William James Sidis and Ratio IQ

William James Sidis was a child prodigy. Indeed, he was one of the greatest child prodigies ever recorded. Yet, what would happen to him today? Would the magnitude of his gifts be recognized were he tested by modern psychometricians?

The short answer is a definite no. You see estimates of William James Sidis ratio IQ place it at least 250 to 300. This might even be conservative in some ways, if you look closely at his life - but nevertheless, this is a significant IQ figure. But what would happen if he was tested by modern IQ tests? They would grossly underestimate him - and here is why. Modern tests tend to have a ceiling of a deviation IQ of 160. Ceiling effects will actually depress most gifted people's scores. Everyone has a different pattern of peaks in their subtests - and these peaks will be cut off at varying points by the test limit. Some subtests may show weaknesses - and these will lower the overall score. In fact, if William James Sidis took a modern IQ test he may not have even got a score of 160 - depending on his pattern of strengths and weaknesses, he may have had a depressed score of 150 or 140 or any other number below 160.

So, a psychologist testing Sidis today would most probably completely miss the magnitude of his gifts, in terms of a test result - because the test is incapable of measuring his gifts, as they truly are - but it is only capable of underestimating them, to an unknown degree. Of course, the same applies to any extremely gifted child today. The IQ tests are only capable of underestimating and not of measuring such children.

I do not know why, as a profession, the designers of such tests have decided to introduce this limit to the tests. Perhaps it is an economic decision: it simply wasn't thought worth having a test with a long tail with all the work that would require for only a relatively few test subjects to benefit from. Perhaps that is what it comes down to. Or perhaps scoring high in such a test is thought enough - perhaps the actual truth of the situation is not regarded as important.

Anyway, this situation with Sidis and all even remotely like him - the extremely gifted - points us to an unavoidable conclusion: ratio IQs remain valuable and should be reinstated as one of the tools of estimation of a child's intelligence.

(If you would like to read about Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and four months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three and Tiarnan, fourteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)