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I just saw an ad displayed on a website that said Barack Obama’s IQ is 125. Yesterday I saw a similar ad displayed on another website that said Britney Spears’ IQ is 125. Does this make Barack Obama stupid or does it make Britney Spears smart? Of course I know the ads are not accurate. It’s just an attempt by the company that put them out to make people click out of curiosity. I didn’t bother to click because I don’t need to know my IQ. What difference does IQ make? When you meet people is that one of the things you wonder about them? What’s their IQ?

Can you imagine you’ve just met someone and one of the questions they ask as they try to get to know you is “What’s your IQ?” I can’t see that happening unless someone came off as being so unbelievably smart you ask them that question just as a way of saying, “Damn you’re smart,” to which they’d probably just laugh dismissively unless they are so full of it and conceited about their smartness that they condescendingly reply with a number so big all you can do is paste on a cool-aid smile while quietly thinking “what a bleeping idiot”.

A few years ago I took an IQ test and apparently had an IQ of 120, which placed me in the “superior” group. Of course superior is still inferior to those with an IQ of 130 and above. They are classified as “Very Superior”. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I took an IQ test today and came away with a score that classified me as Average. My brain was sharper back when I took the test. I haven’t been using it much over the years and certainly not for the kind of mental activity that helps a person do well on IQ tests.

If you’ve ever wondered how they classify IQ, I found this chart on iq-test.learninginfo.org

Descriptive Classifications of Intelligence Quotients
IQ	Description	% of Population
130+	Very superior	2.2%
120-129	Superior	6.7%
110-119	High average	16.1%
90-109	Average	50%
80-89	Low average	16.1%
70-79	Borderline	6.7%
Below 70	Extremely low	2.2%