2005-05-23, 07:11 PM
Quote:I like the concept of the IQ test, but it should be over questions that this forum is targeted at. A mix of hardware, software, programming, administration, etc. questions with them spread across all os's. It should be something that a non-technical person can answer / solve with research but something difficult enough that no one person in our group could answer all the questions without having to do their own research.
You might consider a forum, closed except for posting, where people can suggest questions and provide the answers and let the group build the test.
100 questions / problems should be reasonable.
Questions can be graded on completeness of answer, accuracy, and imagination.
The results and winning answers should be posted for all to review and would add to the FAQ / Howto section of the Forum when the contest is over.
Well, what you describe is not an IQ test, but a skills assessment test. IQ tests do not test (or should not test) for specific knowledge on any given subject, but rather the ability to reason out the answer with the information given within the question. That's why you see less of the "black:white::dark:??" type questions (which presuppose a certain vocabulary and familiarity with the English language, in addition to cognitive understanding of the analogy) and more of the questions with little icons consisting of various geometric shapes, each of which changes from one iteration to the next in a perceptible pattern, thus allowing the test-taker to determine the various progressions and then determine what the missing picture in the sequence should be.
So, that said, let's call that particular selection a "question/answer test" rather than an IQ test. As an aside, genuine IQ tests (such as the Otis-Lennon or Stanford-Binet) are given, proctored, and graded by certified psychologists -- not a random sampling of online personalities. ;)
That being said, while I see the merits of an 'essay' type of test... writing a worthwhile tutorial, for example (and it would serve to bolster the reserve of information here), such tests are rather unfairly biased towards people who can write good material covering technical subjects that the "average" reader can comprehend. This, of course, precludes everybody who either cannot compose a "decent essay" as well as those whose writing is so technical as to seem totally incomprehensible to the "average" reader.
All that said... I think the fairest possible option, to all participants here, would be a simple "random drawing", conducted and/or supervised by a disinterested and unbiased third party.
- briand
