First of all, the concept of IQ was developed by either the German psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Stern in 1912, or by Lewis Terman in 1916, depending on which sources you consult. Intelligence testing was first done on a large scale before either of these dates. In 1904 psychologist Alfred Binet was commissioned by the French government to create a testing system to differentiate intellectually normal children from those who were inferior.
Thus the IQ scale called the "Binet Scale," (and later the "Simon-Binet Scale") was developed. Sometime later, "intelligence quotient," or "IQ," entered our vocabulary. Lewis M. Terman revised the Simon-Binet IQ Scale, and in 1916 published the Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Scale of Intelligence (also known as the Stanford-Binet). The following scale resulted for classifying IQ scores:
An IQ under 70 is considered as "mental retardation" or limited mental ability. 5% of the population falls below 70 on IQ tests. The severity of the mental retardation is commonly broken into 4 levels:
Genius or near-genius IQ is considered to start around 140 to 145. Less than 1/4 of 1 percent fall into this category. Here are some common designations on the IQ scale:
The scoring of an IQ test is not the same for everyone, because age is used in determining a score. Intelligence quotient is determined by the "intelligence age" (I A) in relation to the chronological age of the person being tested. IQ scales can differ from each other (Americans use scales with IQ values above 200), but the mean value of most scales is an IQ of 100. This represents normal intelligence.
Think you are smart? Well, if your IQ is 130, that puts you ahead of 98% of people. Of course that means there are still 120 million people who are smarter than you (the other 2%). Also, recent research shows that a person's level of self-discipline is more predictive of success than their IQ level. In other words, don't take too much meaning from your score on an IQ scale.