Test reveals: highest IQs use Firefox on MacPPC, lowest use Firefox on Win98

Alexander Uslontsev says:

IQLeague guys have some kind of online IQ test on their site and they group IQ scores of all visitors by different geographical locations (city, country, etc.)
Here is an interesting part - they also group IQ Scores by referrer website and by client browser and operating system.

(No, I don't take this seriously.) Link

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

Misfitina

Wow Ivy Leaguers engaged in “studies” that reinforce their classist superiority? Who’da thunkit?

My research indicates that the bigger a douchebag you are, the more tendency you have to go to an Institution with an obscene tuition cost.
QueQueg72

Apparently “I r teh stupid” because I don’t know the symbol for Tungsten, and I didn’t know who the first female prime minister of the UK.
Anonymous

I clicked the A option as fast as I could and got an “IQ” of 105.8.

Basically, that test is bunk if picking the same choice for every question quickly makes you smarter than “average”
nex

I had no idea that it doesn’t even attempt to be anything remotely like an accurate test. I take it all back.
arkizzle

#25 Anonymous

Thank god! That question was driving me nuts, I knew it was flawed.
Elvis Gump

What if I use Firefox on all my boxes?

I run Ubuntu, XP, Mac and even an old Win98 machine I keep to fire-up in emergencies when I hang up the XP/Ubuntu machine and need net access.
nemrel

No, in fact using firefox on Windows 98SE is the only smart way to browse the internet on Windows 98. IE 7 and 8 don’t work on Windows 98, so if you want IE you have to use IE 6 which has so many security holes in it. At least Firefox’s latest builds work on 98. I have my parents using Windows 98SE (XP seriously is too had of a jump for them at 60 years-old oto figure out (I’m not being an agist)) and I always yell at them for not using Firefox instead of IE 6.
Roach

Knowing trivia has nothing to do with IQ. Bah. Apparently I got all those right, though.
Antinous

I know that the web versions bump up your scores considerably

I get exactly the opposite. They always strip 30 to 40 points off mine.
bigpaul

104? That’s not even above average!

Not to be all ‘tooting my own horn’, but last time I did an IQ test, I came in around 145. I’m at my work computer now, so I’m typing this on Vista w/Firefox. But if I was at home I’d be writing this on latest version of Mandriva.

I wonder what you’d see if you got into the 140-160 IQ range? Not may macs is my guess…
Rick.

The test told me I’m the 2nd smartest person in Malibu, CA. Since I’m not in Malibu, it ain’t too bright itself.
Norm & Al

Me bash stupid internets. Me bash stupid browser. Me bash meself. Internets for pron, stupid. Internets for music, stupid. Me bash RIAA.

Grunt

Grunt

I eat glue!
Clumpy

What a small group to make such a sweeping statement. This test is so culturally biased and arbitrary that it’s unreliable at best.
etorsten

And the smartest people of the world live in Moldava (at the moment of this comment).

Blogpost in German here: http://maciscool.blogspot.com/2008/06/safari-nutzer-intelligenter.html
Robbo

Woo-hoo! I’m a genius!

But only if you take these things seriously – in which case you’d be a moron – so ….

… nevermind.
Tenn

So I guess -85 IQ do not use internets?
anthropomorphictoast

I’d be in the smart demographic if I could afford a Mac. :D
Antinous

If your IQ is 85, you use the computer in the Warden’s office until the company comes to pick up Ripley.
Falcon_Seven

@2 No, they obviously use Firefox on Mac Intel.
Just so you know, I’m not biased for/against Macs, I hate all computers equally.
Alex

Of course, this doesn’t take into account the browser/OS demographics of smart people who consider IQ tests bogus.
Anonymous

What a pointless waste of non-renewable energy.

As a non-US citizen, too many US-focussed general knowledge questions: What a relief that I happen to know that CC’s third ship was the Santa Maria!

Plus, I don’t live in California, but on the opposite side of the globe. Where does this site get its location data from? The webmaster’s backside?

As someone who has been properly tested at 142 (and despite my reservations on the usefulness/accuracy of standardised “intelligence” tests), I feel let down by my paltry 112 on this test.

I must be dumberer than I had thunk!
Angstrom

It’s good to see I’m the 72nd smartest person on the planet and also among the most credulous if I chose to believe that.

