Four-year-old Heidi Hankins joins Mensa with 159 IQ

[Liber-AL]

Last edited Mon Apr 16, 2012, 12:33 PM - Edit history (1)

BBC NEWS: Hampshire & Isle of Wight

13 April 2012 Last updated at 07:54 ET



A four-year-old girl from Hampshire has been accepted into Mensa with an IQ just one point below Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

Heidi Hankins from Winchester has a 159 IQ. She taught herself to read and was able to count to 40 at two years old.

British Mensa chief executive John Stevenage said Heidi's parents "correctly identified that she shows great potential".

According to Mensa, the average adult IQ score is 100.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-17702463

[kestrel91316]

1. My niece taught herself to read at age 2, also. She's scary smart,

and now has a successful career in, what else, the translation field - having mastered several languages other than English.

[bemildred]

2. Well let's hope she gets guidance from someone who understands. nt

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. Mensa is only two standard deviations above 100, it's the top 2%.

A standard deviation in an IQ test is usually 15 points.

130 IQ equals the top 2%.

145 IQ (3 standard deviations) is 1 person out of 1,000. There are high IQ societies that only take people of 3 SDs or more: the Triple-9 society, the Prometheus Society.

I scored 145 on a Stanford-Binet at age five. I've been going downhill ever since.

This girl is at 160, which is four SDs above average. I would love to know what the frequency in the population of a 160 IQ is.

[bemildred]

4. Yep.

I have great skepticism that anything real is being measured when you get that far out. What it really says is the tests don't work for those people, they are outside the box. But instead you get assertions that so-and-so had a 180 IQ, and the like.

[Liber-AL]

5. You could be right...

What actually is being measured? Memory or the ability to apply logic and reason in the most efficient way? And to what environmental factor does high IQ play a role in supporting the survival of the fittest?

Could High IQ individuals survive in the jungles of the Amazon with no access to any of the gadgets and technologies that make up the world that spawned them? I fear that HIgh IQ would not be enough. Cunning, diabolical ruthlessness and physical strength would be necessary to supplement one's High IQ under those extreme circumstances.

If memory is the main ingredient of high IQ, an unfamiliar environment full of wild animals and hostiles would prove fatal in a short time. OTOH, if the erudite or gifted person in question had committed him/herself to learning about their new jungle environment beforehand, regardless of the circumstances that got them there, the chances for survival would increase.

I think all would agree that people with high IQ cannot and do not apply that tested intelligence in all situations one might encounter in life. The test measures only a portion of that. Math, music, art and comprehension of complex knowledge are rarely mastered by one individual. For instance, Einstein was a genius but he wasn't a concert pianist or great artist. Stevie Wonder is a musical genius but I doubt if he has a grasp of quantum physics equal to that of Einstein!

[TrogL]

6. They tested my IQ in Grade 1

Because I didn't fit in socially in kindergarten, the administration figured I was "slow" and put me into the "slow" grade 1 class. My mother caused all kinds of havoc and eventually an IQ test was administered. I vaguely remember it consisting of matching stuff through logic puzzles.

I worked away at it and soon announced, "OK, I'm done - now what?" The test administrator gave me a look of abject horror and announced, "I don't know. You're not supposed to be able to finish the test."

The next day, I was sitting in class working on a project that consisted primarily of cutting out pictures of cows and pasting them into a book, when the principal came in, gathered up my stuff, roughly hauled me out of class and dumped me into the mainstream Grade 1 class, where I didn't know anybody and had missed some of the work, but soon caught up.

Still can't identify cows worth a damn.