User:MichaelCPrice/mega
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[edit] Mega Society
Founded in 1982 by Dr. Ronald K. Hoeflin to facilitate psychometric research,[1] the Mega Society is a high IQ society open to people who have scored at the one-in-a-million level on a test of general intelligence credibly claimed to be able to discriminate at that level.[2] The Guinness Book of World Records stated that the most elite ultra High IQ Society is the Mega Society with percentiles of 99.9999 or 1 in a million.[3]
The public profile of the Mega Society increased with the publication of the Mega Test in 1985 by Dr. Hoeflin.[4] In that article, Omni reporter Scot Morris notes the hierarchy of I.Q. societies that places the Mega Society on top:
- Mensa, the most famous [IQ] group, is open to one person in 50... The Triple Nine Society has a 1-in-1,000 cutoff (the 99.9th percentile, hence the name). And the Prometheus Society shoots for 1 in 30,000. But the most restrictive group is the Mega Society, which is theoretically limited to one person in a million (the 99.9999th percentile).
Notable people who took the Mega Test, meeting the Mega Society entrance requirements, include author and columnist Marilyn vos Savant, mathematician Solomon W. Golomb, Chris Langan, and former governor of New Hampshire and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.[5]
Timed and supervised IQ tests usually do not accurately measure at the one in a million level. For example, the range of the Stanford-Binet is 40–160,[6] which is four standard deviations of 15 about the mean of 100, so that a score of 160 corresponds to a population rarity of 1 in 30,000.[7] The Mega Society accepts members on the basis of untimed, unsupervised IQ tests that have been normalized using standard statistical methods.[8] There is controversy over whether such tests measure the same thing as timed, supervised IQ tests.[9]
The Mega Society accepts for admission tests that are not compromised by publication of their answers.[10]
The society's journal, called Noesis since July 1987, has been published regularly since January 1982, when it was called the Circle.
[edit] References
- ^ Lemley, Brad. "The Mind of Genius", The Washington Post Magazine, March 17, 1985, pp. 14, 23.
Aviv, Rachel. "The Intelligencer", Village Voice, August 2, 2006.
Fella, Answer. "World's Smartest Fella", Esquire, March 1, 2006.
Cox, Jack. "Smarter than 99.9% of the rest of us", The Denver Post, June 21, 2005.
Derfner, Larry. "It smarts!", The Jerusalem Post, August 8, 2003. - ^ Mega Society (August 2005). Constitution of the Mega Society. Retrieved on 2006-07-25.
- ^ (1983-90) “Highest I.Q.”, Guinness Superlatives Ltd.: The Guinness Book of World Records, 18. ISBN 0-85112-433-X.
- ^ Morris, Scot. "World's Most Difficult IQ Test.", Omni magazine, April 1985, pp. 128-132.
Graham, Ellen. "For Minds of Mega, the Mensa Test, is a Real No-Brainer", The Wall Street Journal subs. req., April 9, 1992, p. A1. Retrieved on 2006-07-26.
Berliner, Uri. "Mega smart is very, VERY smart, indeed", The San Diego Union-Tribune subs. req., December 28, 1992, p. C1.
Simonton, Dean Keith (1994). Greatness: Who makes History and Why. Guilford Press, 225. ISBN 0-89862-201-8.
(1999) Lawrence A Pervin, Oliver P John (editors): Handbook of Personality. Guilford Press, 632. ISBN 1-57230-695-5.
Paku (2001). Jump Out! Der Springende Punkt der Genialität (in German). Books on Demand, 148. ISBN 3831112983.
Jacobs, A. J. (2004). The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Man in the World. Simon & Schuster, 243. ISBN 0-7432-5060-5. - ^ Chotzinoff, Robin. "It This the Smartest Man in America?", Westword, November 20-26, 1985.
Thompson, D. "Marilyn's Most Vital Statistic", Courier-Mail (Australia), July 5, 1986.
Seipp, Catherine. "Brains -- They’re the smartest people in L.A.", Los Angeles (magazine), November 1987, pp. 210–216.
Anderson, Jack, Dale Van Atta. "Is 176 I.Q. Enough for White House?", Washington Post, November 28, 1988.
Baumgold, Julie. "In the Kingdom of the Brain", New York Magazine, February 6, 1989.
Morris, Scot, Ronald K. Hoeflin. "Mind Games: the hardest IQ test you'll ever love suffering through", Omni magazine, April 1990, pp. 90 ff.
Lichfield, John. "Profile: Fat Man on a Jet Plane: John Sununu", The Independent (London), June 30, 1991, pp. 23.
Derfner, Larry. "It smarts!", The Jerusalem Post, August 8, 2003, p. 5.
Sager, Mike. "The Smartest Man in America", Esquire (magazine), November 1999, pp. 143ff. Retrieved on 2009-09-23.
Introduction to the Hoeflin Tests. Retrieved on 2006-07-29. Similar reports about the actress Uma Thurman are an urban myth. - ^ Roid, Gale H. (2006). Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (SB5), Fifth Edition. The Riverside Publishing Company. Retrieved on 2006-07-25.
- ^ z score Calculator. Retrieved on 2006-07-25.
- ^ Hoeflin, Ronald K.. Mega Test Norms. Retrieved on 2006-07-25. Dr. Hoeflin's norming of the Mega and Titan tests extrapolating from reported scores on supervised, timed tests.
Membership Committee (1999). "1998/99 Membership Committee Report". The Prometheus Society. Retrieved on 2006-07-26. A committee of ten people including four psychologists found that the Langdon Adult Intelligence Test, the Mega Test, and the Titan Test are able to discriminate at the 4.75 sigma (one in a million) level.
Towers, Grady. Norming of the Mega Test. Retrieved on 2006-09-26. Dr. Grady Towers uses the Rasch model of item response theory to norm the Mega and Titan tests. - ^ Roger D. Carlson, Ph.D. (1991). Daniel J. Keyser, Ph.D., Richard C. Sweetland, Ph.D. (General Editors): Test Critiques, Volume VIII, PRO-ED, 431-435. ISBN 0-89079-254-2. From the article: "Although the approach that Hoeflin takes is interesting, inventive, intellectually stimulating, and internally consistent, it violates many good psychometric principles by overinterpreting the weak data of a self-selected sample."
- ^ Mega Society (August 15, 2005). Tests Accepted for Admission to the Mega Society. Retrieved on 2006-07-25.