I have to wonder about the people who scored so awfully on the test though

http://www.iqleague.com/group.aspx?page=5&nameUrl=boingboing-net

ouch !
SamSam

By the way, all those who are saying their IQs are in the 140s and 150s: How did you take the test?

I’ve taken several online tests, and always came out at least 140, and up to 160. However, I’m no genius so I know that the web versions bump up your scores considerably, on purpose or not…
roryrhorerton

Woo!! Smartest user of Firefox on UNIX! Second smartest person in Missouri!

Let’s see how long that holds up once people start filtering in from BB.
CJ

#31: That’s nothing. It thinks I’m off in the ocean to the east of Madagascar. Gosh, I hope I’m at least on a raft…
nex

I suspect the scores around 100 +/- 5 are not statistically significant, but ff on Win98, whoa … I wonder how many people were in that group.
hellhead

I think it’s funny when people are all I took a test once and I had a 198 IQ. This is crap!

Sorry, I just think it’s funny. I took a test once and it said I had a 153 IQ. Seriously, I’ma genius.

I’ma go diddle myself.
mmbb

Upon completion of the test, you are taken to a page called “congradulations.aspx”

That’s smrt!
mmbb

Rich Gibson is dumber than I am by 10 minutes. Yay, me!
mdhatter

Gee, I use Firefox on a PPC Mac.

It may be BS, but it made me smile.
Rich Gibson

“Congradulations, Rich Gibson!
Your IQ is 136.75
You are #2 Smartest Human in the World”

If they had spelled ‘Congratulations’ correctly, and
if the test were not weighted so heavily in favor of useless general knowledge I would take it more seriously.

OTOH, use what you got, right? Anyone want to hire the ‘#2 Smartest Human in the World?”
David Bruce Murray

Talk about serious flaws. My results list me as being in the state of Washington. I’m actually in a state on the Atlantic coast.
kyrbrahaus

i’ll just say i’m dyslexic as usual…….
that always makes me feel better about scores anyway……..
klobouk

The other day I watched a girl my friend was talking to at a coffeeshop try to access the results of an online “IQ test” she’d taken.
She had to click through page after page of ads, declining surveys and special offers.
“This is lame. How did you find this test?”
“I clicked on an ad,” her friend said.
“So you already failed the test?”
ZippySpincycle

Damn…here I thought that I used Firefox on W98 because I can’t afford a new computer. Turns out I’m just slow! Thank goodness the school where I teach is upgrading its classroom computers in June; not only will I score a surplus XP box, but I’ll also boost my IQ by 15 points in one fell swoop!

I suppose this would also be a good place to mention Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man…I just hope that it doesn’t look like sour grapes.
soubriquet

Soubriquet is accessing the web on a computer he built himself out of acorns and string. Being unsatisfied with the temporal limitations of proprietory operating systems, he wrote his own.

Now he sits, weeping, having realised that without an Apple, running firefox, he is doomed to stupidity forever.

However, if he counts his pennies carefully, he could join the elite as a genius this afternoon.

Soubriquet also wonders if the persons who created that test might have some pecuniary interest in Macs.
mgabrysSF

Wierd. Safari’s latest versions on OSX are far superior to Firefox particularly with some of my nuttier CSS templates. FireFox on Windows has always been a smidge ahead and Safari’s speed in launching (not to mention the cover-flow option in Leopard) make it far more droolworthy and a smarter implementation (mmm coverflowing history).
haaz

Usually I don’t like studies, unless they say something that I like. And let me tell you, I like this one a LOT!

(Where’s OSX/86 on here? me not figger out it!)
shawnhcorey

I’m not surprised by the results. Since Apple has abandoned the MacPPC, working with it requires more intelligence and less smarts. Those that are smart, left it long ago. This is not a question of “Who is smarter?” It’s a question of “Who enjoys banging their head against a brick wall?”

