Lileks: Are you smarter than a North Dakotan?
Between the last great storm and the first fine thaw, I found myself standing outside, marveling. It was thundering, snowing and hailing. Just a bit of each, a sample platter. I thought how stupid do I have to be to put up with this, year after year?
But I can't be stupid — I'm a Minnesotan!
Really. The other day I was looking at a chart of IQ broken down by state. Minnesota, I noted, had a high average IQ: 107.3.
The problem was, this is not an IQ; it is an FM radio station. One of those end-of-the-dial stations where the announcer — not a DJ, thankyouverymuch — plays Kleinenhoff's "Concerto for Triangle and Timpani" and Sunday night is "Eine Kleine Niche Music," a show full of unpopular pieces and dissonant jazz.
IQ is a bogus metric, if you ask me. There are all sorts of intelligences not measured by the standard tests. I mean, North Dakota might be lower, but the intelligence required to farm or extract oil is not the sort of thing that can be measured on tests. (A NoDakian's average IQ is higher than ours, by the way.)
Curious to see how these things were measured, I called up an online IQ test. One of the questions:
"If Jessica, Elizabeth and Stephanie in a room all shake hands with each other, how many handshakes occurred?" First of all, I'm keen to know why they said "in a room." If Jessica Elizabeth and Stephanie are in a cornfield, does the number of handshakes differ?
Plus, there are other issues. Why are they shaking hands? Were they cursory shakes or triple-pumps? Is there a sanitizer dispenser on the wall? And does Jessica's handshake with Elizabeth also count as Elizabeth's handshake with Jessica?
These are high-IQ reactions, and while I think I know the answers, I'm convinced it's a trap, so let's move along.
"If the population of an alien race doubles every two minutes, how long will it take for the population to go from 1,000 to 32,000?"
To me, it would seem that the relevant question is: Where are the aliens coming from? And will this preposterous reproduction rate force them to seek other habitat planets? Do we start to make preparations now, or wait until they land and then send Jessica, Elizabeth or Stephanie to shake their disgusting tentacles in greeting, which they misinterpret as a threat and eradicate our cities?
There were some "spatial intelligence" questions that required me to predict the fourth step in a sequence of boxes, and some number puzzles that looked far too easy. "1 - 3 - 5 - 7 What is the next number?"
Hmm, let me put on my mortar board, sit on a stool and stick out my tongue whilst I puzzle this one out. Can I get back to you tomorrow?
At the end of the test, I was certain I'd scored 100. Pretty sure LIZARB, when unscrambled, is the name of a country, not a city. Unless there's a Zilbra in Alabama. The website promised to email my results if I sent them $2.14 to cover costs and buy a seven-day "personalized training program" that would boost my IQ, in case I wanted to go to North Dakota and not have the locals call me stupidus gopherus.
I expected a pop-up warning that said they would knock 30 points off my IQ if I entered my credit card number and gave them any money.
