Test the Nation a test of our intelligence

By GREG DIXON

So how bright are you, really? Yes, you can tell the time, tie your shoelaces and, if pressed, name the capital of Peru.

You might even have a certificate printed on cheap cardboard that reminds you that, at some point, you were able to remember enough to pass a few exams.

But does any of this add up to being, well, smart? And, more importantly, does it make you smarter than the next guy?

Well this year's flashiest television stunt, Test The Nation: The New Zealand IQ Test 2003 (TV One, 7.30 tonight), should provide you with the answer to this pressing question without you having to leave the privacy and comfort of your home.

Hosted by Simon Dallow (an ex-lawyer) and Lana Coc-Kroft (an ex-beauty queen), the three hour - yes, three hour - programme is based on a format developed in Holland then exported to the world. Our version will be broadcast live from TVNZ's Avalon studio in Wellington, with seven different groups - blonds, builders, teachers, students, twins, sports stars and celebrities - taking the test in the studio.

Of course the cunning, audience-pulling part - the Aussie version was their most watched telly programme of last year - is that we, the people, get to do the test too, either using pen and paper, mobile phone texting or by sitting it online at http://testthenation.nzoom.com.

But what exactly is the programme testing, and what does your result actually mean in terms of your intelligence?

Test The Nation consultant Professor John Hattie of the University of Auckland says many people confuse high IQ with academic smarts.

The two are not mutually exclusive of course, but you can certainly have the first without having the second.

"IQ tests try to assess your general problem-solving ability, your reasoning and your ability to adapt to the world around you," he says.

"The cliche I use is [IQ] is what you use when you don't know what to do, when you go into a new situation and there are a set of problems and tasks that require thinking and reasoning.

"The IQ is not everything, but it is about problem solving and adaptation to environment."

And what you do for a living doesn't necessarily mean you have a high or low IQ. What is interesting, Hattie says, is the range of IQ within occupations. Farmers, for example, have one of the largest spreads of intelligence.

"With doctors, it is a much narrower spread, usually up higher in the IQ - at least I hope so when I go to mine."

Hattie, who says his "fundamental interest in life is assessment and measurement", put together Test The Nation's 72 questions with Massey University's Richard Fletcher, using material provided from Australia.

To make sure the questions suit New Zealanders, and that they are scientifically robust, the pair adapted them and tested them on a sample group of some 270 people, who also sat two other, standard IQ tests to make sure the telly questions produce a reliable, typical result.

Your IQ will be tested in six broad areas: language, arithmetic, learning, reasoning, memory and spatial sense.

The first part of the show will ask and answer the questions and the second will analyse the results - are blonds and celebrities dumb and dumber, do twins have the same IQ, is the North Island a smarter gene pool than the South?

The average IQ is 100, and 50 per cent of people score between 90 and 110. Around 16 per cent of people have an IQ over 115 (the same percentage are under 85), while somewhere between 2 and 3 per cent of us have an IQ over 130 or below 70.

But, says Hattie, your IQ isn't always the same. Age and other factors mean it can vary over time and between tests. His, for example, has varied between 100 and 140.

As for tonight, a warm-up - use the sample questions we have provided below - might help you get the brain firing. So, too, might that old student, pre-exam trick: eating fish. But, says Hattie, we shouldn't take Test The Nation too seriously.

"Fundamentally, it is television, so it's not the pure assessment conditions we would usually want."

That's the trouble, of course. There is no way of knowing, when mates and family brag tomorrow that their score makes them roughly equivalent to Einstein in brain size, that they didn't cheat.

But if you don't do well, you could do worse than recalling what 20th-century writer and professor of history C. Northcote Parkinson said about IQ tests.

"The defect in the intelligence test is that high marks are gained by those who subsequently prove to be practically illiterate. So much time has been spent in studying the art of being tested that the candidate has rarely had time for anything else," he said.

Like watching television.


The New Zealand IQ test - how well will you fare?





Here are some of the types of questions you might come across in Test The Nation: The New Zealand IQ Test 2003.



Section 1: Language



1. Which word has the same meaning as autonomous?



a. Released

b. Self-confident

c. Independent

d. Authoritarian



Proverbs



2. Which proverb has the same meaning as "Birds of a feather flock together"



a. One has to run with the pack

b. Every Jack will find his Jill

c. Friends will be friends

d. Opposites attract



Section 2: Memory



Give yourself 30 seconds to memorise the following numbers. Then cover them up as you test your memory by answering the question.



3. Memorise the following data thoroughly:



Anna-Louise Black



Tel. 00223-397104



Harry Smith



Tel. 078-561524



Jenny Martin



Tel. 0201-430233



Herb Jones



Tel. 089-263495



What is Harry Smith's phone number ?



a. 089-263495

b. 078-561524

c. 02223-72356

d. 078-430233



Section 3: Logic



4. Continue the series logically:



27 30 29 32 31 34 ?



a) 37

b) 36

c) 33

d) 32



Section 4: Numbers



5. Add up the following series of numbers:



2 3 4 5 6 7 8



a. 37

b. 35

c. 33

d. 31



Text Question:



6. A car drives 8km in 4 minutes.



What is the distance it travels in 40 minutes?



a. 110 km

b. 90 km

c. 80 km

d. 70 km