A question about IQ

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Why is it more legitimate in getting an accurate IQ score to guess at an answer rather than skipping that question ?

Guessing the answer is similar to answering it without it being a guess. You might not be sure if it's the right answer, but it's better than nothing at all. Getting it right would still raise your score and getting it wrong would still lower it.

Guessing takes logic and deduction. If you're a "good guesser" and hit on the right answer without actually "knowing" it it still shows aptitudes.

Its like the questions in the board game "Trivial Pursuits".

IF you get the question "who is the only US president sworn into office aboard an airplane?" there is NO way anyone but an historian would actually already "know" the answer as a "fact" they already have on mental file.

But most adults have a fighting chance of figuring out the answer by using deduction.

If the guy was sworn in aboard on airplane then you already know two things: 1) it had to be in the 20th/21st Centuries. Probably after WWII when air travel became common. And (2) since most POTUS are sworn in front of throngs at a podium on Pennsylvania Ave - a POTUS sworn in aboard a plane must have been sworn in under weird circumstances- like during a national emergency- like maybe he was the Veep and the sitting POTUS was assassinated.

Narrows it down quite a bit.

If you're over a certain age then you know that that HAS to be Lyndon Johnson because the JFK assassination happed in your lifetime. If you're younger then that age you would probably deduce that it was "the guy who came after JFK, but I don't recall who that was...." . So it would take deduction combined with guessing. But you still might guess LBJ.

I can see that working on a question like the swearing in of a president on a plane , but I'm not sure with those online non- verbal tests .

It 's said such tests are scored so as to boost your ego . Well if that's true something went seriously wrong in my case, as I average 74 for such tests when not skipping any questions .

I dunno.

And I generally suck on that type of test too: looking at a bunch of geometric figures dancing around the inside of square, and then trying to figure out what their next dance step is gonna be.

At school I was a complete dunce when it came to geometry.

Firemonkey,

These test results do not represent the true measure of the person you are. It is unnecessary to trouble yourself over these exercises.

I'd totally agree with anyone who says I'm insecure when it comes to this . I think I'd be far less insecure if I had a more evenly balanced cognitive profile .

i am the type of aspie whose logical deduction/induction skills are not at the level of others in this forum such as Fnord's, Natural's, et al. oh well, IQ isn't everything [not quite, anyways].

My induction skills are far from brilliant .

i hafta strain to discern the difference between deduction and induction. it is a wonder i ever passed my symbolic logic course in college.

Sometimes I guessed on tests, quizzes, & things like SATs by randomly selecting an answer or selecting the same letter answer every time like selecting C for every question I don't know thinking I'll hit on the right answer some of the time. How would doing something like that relate to accuracy of an IQ test