richard g. rosner has the highest reported iq in history.
richard g. rosner has the highest reported iq in history.
who has the highest reported iq in history?
richard g. rosner
hoeflin attempted, along with kevin langdon, to develop an iq test that could measure adult iqs greater than three standard deviations from the population median, or iq 145 (sd 15). hoeflin's mega test was an untimed and unsupervised iq test consisting of 48 questions, half verbal and half mathematical. it was published in omni magazine in april 1985 and the results were used to norm the test. hoeflin standardized the test six times, using equipercentile equating with sat and other scores, and some extrapolation at the highest level. the highest scorers on the mega test had their names printed in the "guinness book of world records" and were also profiled (along with hoeflin) by "esquire" under the title "the smartest man in america". the guinness book of world records has since retired the category of "highest iq" after concluding that iq tests are not consistent enough to designate a single world record holder. one such scorer, marilyn vos savant, was also profiled in new york magazine. this article also discusses hoeflin and the mega society (the author of the "esquire" article, mike sager, later used it as part of a book.) the mega test has been criticized by professional reviewers of psychological tests. in 1990, hoeflin created the titan test, also published in omni.
ronald k. hoeflin
as long ago as 1937, lewis terman pointed out that error of estimation in iq scoring increases as iq score increases, so that there is less and less certainty about assigning a test-taker to one band of scores or another as one looks at higher bands. current iq tests also have large error bands for high iq scores. as an underlying reality, such distinctions as those between "exceptionally gifted" and "profoundly gifted" have never been well established. all longitudinal studies of iq have shown that test-takers can bounce up and down in score, and thus switch up and down in rank order as compared to one another, over the course of childhood. some test-givers claim that iq classification categories such as "profoundly gifted" are meaningful, but those are based on the obsolete stanford–binet third revision (form l-m) test. the highest reported standard score for most iq tests is iq 160, approximately the 99.997th percentile (leaving aside the issue of the considerable error in measurement at that level of iq on any iq test). iq scores above this level are dubious as there are insufficient normative cases upon which to base a statistically justified rank-ordering. moreover, there has never been any validation of the stanford–binet l-m on adult populations, and there is no trace of such terminology in the writings of lewis terman. although two current tests attempt to provide "extended norms" that allow for classification of different levels of giftedness, those norms are not based on well validated data.
iq classification