She was worried that it could affect the way she treated me and my success (or lack of success) in school if she had some expectations based on a single number.
First, Intelligence (as probably this article says) is an ever evolving concept and its multidimensional. Accurately measuring it seems probably impossible, the least really hard. The way we attempt to measure it, is via standardized tests - but those don't really prove much because instead of really measuring what they should measure, they usually end up measuring "test-taking" abilities.
Just think about Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci for that matter. Einsten did terrible in school and would have probably done terrible on an IQ tests. Leonardo da Vinci (arguably the greatest genius of all history) was rather slow in problem solving, but increadibly effective. He would have probably done terrible on a timed standardized test.
In no way was Einstein deficient -- he would at least be described as advanced, just maybe not as a prodigy.
This doesn't mean he was stupid. Go and read "The Einstein Syndrome" [1], it's a fascinating read.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Einstein-Syndrome-Bright-Children/...
Einstein started in the second grade of elementary school at age 6 1/2, was one of the top students in his class, and was admitted to a competitive gymnasium at 9 1/2. He studied not just "math", but Latin, Greek, art, music (he was a very talented violinist who could have played with any number of orchestras), literature, history, philosophy, and theology. He did very well in all of these, was not "fast tracked" to anywhere, and tried, on his own, to enter university more than 1 year early. This failed, largely because French was not a strong subject for him. He studied it in Munich, where it was a lot less important than in multi-lingual Switzerland. After half a year of schooling in Switzerland, he passed the university entrance exams with flying colors, both in sciences and humanities. He was not an incredible child prodigy, but he was doing fine, and nobody ever thought he was mentally retarded. Enough.
If you think that the Stripe CTF challenge has the potential to evaluate and define you as an individual, then perhaps you should either think twice about it, or work really hard. For most entrants, and I guess probably you too, it's a harmless and fun challenge with very few implications for your core identity.
The kind of people who go around talking / bragging about their IQs are likely to overlap with that set of people that score well on formal cognitive tests, IQ or otherwise. (See, the entire membership of "Mensa", for example.)
(And if a person who was very into tests and intelligence also scored 95, you'd probably not hear a peep out of them - it would misalign with their self image.)
Finally, the typical person scoring 80-85 in IQ is not likely to be the kind of person who enjoys taking such tests, or considers their IQ or their intellectual ability as an important aspect of their personal identity.
Well, no - because I could use tools to extend that. And it's not about insecurity, as I'm quite comfortable with myself and my brain. I just don't see it as being a valuable reference. However, I know if I had a number I'd start comparison-shopping and I might feel either elated (if high) or depressed (if low). Is anyone here, if you have had an IQ test, honestly prepared to say that you didn't or wouldn't be curious about what that meant and that it wouldn't affect how you viewed yourself?
I just don't need to know. I guess that for me, as long as there isn't a 'goal' or a 'fence', the sky's the limit.
It's the same thing with the SAT (before they added the writing sections). It usually paid to just guess & move on if you faced a difficult question, because the time spent thinking about it would cost you so many other answers that you were better off just eating the penalty for getting it wrong. People who could actually complete the (old) SATs were at a strong advantage, as one of the most common failure modes was simply not being able to answer all the questions.
IQ is a comparison between you and everyone else, on a topic which is close to the core of our being, especially for the kind of people on this forum.
I don't really believe in IQ as anything more than a statistical artefact in the first place. But of course, different people are going to perform differently on different tasks.
I've love to know more about the research backing this up. I googled, of course, but I'm sure there must be a good discussion of this that I've missed.
I also wonder if I would have a higher IQ (or would that be an IQ that appears higher?) were I not to think those thoughts (and would I be stupid for thinking them in that case?)
This is a wild guess: You're probably ~young, with high aspirations for yourself, you don't think people should ever be prejudged. You have great promise and show all the signs of competence, but you haven't actually achieved anything particularly noteworthy, yet.
I base this hypothesis on the theory that once you achieve certain things, and you have confidence in yourself, you won't give two shits about what some IQ test says. In fact, if it scores low, if you are genuinely competent, you would think "wow, now that's an interesting development, let's investigate" rather then feeling that you've been somehow slighted.