Test Your IQ!

· The most famous way of testing intelligence is the IQ test.

· Short for ‘Intelligence Quotient’, it’s a 'psychometric' test that measures mental ability.

· It was developed in 1905 by Alfred Binet, a psychologist working in Paris.

· The IQ test is basically a variety of exercises designed to assess verbal, mathematical, spatial, memory and reasoning abilities. The IQ test is set so that the average man or woman in the street will score between 90-110.

· Anything scoring above that begins to enter into the realms of exceptional abilities and even genius.

· Mensa is an international organisation for people with a high IQ. Membership is open to anyone who can demonstrate an IQ in the top two per cent of the population.

· There are around 100,000 members worldwide and 28,000 members in the UK, including 2,200 Junior members under the age of 16.

· The Mensa mental workout is a good place to find out just how you might cope with a real IQ test http://www.mensa.org/workout.html

· However, to find out your actual IQ score you would need to sit an approved supervised IQ test. It takes around two hours.

· Mensa offers supervised IQ testing throughout the British Isles.