Posted by Gremlin on 26 January 2000 at 06:15:54:

In Reply to: Some thoughts on having a negative IQ posted by Jurassosaurus on 26 January 2000 at 04:17:11:

A negative IQ is mathmatically impossible.

The simple formula for an IQ is the mental age divided by the chronological age. If a fifteen-year-old's mental age is thirty, then thirty divided by fifteen is two. The product is multiplied by 100, equaling an IQ of 200.

The lowest IQ you could have--technically--would be single digits, maybe. If a subject were 100 years old, and braindead, it could be argued that it had a mental age of zero. Since 0/100 is technically impossible too, we'll call it a mental age of one. One divided by 100 is .01, times 100 is an IQ of one.

The only way to produce a negative IQ would be to have a positive chronological age, and a negative mental age--to know, literally, less than nothing. It could probably be argued that knowing nothing, and thinking you knew more than nothing, would be equal to knowing nothing and being wrong about everything else; that could almost be a sort of philosophical negative mental age, and resultant negative IQ. But since there's no way of measuring a mean negative mental age, it's a lot simpler to call a negative mental age, and a negative IQ, flatly impossible.

--Gremlin

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