[Robert_Paulson2]

I would imagine most freepers are on the upper side of the bell curve. The addiction to constant and up to date information is actually an indicator of people who are not getting enough to process in their normal day to day activities.

The stupidest freeper would very likely be around 110.
Some of them, I am confident, are in the upper 170 range.

Birds of a feather so to speak.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I like that explanation.

[birbear]

I would imagine most freepers are on the upper side of the bell curve. The addiction to constant and up to date information is actually an indicator of people who are not getting enough to process in their normal day to day activities. The stupidest freeper would very likely be around 110. Some of them, I am confident, are in the upper 170 range.

I understand what you're trying to say, but I'm afraid your logic is flawed. IQ measures your "innate" intelligence, not general (or specific) knoweldge. Free Republic draws from the same population that everything else is drawn from, so by and large, you're going to have people in lower range of the bell curve, you'll have some on the upper range of the curve, but the bulk of your Free Republic population is still going to be in that 90-110 range.

If you were to give a test on current events, then I'd agree with you that the population of Free Republic would likely score higher than the population in general.

For any "generic" population to have an above average number of people with IQ's over 170 would be a statistical anomoly. (170 is pretty damn smart...I'd be surprised if Free Republic had 2 people with IQ's of 160 or higher.) As an example here are some famous people and their listed IQs.


IQ 160

Bill Gates (CEO, Microsoft)
Jill St. John (Actress)
Paul Allen (160+, Microsoft cofounder)
Stephen W. Hawking (160+) (Physicist)


IQ 170

Andrew J. Wiles (Mathematician; solved Fermat's Last Theorem)
Judith Polgar (Formula based; Female World Champion in Chess)


IQ 180

James Woods (Actor)
John H. Sununu (Chief of Staff for President Bush)
Benjamin Netanyahu (Israeli Prime Minister)
Marilyn Vos Savant (186) (Author)
Bobby Fischer (187) (Former World Champion in Chess)


IQ 190

Philip Emeagwali (Extrapolated; Nigerian Mathematician)


IQ 200
Kim Ung-Yong (S. Korea; Showed similar child capabilities as J.S. Mill)

[MonaMars]

"The stupidest freeper would very likely be around 110.
Some of them, I am confident, are in the upper 170 range"

Doubtful. Only 1% of the population measure above 137 and about one in a million measure above 170. Maybe we all just sound smart :)

[briant]

Well, it is easy to see why you would think that considering that every post like this brings out the multitudes with their IQ's of 130+ and SAT's of around 1590. LOL

[RightWhale]

It would be similar to upper stratum private colleges that screen freshmen for academic success potential. 125-130 would be the norm. The distribution curve would have its bulge relatively far to the left but that would still be to the right of the general population curve.