My Take On: IQ Tests Part 1

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I'm sure you know of IQ tests, those tests that show you how smart you are. But what if I tell you they really don't? You see, IQ tests don't really measure "intelligence" as we think of it but rather, how smart you are "compared" to most people in your age group. Back in the early, IQ test-less, days when the French government wanted to make a better educational system for children, they commissioned a man named Alfred Binet to find a way so they could find out which kid was falling behind and needed help. He, along with a student of his named Theodore Simon, made a clever idea. With previous breakthroughs in the concepts of measurable intelligence and psychological statistics, they made a test that measured how well pupils knew things and ranked them based on their scores. They found which scores had the most pupils who were lagging behind and marked them as the range where more help should be given. And thus the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale was born. As a student, I was taught that they named it intelligence quotient because back in the old days, you divide the score you get from the test with the your age. The specifics contain a complex statistical concept that can't fit in a single post, but the gist is that psychologists and statisticians made changes to the original formula to make a more accurate one. Now, IQ tests really took off. They're really useful when you're trying to screen children for learning disorders, educational help, and even in recruiting people for work. But IQ tests are not always good. I'll explain why in another post. Thanks for reading! If you've got feedback or want to say hi, please don't hesitate to let me know. I'm all ears for constructive criticism.