The Mensa Genius Quiz-a-day Book
by Abbie F. Salny, Mensa
List Price:
Our Price: $5.92
You Save: $7.03 (54%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Abbie F. Salny, MensaEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1989-01-22
ISBN: 0201135493
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Book Reviews of The Mensa Genius Quiz-a-day Book
Book Review: Fun book, and then some comments on high IQ's
Summary: 5 Stars
I've belonged to a couple of high-IQ societies, including Mensa, in the past, and once talked to Dr. Salny over the phone about IQ equivalents for the MAT, or Miller Analogies test, which was the one I qualified on for Mensa. Dr. Salny, who was at the University of New Jersey at Rutgers the time, was very helpful in that regard and I wanted to mention that.
This is a great collection of puzzles put together by Dr. Salny to help you keep your mental muscles tuned up, whether you're a Mensa member or not. In fact, one of the things we've learned about the brain over the last 50 years is that in many ways the brain is truly like a muscle--use it or lose it.
I was a grad student in the brain sciences and also formally studied the IQ and psychometrics area for a while, and I had some comments about the problems with testing high IQs that I thought I'd post here, especially on the problem of testing very high IQs above 150 or 160, particularly for adults.
Various writers, researchers, and members of other high IQ societies have attempted to solve this problem by constructing their own tests and standardizing them. They also claim to be able to standardize these high-end IQ tests using various special procedures and statistics. However, the problem of standardization for these sorts of tests has really never been resolved very well. Hence, many claims of IQ's that high are really just that--claims. That isn't to say that people who score high on things like the Mega test or the Langdon LAIT and so on might not have IQ's of 180, just the reliability and accuracy of such scores isn't that great.
The other problem is that the human brain is quite complex and we really don't know how to adequately test its capabilities except in the crudest sense. Most IQ tests examine a half dozen factors at most (although the well-known DAT, the Differential Aptitude Test, looked at 9 factors, but then it was technically an aptitude test and not an IQ test) and there are actually dozens or perhaps hundreds of factors involved. The eminent cognitive psychologist and psychometrician, J.P Guilford's Structure of Intellect model postulated 120 different types of intelligence (most if not all of which I find more convincing than the more standard factor models).
Another problem is the factor subtests still correlate highly with each other; for example, the typical verbal subtest correlates at the .75 level with the math subtest, although the spatial ability tests seem purer. A .75 "r" or correlation means that half the variance in one test is accounted for by the variance of the other (since the variance is the correlation coefficient squared). Hence, the factor subtests aren't very "pure," as they say, and correlate too highly with verbal skills which is too narrow a subset of skills and also is likely the most socio-economically influenced.
That having been said, ironically, the most egregious criticism of IQ tests is that you can show that the most complex IQ test known is only about 10-15% more accurate in predicting, say, college grades, than a 40 item, 20-30 minute vocabulary test.
And finally, for the coup de grace, the most famous IQ study of all time, the Lewis Terman study at Stanford in the last century, tested tens of thousands of kids and then followed 1400 of them with IQ's of 140 and over throughout their lives. A couple of dozen were as high as 180. Although a distinguished group in later life in that many of their achievements were impressive, there were no Nobel Laureates in the group. In fact, they passed over two of them--Luis Alvarez and William Shockley--who didn't test high enough to be included, both of whom later won the Nobel Prize in physics. Oops.
The second coup de grace is that research has shown that further IQ points above 120 is not as important as good social intelligence in ensuring success in life. And an IQ of 120 is enough to do anything--with few exceptions-- such as being a physicist or mathematician. After all, James Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA helix and Nobel Laureate, only had an IQ of 118. And in another classic study by Getzels and Jackson, children who were high on tests of creativity with average IQs of 120 had grades as high as those less creative with average IQs of 140.
Another thing you can see right away from visiting a few of these high-IQ society web pages and reading the discussions there, is that many of these people (most of them are men) are obsessed with the IQ business and about which test is the best, who has the highest IQ, and who gets to belong to the most exclusive societies. This produced an odd competitive race as various people attempted to form ever more rarified and exclusive and cliquish groups. There have been literally dozens of these, but most have never gone anywhere and died out after a few years, or never even got off the ground.
They also get into various inter-society and internecine debates, as I said, about who gets to belong to which high-IQ society on the basis of which test, each one claiming their test is the best, when, as I said, there really isn't any way to validate them that accurately. They've even gone, in one case, to the trouble of suing each other about the issue of the legitimacy of the testings, since few of these people are licensed psychologists. It really is a tempest in a teapot and they should go get a life. The whole thing would be funny were it not for the fact that they take the whole thing so seriously.
