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15 articles on what IQ tests measure, and what they do not.
- 01 Aptitude tests: the seven question types that keep coming back Graduate schemes, civil service exams and psychometric screening reuse the same handful of formats. Recognising the family at a glance is worth more than any amount of general practice.
- 02 Number series: the method, with twelve worked examples A four-attempt procedure that cracks the large majority of number sequences, and twelve examples from the obvious to the genuinely awkward, each explained.
- 03 Matrix reasoning: how to find the rule every time A grid of figures, one cell blank. Thinking in separate attributes turns an exercise that looks impossible into a short series of simple observations.
- 04 IQ tests for children: what a parent should know first Online tests are meaningless for a child, and the reason is arithmetic rather than moral. Here is what a real assessment involves, and when it is actually worth doing.
- 05 Seven things that distort your score — and what to do about them Tiredness, language, practice, time of day. The same person can vary by ten points from one day to the next. An inventory of what moves, with the real size of each effect.
- 06 The Flynn effect: why scores rose for a century Raw test performance climbed by roughly three points a decade through most of the twentieth century. Nobody became cleverer — and the explanation says a great deal about what these tests actually capture.
- 07 From Binet to matrices: a short history of intelligence testing The tests were invented to help struggling children, were used to sort millions of soldiers, and were invoked to justify the worst. Knowing where they come from clarifies what they are worth.
- 08 How to read an IQ score (and why a range beats a single number) What 100, 115 or 130 actually mean, what a percentile is, and why a bare number promises a precision no test has.
- 09 Spotting the “free” IQ tests that charge you at the end The pattern is always the same: a free test, a withheld result, one euro to unlock it, then a monthly subscription in small print. Here is how to see it coming.
- 10 WAIS, WISC, Raven: what real clinical tests look like What a professional assessment contains, how it differs from an online test, and why these instruments are not freely available on the internet.
- 11 Creativity, memory, emotional intelligence: what IQ does not measure An honest inventory of what escapes aptitude tests — and of what the correlations people cite about them are actually worth.
- 12 There is no such thing as a truly culture-free test Non-verbal items were designed to cross cultural barriers. They do it better than anything else — but the fact that they gained thirty points in a century shows the limits of the ambition.
- 13 What does an IQ test really measure? Neither intelligence in general nor a person's worth: a narrow set of reasoning abilities, measured under very particular conditions. What psychometrics knows, and what it does not.
- 14 IQ, gifted, high potential, Mensa: what each term means Four words that circulate constantly and overlap badly. Precise definitions, actual thresholds, and what each does — or does not — imply.
- 15 Can you train for an IQ test? Yes, and the effect is measurable — but it lands on the score, not on the ability. What training actually changes, and when it is worth doing.