Mega Society

Mega Society

Logo of the Mega Society
Formation 1982
Type High IQ society
Official languages English
Administrator Jeff Ward
Website www.megasociety.org

Founded in 1982 by 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 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 required for admission.[3]

The public profile of the Mega Society increased with the publication of the Mega Test in 1985 by 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).

Contents

Notable members

Notable people who have taken the Mega Test, meeting the Mega Society entrance requirements, include author and columnist Marilyn vos Savant, mathematician Solomon W. Golomb, Christopher Langan, Keith Raniere, and the former governor of New Hampshire and former White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.[5] Similar reports about the actress Uma Thurman are an urban myth.[6]

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 IQ test is 40–160,[7] which is four standard deviations of 15 about the mean of 100, so that a score of 160 corresponds to a scarcity of only 1 in 30,000, which falls short of the Mega Society's 1 in a million requirement.[8]

Criteria for acceptance

The Mega Society accepts members on the basis of untimed, unsupervised IQ tests that have been normalized using standard statistical methods.[9] There is controversy about whether these tests have been properly validated.[10] The Mega Society accepts for admission tests that are not compromised by publication of their answers.[11]

To qualify for membership in the Mega Society via the Mega Test, aspirants must earn a score corresponding to an IQ of 171 or more (SD = 15) on a test accepted for admission by the society. People of average intelligence, by contrast, have IQs that cluster around a score of 100.

Mega Society's publications

The society's journal, called Noesis since July 1987, has been published since January 1982, when it was called the Circle. Currently the journal is published on an irregular basis.[12]

See also

References

  1. ^ Lemley, Brad (March 17, 1985). "The Mind of Genius". The Washington Post Magazine. pp. 14, 23. 
    vos Savant, Marilyn Mach (1985). Omni I.Q. Quiz Contest. McGraw-Hill. pp. 31–36. ISBN 0-07-039377-X. 
    Aviv, Rachel (August 2, 2006). "The Intelligencer". Village Voice. http://www.villagevoice.com/arts/0631,aviv,74027,12.html. Retrieved 2006-09-23. 
    Fella, Answer (March 1, 2006). "World's Smartest Fella". Esquire. http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2006/060425_mfe_March_06_Answer_Fella.html. Retrieved 2006-10-29. 
    Cox, Jack (June 21, 2005). "Smarter than 99.9% of the rest of us". The Denver Post. http://www.denverpost.com/archives. Retrieved 2006-10-29. 
    Derfner, Larry (August 8, 2003). "It smarts!". The Jerusalem Post. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/jpost/access/384039071.html?dids=384039071:384039071&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Aug+8%2C+2003&author=Larry+Derfner&pub=Jerusalem+Post&edition=&startpage=05&desc=It+smarts!. Retrieved 2006-10-29. 
  2. ^ Mega Society (August 2005). "Constitution of the Mega Society". http://www.megasociety.org/constitution.html. Retrieved 2006-07-25. 
  3. ^ Guinness Superlatives Ltd., ed (1983-90). "Highest I.Q.". The Guinness Book of World Records. pp. 18. ISBN 0-85112-433-X. 
  4. ^ Morris, Scot (April 1985). "World's Most Difficult IQ Test.". Omni magazine. pp. 128–132. 
    Graham, Ellen (April 9, 1992). "For Minds of Mega, the Mensa Test, is a Real No-Brainer". The Wall Street Journal subs. req.. p. A1. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/wsj/access/4284706.html?dids=4284706&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS&date=Apr+9%2C+1992&author=Graham%2C+Ellen&type=1995_1984&desc=For+Minds+of+Mega%2C+the+Mensa+Test%2C+is+a+Real+No-Brainer. Retrieved 2006-07-26 also archived at [1]. 
    Berliner, Uri (December 28, 1992). "Mega smart is very, VERY smart, indeed". The San Diego Union-Tribune subs. req.. p. C1. 
    Simonton, Dean Keith (1994). Greatness: Who makes History and Why. Guilford Press. pp. 225. ISBN 0-89862-201-8. 
    Lawrence A Pervin, Oliver P John (editors), ed (1999). Handbook of Personality. Guilford Press. pp. 632. ISBN 1-57230-695-5. 
    Paku (2001) (in German). Jump Out! Der Springende Punkt der Genialität. Books on Demand. pp. 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. pp. 243. ISBN 0-7432-5060-5. 
  5. ^ Chotzinoff, Robin (November 20–26, 1985). "It This the Smartest Man in America?". Westword. 
    Thompson, D (July 5, 1986). "Marilyn's Most Vital Statistic". Courier-Mail (Australia). 
    Seipp, Catherine (November 1987). "Brains – They’re the smartest people in L.A.". Los Angeles (magazine). pp. 210–216. 
    Anderson, Jack; Dale Van Atta (November 28, 1988). "Is 176 I.Q. Enough for White House?". Washington Post. 
    Baumgold, Julie (February 6, 1989). "In the Kingdom of the Brain". New York Magazine. 
    Morris, Scot; Ronald K. Hoeflin (April 1990). "Mind Games: the hardest IQ test you'll ever love suffering through". Omni magazine. pp. 90 ff. 
    Lichfield, John (June 30, 1991). "Profile: Fat Man on a Jet Plane: John Sununu". The Independent (London). pp. 23. 
    Derfner, Larry (August 8, 2003). "It smarts!". The Jerusalem Post. p. 5. 
    Sager, Mike (November 1999). "The Smartest Man in America". Esquire (magazine). pp. 143ff. http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/Esquire/1999/11/01/171647?ba=a&bi=1&bp=7. Retrieved 2009-09-23. 
    "Introduction to the Hoeflin Tests". http://cubfiction.com/index_sub_iq_test.htm. Retrieved 2006-07-29. 
  6. ^ According to this 2001 article, Thurman has never taken an IQ test.
  7. ^ Roid, Gale H. (2006). "Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (SB5), Fifth Edition". The Riverside Publishing Company. http://www.riverpub.com/products/sb5/scoring.html. Retrieved 2006-07-25. 
  8. ^ "z score Calculator". http://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/experiments/analysis/zCalc.html. Retrieved 2006-07-25. 
  9. ^ Hoeflin, Ronald K.. "Mega Test Norms". http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/meganorm.html. Retrieved 2006-07-25.  Hoeflin's norming of the Mega and Titan tests extrapolating from reported scores on supervised, timed tests.
  10. ^ Membership Committee (1999). 1998/99 Membership Committee Report. The Prometheus Society. http://www.prometheussociety.org/mcreport/memb_comm_rept.html#Some%20Available%20Psychometric%20Instruments. Retrieved 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". http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/megadata/gradynorm.html. Retrieved 2006-09-26.  Grady Towers used 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). ed. Test Critiques (Volume VIII ed.). PRO-ED. pp. 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."
  11. ^ Mega Society (August 15, 2005). "Tests Accepted for Admission to the Mega Society". http://www.megasociety.org/tests.html. Retrieved 2006-07-25. 
  12. ^ "The Mega Society". The Mega Society. http://megasociety.org/. Retrieved 16 May 2011. 

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Related
Densa (parody)