Of course, to some extent this is the pot calling the kettle black since I have belonged to a couple of these societies too in the past, but I also see the silliness of it all, not to mention, as I said, that it seems that for the vast majority of these people this is the only real distinction they seem to have.
Summary of The Mensa Genius Quiz-a-day Book
Test your wits with this all-new collection of mindbusters from Mensa, the high-IQ society. Master puzzler Abbie Salny provides a fun brainteaser, logic twister, math mystery, or word game for every day of the year. Whether you?re mathematically, verbally, or visually inclined, you?re sure to find twelve months? worth of exciting challenges inside.Included with each puzzle?s solution is the percentage of Mensa members who answered it correctly, so you can score yourself against the people with the high IQs. With a puzzle for every date and an extra for leap years, you can match wits with Mensa 366 days out of every year!Here are a couple of sample questions, and the percentage of Mensans who answered correctly: February 24: Can you make three words from the letters LGNEA? (100%) May 14: You have fifty coins that total $1.00. If you lose one coin, what is the chance that it was a quarter? (15%)
Puzzles Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Puzzles Books
Complete Puzzler's Lists Hbby Joan Burman
Cassell; Published: 1995-08-12; Hardcover; Book
Henry V, War Criminal?: and Other Shakespeare Puzzles (Oxford World's Classics)by John Sutherland, Cedric Watts
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2000-06-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.99
Price in other shops:
The Landmark Quiz Bookby Derek O'Brien, Gautam Padmanabhan, Navin Jayakumar
Penguin Books; Published: 2006-08-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.82
Sudoku Under the Sun: More Than 380 Puzzles from the Penguin Samuraiby David J. Bodycombe
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2006-07-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Collins Pocket Scrabble DictionaryCollins; Published: 2008-05-06; Hardcover; Book
Times Killer Su Doku (Bk. 3)by Sudoku Syndication
Harpercollins Reference Hbacks; Published: 2006-10-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.66
Anagrams (Collins Dictionary of)by *
Collins; Published: 2005-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $29.03
The Alien IQ Testby Clifford A. Pickover
Basic Books; Published: 1997-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
The Mensa Genius Quiz-a-day Bookby Abbie F. Salny, Mensa
Da Capo Press; Published: 1989-01-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.70
Price in other shops:
Crossword Puzzle Dictionaryby Andrew Swanfeldt
Avon; Published: 1993-02-18; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.99
Similar Books and other products
Mensa 365 Brain Puzzlers 2012 Calendarby Fraser Simpson, Mark Danna
2012 Calendars; Workman Publishing Company; Published: 2011-07-15; Calendar; Book
Best price: $25.95
Maximize Your IQby Philip J. Carter, Kenneth A. Russell
Sterling; Published: 2007-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.39
Price in other shops:
The Moscow Puzzles: 359 Mathematical Recreations (Dover Recreational Math)by Boris A. Kordemsky
Dover Publications; Published: 1992-04-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.19
Price in other shops:
Entertaining Mathematical Puzzlesby Martin Gardner
Dover Publications; Published: 1986-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.99
Price in other shops:
The Complete Book of Intelligence Tests: 500 Exercises to Improve, Upgrade and Enhance Your Mind Strength (The IQ Workout Series)by Philip Carter
Capstone; Published: 2005-09-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.16
Price in other shops:
My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles (Dover Recreational Math)by Martin Gardner
Dover Publications; Published: 1994-11-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.47
Price in other shops:
The Book of IQ Tests: 25 Self-Scoring Quizzes to Sharpen Your Mindby Philip J. Carter, Kenneth A. Russell
Sterling; Published: 2008-03-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.23
Price in other shops:
The Big Book of Mind-Bending Puzzles (Mensa)by Terry Stickels
Sterling; Published: 2006-10-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.05
Price in other shops:
Match Wits With Mensa: The Complete Quiz Book (Mensa Genius Quiz)by Marvin Grosswirth, Abbie F. Salny, Alan Stillson
Da Capo Press; Published: 1999-11-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.98
Price in other shops:
Challenge Your Brain Math & Logic Puzzles (Official Mensa Puzzle Book)by Dave Tuller, Michael Rios
Sterling; Published: 2005-10-01; Spiral-bound; Book
Best price: $6.70
Price in other shops: