topic.A person with a high IQ can perform the sorts of tasks presented on IQ tests well, and is likely to do the sorts of tasks you see in public school well.IQ is not designed to mean what people sometimes think it means.  Originally, it was designed (and it is still best used) to find kids who are at risk for falling behind in school, for whatever reason.   Lack of native ability is one possible reason, but poor preparation is equally probable, as are many other reasons.  IQ doesn't really speak to the cause, it merely helps identify that there may be a problem.  Scores on IQ tests do correlate well to grades in future education, but correlate much less well, or not at all, to later measures of intelligence/success in life.  IQ is not a test of general intelligence or intellectual ability - those terms are not well defined, and so cannot be tested.  The original conflation of the results of testing to "IQ = intelligence" is based largely on some statistical do-jiggery that really doesn't mean what folks say it means.  And, at the ends of the scale (moreso on the high end) the system generally breaks down - having a 180 IQ does not speak volumes about what you can do that a person with a 130 can't.  And having a high IQ does not mean you have particularly different mental processes.</blockquote>