BTW, I do run Firefox on a MacPPC.
Frank_in_Virginia

Are you sure these are IQ scores? I think these are the frequencies of the radio stations each group listens to…

And yes, I am smart enough to realize US FM frequencies are .0, .1, .3, .5, .7, and .9. After all, I use the DOS Houdini browser on the GEM 1.1 Desktop on my NEXTCube. That puts me over the top.
jewbacca

Cool chart, test absurd to the point of offensiveness. IQ. Are you fucking serious? “Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of:”
Mim

I don’t believe in IQ tests personally (and it thought I was in Florida rather than Washington),
but even if my issues with IQ tests and their little programming glitches were ignored…

What kind of IQ test has knowledge-based questions rather than logic based ones? How does being able to translate Latin or know when the Olympics were first held correlate with your ability to reason, see patterns, and such? Of course, I’m probably just bitter because their test scored me about 30 points lower than every other internet IQ test I’ve ever compulsively taken. :)
Antiglobalism

This is bullshit.

I’d say the people who use Opera on Windows NT are pretty clever.
dnl2ba

There’s a correlation between IQ (as measured by decent IQ tests, not Mickey Mouse Internet IQ tests) and income.

It’s not a stretch to imagine there’s probably also a correlation between income and budget for computer hardware.

By transitivity, there should be a correlation between IQ and computer hardware cost / up-to-date-ness. So it shouldn’t be surprising that fancy new hardware appears at the top of the chart and old, inexpensive hardware appears at the bottom.
trimeta

Yea, a real IQ test shouldn’t have any “general knowledge” questions. Then again, a real IQ test usually has anagrams, and I suck hard at those, so I can’t complain.
Sam

#18:
There’s a correlation between IQ (as measured by decent IQ tests, not Mickey Mouse Internet IQ tests) and income.

Thats why all poor people are dumb and all rich people are smart, right?
Joyuna

Thought I was in California, but I’m in Ohio. Wonder how it gets the location data.

Also, ditto re: the general knowledge questions and multitude of spelling errors.
billydeville

I guess I’m just slow, but I’m confused on what the difference is between Mozilla on WinXP and Firefox on WinXP. I thought I was using Mozilla Firefox on Win XP. How are the two different?
Jake0748

Wow, I’m the 644th smartest person in the world, and only the 223rd smartest person from BoingBoing! I KNEW I was in good company here!

(BTW – Why does BoingBoing’s spell checker flag the word BoingBoing)?
spencerluck

The really smart folks have no time for stupid tests and realize that it’s not how big your IQ is (once it’s ~above average), it’s what you do with it.

Remember, Donald Trump is a billionaire and he’s really not that smart.
iamdeadfish

Bah. I have an IQ somewhere around 120-130 and I mostly use IE7.

I’m a web developer. I’m well aware of the rendering differences between the browsers and generally have a very pleasent surfing experience in IE7.

In fact the only time I seem to run into difficulties is while viewing websites made for others in the web industry. A lot of developers seem to be acquiring a “that’s what they get” attitude towards IE users.

Why they have such an animosity for what is STILL the vast majority of internet users is beyond me!
clothingoptional

What’s interesting is that the smartest person in the FF/MacPPC dataset is a person who goes by the name of booger.

http://www.iqleague.com/user/kcdU1FWRY0CWcZqmAAcUIQ
Hyouko

@21 – Mozilla is actually both the name of the broader organization (hence the branding of Firefox) and of their original suite of net applications, which took after and updated the Netscape Navigator design. Some people still use the all-in-one Mozilla suite, as it’s still updated to this day; it integrates email, web-browsing, chat, and other functionality into one package.

Or, more accurately, Firefox, Thunderbird, Chatzilla, and several other Mozilla projects are based on de-integrated (disintegrated?) Mozilla Suite components.
dnl2ba

#38:
I didn’t say it was a perfect 1:1 correlation, but yes, there is a correlation. Does the data upset you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ#Income
Anonymous

Read the fine print: “Our IQ tests are for entertainment purposes only.”

Which is a good thing, because one of the questions (on the 5 teenagers’ heights) doesn’t even have a solution.

Spoiler:

The information they give is that B>C>A>D and E>D, and then they ask who is third tallest, which could be A, C, or E.
Tenn

@40

That’s because the IQ test is inherently flawed and measures people based NOT on their capacity to learn, but their capacity to learn within the frame of having experienced those sorts of questions before.

Poor folk get less education thanks to the brilliant systems in place, also have less time to focus on education because they must expend more effort to get along day to day, and have little encouragement from anyone to succeed. The poor are caught in a cycle that is exceptionally difficult to escape from without some inborn talent and some luck; my grandfather did it.

Rich folk get the easy ride.