My IQ Scores Make Me Feel Confused About My Life

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When I had my evaluation for ASD a little while ago, they gave me an IQ test. It was the only one I have ever taken and it was a surprise in a moment when I was already quite anxious. Anyway, I scored average in perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing speed, but "very superior" in verbal comprehension. This confuses me because I have always excelled in math. I have a very good number sense and have always picked up math things far more quickly than my classmates. I study a math field in college and do very well. I even work as a college-level math tutor. I do not doubt that I am verbally gifted, but whence come my innate math abilities if not from good perceptual reasoning and possibly working memory? I have tried to look into this, and it seems like people with my IQ profile do tend to be bad at math. Do any of you have a similar experience?

I try not to obsess over IQ. I know it's not everything. This is just something I have been thinking about (or maybe obsessing a little, but what can you do?).

My mental abilities vary enormously in time.
Maybe it's the case for you, too, and you took the test not in your best day.

The skills tested by IQ tests are not quite the same skills required to be good at math, so one won't necessarily reflect the other. Perceptual reasoning, for example, seems to be hardly used in math courses at all outside of geometry, certain aspects of calculus, and the like.

A person with average skills can become good at math by studying. Studying and other such things that strongly influence school performance are not necessarily tested on IQ tests.

I agree with starkid but also I have a lower than average verbal working memory, am slow at doing things but have a degree in Maths and a PhD in cognitive psychology, so you see IQ test results are not well related to your mathematical ability. One thing I did notice was the I was better at “A” level maths (pre-University 18 year olds) than “O” level (16 year olds). This I put down to the increase in the abstract nature of the subject. (My class mates went the other way). I had a very good long term memory and a clarity of thought which I think are more important for maths than what your IQ test measure.
Just enjoy the maths and forget about your IQ test.

Never let an IQ test deter you from something you know you're good at! They aren't meant for that, anyway.

You do you, no matter what your IQ test says.

You already stated that you're a math tutor and do well in it. Why are you worried about other people and their abilities?

Yeah, I'd agree that you shouldn't obsess over your IQ scores.

Intelligence cannot be measured by a bit of paper with nonsense squiggles on it.

Actual intelligence is a measure of what you can do as a combined unit aka mind and body working together to make, solve, fix or create something.

An IQ score really means nothing out in the real world.

Oh, and I didn't get any higher than an E grade at school along with a number of ungraded.

P.S. In half a dozen different online tests I scored zero yet I can visualise in my mind the insides of an engine and "see" it working.

A high IQ score just means your good at doing IQ test (or at least that particular type of test).

Thats one of my complaints. That folks talk about "being good at math" as if it were one skill, when in fact there must be a dozen very different aptitudes that fall under the rubric of "math".

I work for a company that counts inventory for store chains. In some stores you just eye ball the products on the shelf and key in "price/department/quantity" into your little hand held computer-thing.

Trouble is that often the price is something like "three for eight dollars".

We I see "three for eight dollars" I just key in "$2.67" for each piece with out missing a beat because I can do the math in my head that fast. But a certain coworker guy just cant do that without a calculator. Yet this coworker has a degree in engineering, presumably aced calculus in school - and I never got beyond basic algebra (and I have forgotten most of even THAT decades ago).