Are you Mensa smart? Take the quiz | Hacker News Reader

Are you Mensa smart? Take the quiz

usatoday.com

9 pointsedw51921 comments

As an existing member of Mensa, I can probably answer "yes". However, I generally do not like to mention the information because every time I break down and attend a local Mensa meeting, it always strikes me as just a group of self-righteous bastards who revel in being able to say "I'm smarter than you". The perks of membership, including the sometimes interesting bulletins and magazines, ntm discounts at various retailers and travel vendors, are interesting and enough to keep me paying the fees.

Agreed. I'm in (at one point anyway) the original British & Irish Mensa. It seems that out of all the bright people who are in Mensa, only the pompous arrogant ones tend to turn up and organize meetings so they can hear themselves talk.

I let my membership lapse, I couldn't see any benefit to it at all. It was only helpful in that, because of my patchy education (and in the words of a friend with a similar problem): "by the time I left school, I didn't just think I was stupid. I knew it." So, it reassured me I had something going for me and gave me the confidence to tackle things I might not otherwise have tried.

As has been pointed out innumerable times before, the test only measures a specific kind of intelligence and doesn't provide any indicator of how well you will do at life.

> it always strikes me as just a group of self-righteous bastards who revel in being able to say "I'm smarter than you"

I've always thought that really intelligent people solve real-world problems. Real-world problems are way harder than artificial ones because of their inherent accidental complexity, which you can't take away. If a man devises a problem, another man can solve it. If no man has devised it, however, are you intelligent enough to solve it?

EDIT: Hence, I would prefer/like to be "street smart" over "mensa smart" every time.

It seems like 2 is improperly specified:

>2. Jane went to visit Jill. Jill is Jane's only husband's mother-in-law's only husband's only daughter's only daughter. What relation is Jill to Jane?

Here's the reasoning I think they want:

Jane's only husband's mother-in-law is Jane's mother.

Jane's mother's only husband is Jane's father.

Jane's father's only daughter is Jane.

Jane's only daughter is Jane's daughter.

But wait! Just because Jane's mother has only been married once doesn't make Jane's mother's husband Jane's father! Children can be born out of wedlock. So Jane's mother's husband could have had a daughter who isn't Jane. What does that make Jane and that person's daughter? Absolutely nothing.

If and only if you make the obvious assumptions, there is a really nice answer, easy to explain in a newspaper article. Otherwise, you'd need to spend three pages clarifying a three sentence question.

Some people have two wives. Sometimes it's legal, and sometimes it's not; either way, it happens. Maybe Jane's only husband divorced her and remarried, and his new mother-in-law is in the same boat with respect to her husband. Also, one or more of the daughters may have been adopted. Also, there are multiple definitions of "relation" and of "husband" that you might use. And, it all depends on what the definition of "is" is.

Ha, when first formulating the argument, I realized that the husband could have been married multiple times, but forgot that when I wrote my post. Excellent point.

But it seems to me that if the whole reason for your group existing is that you're smarter than most people, you shouldn't have flaws in your exam like this.

The question itself is an implicit test of logical deduction to determine the most likely assumptions given the restraints imposed by the question.

Just because random things are possible (the husband had two wives!), does not make them the most likely assumptions given the nature of the question. If the answer was "Unrelated - Jane's dad had a harem of several women", the question wouldn't make much sense on any type of quiz designed to determine intelligence.

I love me a good arithmetic/algebra review -- but in the end, I am not qualified to rub elbows with the geniuses of Mensa, as I lack the essential requisite domain-specific kitten/mitten training.

References aside, I certifiably lack enough legit brains to step to Mensa's gatekeepers. But now I'm curious -- has anyone got any anecdotes of Mensa gatherings that defied stereotypes? Such as for example those alluded to in Mr. Onstad's synopsis of Mensa here: http://achewood.com/index.php?date=03222005

In the poem, the kittens find their mittens, so shouldn't the answer be 0.

I'd love to know if this is an accurate representation of how difficult Mesna tests are.

I've always fancied joining but assumed that I would never qualify and to be honest, having sat a few IQ tests in my time I would consider that to be an example of a pretty easy quiz.

From an old comment of mine: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=735499

The admission test itself is surprisingly simple. There are actually two of them and you only need to pass one. The first test is the Wonderlic and the second is a test designed by Mensa. If you fail both you don't get to reapply. You never learn your score. You're only told whether you passed or failed.

The tests contain nothing like those ridiculous Mensa brain teaser books. They're the types of questions that most reasonably intelligent people can answer fairly easily. They're not unlike the questions you see on the online Mensa practice test or one of those tickle.com IQ tests. What makes it difficult is that you've got insane time constraints. You end up with about 12-15 seconds per question. One test is fill in the blank and the other is multiple guess scantron. You basically have to be writing your answer while reading and solving the next problem. The person who proctored my exam said that there's about a 60% failure rate. It probably says more about the people applying than the actual test, but I thought it was interesting.

I took the test when I was 16 or so. I don't remember those type of questions (not saying there weren't any), but I recall material that covered spatial relations (when this patterned cube is rotated which one of these four could it look like). The big factor was the limited time to answer a large set of question in each sitting.

I always thought the test involved probes or electrodes attached to your head to get a reading.

I did not go to one.

You don't need to take a Mensa test to join Mensa. If you have already done very well on a past GRE, LSAT or other accepted test then you can also qualify. Perhaps your old IQ exam results are already sufficient to join. The Mensa site has details on accepted exams and necessary scores. I got in with my old GRE exam results.

Is it just me or is the one about word similarity extremely arbitrary? There's any number of reasons you could come up with for any answer.

Yeah, I thought MORE is an adjective while the other three are names.

"1. What is the four-digit number in which the first digit is one-fifth the last, and the second and third digits are the last digit multiplied by 3? (Hint: The sum of all digits is 12.)"

I don't understand how they got the answer to this one; it makes no sense to me at all.

The only digit that can be 1/5 the last would be 1 if the last were 5 (because 2/10 doesn't work, 10 isn't a single digit and they need to be whole).

From there, digits 2 and 3 are the last (5) multiplied by 3. So: 1155. Add those up: 1 + 1 + 5 + 5 = 12.

I think. :)

I get it now. Was trying to multiply them individually, which doesn't work at all. Thanks. =D

No.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com