To think IQ testing is a load of old bollocks?

[muffinflop]

(Not really a thread about a thread but something elsewhere made me think of this)

How do 'professionals' administering IQ tests know the person doing the test is in the top 1% of the country? Surely the only way they'd know that was if they'd tested everyone in the country?

There are all sorts of reasons to be suspicious of IQ tests but I think it would be wrong to dismiss them altogether. They can't measure "intelligence" because "intelligence" is an abstract concept, a bit like beauty, but they can measure particular kinds of intellectual skill, mostly related to logic or the ability to detect patterns. Schools use CAT tests (which are essentially IQ tests) in year 7 because they're a good predictor of GCSE results. And, as iggly2 says, IQ can be used as a measure of learning difficulties.

My DP did a test showing he was in the top one percent of the population for spatial reasoning. It's a long time since I did a spatial reasoning test but I'm pretty poor at them. And it shows up in everyday life - he's much better at navigating than I am, for example. It's not a completely meaningless test.