im surprised you were able to string together a sentence for once
^ Actually there are a lot of people on the internet who are not able to write a proper sentence, with a capital at the beginning, and a period at the end. 
…but then I’m from the generation who still knew how to write, maybe sentences aren’t cool anymore.
^its the internet, hopefully you keep up the good work at work
the one he linked to was written by a Boardmember. Must have been the real JDV.
FTR, I was late to the party. JDV had already flown the coop by the time I became active. I recall seeing a very few Frankie posts, and remember seeing a few posts by Alladin, but he quit posting shortly thereafter.
Yeah the real JoeyDVivre , was by far the smartest in AnalystForum history.
Would be interesting if some on that list disclosed their IQ, or even users that are not. Some have I believe. Many with high IQs have been tested. Yes, I know such tests aren’t the most accurate. My sense is that list would end up scrambled.
s2k has a pretty impressive background, never followed JDV
What I’ve come to notice is expertise in a certain area is often mistaken as incredible intelligence. A doctor client of mine explained it best. While he was in med school, he was enamored by the brilliance of his professors. Now that his knowledge base and experience matches theirs, he has come to realize, that while bright, they really weren’t super special.
rahul
This
I’ll disclose. I’ve never taken an actual IQ test, but the cheap imitations all put me in the 140 range. Assuming 100 is mean and stdev is 15, that’s a z-stat of 2.66, and I’m in the top .4% of the population, or 1/250.
Not bragging just disclosing an extremely unscientific study.
I’ve heard randomly selecting answers on those tests generally yeilds numbers between 120 and 140. Not saying you’re not smart in some way but those tests are supposed to be bogus.
True iq test are given one on one by trained mental professionals.
Has anyone here *not* scored 135+ on one of those free IQ tests? I’m reasonably certain that the purpose of those tests is to flatter you into buying various memberships or subscriptions.
Anyway, it’s hard to detect intelligent people sometimes, since what they say reflects incidental knowledge, communication skills, and their level of maturity. For instance, some of my college friends are MIT, Harvard, Princeton PhDs. However, they have never held hands with a girls. So they make dick jokes all the time instead of talking about genius stuff. Although, it could also be that we revert to a childlike state when reunited.
Anyway, let the group mastubatory activity continue…
I don’t doubt that’s true.
Let me also posit this–I scored 28 on the ACT (85th %) and 560 on the GMAT (55th %) without studying for either one. Didn’t even know what to expect. Just showed up at the schedule time and place and took the test.
Knowing all this probably doesn’t help much, either.
Extreme outliers are really rare, that’s the nature of outliers.
At 145 it’s 1 in 1000, and at 160 it’s 1 in 30,000. Of course the point of Yahoo.com IQ tests is to tell everyone they are an outlier. But the reality is, most people have never met a really smart person. If you go to a certain school, or if you work at a rare company that specifically hires geniuses for some purpose, maybe you bump into a few in your life, maybe. I think Ohai mentioned his university experience, I worked at a specialized company once that had some. But randomly, most people never meet 30K people, and so they have no experience with these weirdos.
Probably there are no true geniuses (160+) on this site. Really, that sort of person likely wouldn’t be interested in this profession. Although there are some that might get into the quant stuff. Maybe JDV was, but even he might have “only” been a 145. IQ scores get massively overestimated.
You shouldn’t assume AF population = general population. I wouldn’t be shocked if there are a few >150s here. How many >700 GMAT scores do we have? Probably more than a handful. Edit: changed several to a few. Several is probably a reach.
^ Obviously AF is not the general population, but it’s still not likely there are any 160s, why would they do finance? Maybe 0, maybe 1.
I randomly answered the questions on http://www.free-iqtest.net and was told I have an IQ of 74. When I answered the questions for real a few hours ago, my score was 142 or 145 (don’t remember exactly).
Edit: I’m not suggesting that my “true” IQ is in the 140’s, just demonstrating that randomly answering the questions doesn’t get you in the 120-140 range, at least on that particular site.
Because they are interested in finance? I’m not a 160, but I have a real test that’s pretty high (above Mensa level). You might figure that out meeting me in person but probably not. I’m not book smart, I don’t know a ton of facts nor am I a stand out quantitatively. Give me a strategy issue or some complex qualative problem to solve though and I’ll understand it inside and out in a short time. Intelligence is different in everyone. No one is a 1%'er in all areas. We all have our strengths. Some are just more applicable strengths than others.