Digging through the hundreds of TAVIS test submissions, I have slowly found 10 TAVIS takers with self-reported SAT scores (old scale; pre-April 1995). I’m sure there are many more, but this is a start:
Old SATs were converted to IQ using this article. 45-year-olds were assumed to have taken the old SAT in the mid 1990s, 55-year olds in the mid 1980s etc.
The correlation between TAVIS and old SAT scores was a disappointing 0.04. The person with the highest SAT score (1560) got the lowest TAVIS score (7). But given the small sample size, this needn’t alarm us, and indeed if we eliminate that one anomalous person, the correlation jumps to 0.60.
If we put TAVIS scores and IQ equivalents in order from highest to lowest and place them side by side, we get the following preliminary IQ equivalents:
TAVIS 14 = IQ 161
TAVIS 13 = IQ 154
TAVIS 12 = IQ 143
TAVIS 11 = IQ 139
TAVIS 10 = IQ 131
TAVIS 9 = IQ 117
TAVIS 8 = ?
TAVIS 7 = IQ 109
Pumpkin Person 
TAVIS: 14
SAT: INAPPLICABLE (for reasons noted elsewhere on PP’s site)
MEGA: 45/48
AGE: 67Y 10M
45 on the Mega test? That’s incredibly impressive. That kind of invalidates my whole test if you weren’t one of its highest scorers haha
Have you considered using r/cognitivetesting to establish an independent norm? EqusB even has some formal IQ data that, with the permission of the takers, be used with your test.
interesting
Yes I let PP know about EqusB. It would be cool to have two accomplished amateur psychometricians collaborate. Maybe I’ll reach out to him to see if he’s interested. Thanks to Kiwi for making a thread for it in that subreddit. I’m going to attempt his test soon (have been super busy and sleep-deprived).
I made a thread there about the TAVIS the other day. I’ll probably try do an independent norm of KAMIKAZE there whenever Pumpkin has finished his. They have some great resources there (the classic Terman Concept Mastery test was posted there not long ago!) as well as lots of willing test takers who have taken plenty of other tests like the WAIS, CAIT, PPVT, 1980s SAT to compare scores with.
45 on the MEGA? Jesus. How long did you spend on your attempt?
I won’t venture a guess as to the number of thought-hours; my work was intermittent over a few months (Sustaining interest was a chore). In quite a few instances, I found two, sometimes three approaches to a solution, just to be sure :0) That may seem impressive, but then you learn that Chris Langan solved something like 42 problems in 8 hours. Geez!
The ‘scratching the surface’ person has autism.
You might be meta-autistic: autistic about autism.
I should start by apologizing; I think I mislead some with the “Scratching the surface” handle, although that wasn’t my intention. “Autistic” or a variation thereof? No, most who know me would probably use words like “amiable” and “amicable” (if they knew what they meant :0) T’, I’m probably not a good “application” of your test. Time constraints bring on a bit of anxiety. My result was pretty good, but frankly I only focused on the low-hanging fruit. I didn’t feel like I could fully engage.
BTW, the “low-hanging fruit” wasn’t meant condescendingly; it’s just that we elders have had lots of time to accumulate information.
That is “I misled…”
These are all old people’s results on the test – they might not be representative of the overall sample since some questions may be biased against them. I find it hard to believe that my score of 16 would put me cleanly above the 160 verbal iq mark! Is there any correlation between scores and age? Also, if the SAT is a better measure of g than scores on this test (and it probably is), and we assume that the primary factor that causes PP readers to score higher than the general population on both tests is higher g, then we can expect there to be a smaller difference between the general population and PP readers on this test than on the SAT, i.e., if the average PP reader has an SAT iq-equivalent of 130, then we can the average TAVIS iq-equivalent may be more like 125 or 120, and any norms for the TAVIS that assume the average score of PP readers on the TAVIS is equivalent to 130 would be inflated. Plus, PP readers could lean towards being math heavy people on average, so their high SAT scores would regress more precipitously to the mean on verbal tests than one would expect.
Interesting points!
Massive gap between TAVIS 9 and 10 where there is a gap of 14 IQ points from 117 to 131. Hm. Seems like I went from 125 IQ to 117. I think it seems pretty legit actually but yeah the scores that I get on these online IQ tests (Mensa Hungary, Norway, your TAVIS test, that other test you made, Wonderlicetc) all are in the 116-130 range. Don’t repeat tests and don’t take multiple one oafter the other and this is from well over 3 years of me reading your blog and being interested in IQ, psychometry etc. I suppose it seems legit enough 👍
do you have autism? not to put you down but autism reduces social functioning by 30 IQ points! so if youre at 117-130 it would mean your irl functioning is at 86-100 maybe a little higher depending on the severity of your autism!
even high-functioning autists suffer from the 30-point markdown!
Thanks for all the work, PP. Probably a solid test for the ranges of -2SD to +2SD and like +4SD, but intermediate scores seem to be all over the place. Something other than g is probably a big factor in that range (like sharing a conceptual background with me or some form of verbal “cleverness”). Probably too few difficult but not arcane items. Still a potential .6 correlation with the old SAT is respectable and higher than I expected.
bruhhhhh why’d you remove my comment I didn’t even say anything offensive
I also want to complain about my comments being removed.
Removed or not published ?
Pill you and I are very different because you have a low disgust threshold meaning you get disgusted easily and i have a very high disgust threshold meaning i feel disgust less often!
the lack of disgust i may have has played an important part in making me very resilient. but that is a story for another day!
Loaded you talk some severe amount of bullshit most of the time. Do you even know what youre saying. I think youre on drugs when you post, right?
LOADED is it true the koran doesn’t have the death penalty explicitly?
Puppy what statistics textbook did you read to get your knowledge?
I advise you comprehending behavioral statistics from Russell T Hullburt wich is very non math learner friendly
does anyone else here smoke cigarettes? i smoke about half a pack a day!
Are my replies getting through? I’m not sure if you got my mathematical reasoning test or not.
Just found it. Some of your comments were being sent to spam for some reason. I will publish within a few days if I see no problems.
TAVIS 11 = IQ 139
Those 10 readers have an approximate (I compute it in my head) average IQ of 134 (by SAT equivalence).
Average Age of 51 yo and being overwhelmingly English speakers comes from selecting pre-1995 SAT I guess as you surely have much more persons with post – 1995 SAT scores among the t’avais test takers, haven’t you ?
Jada Pinkett Smith completely changed the movie industry through complaining. Now every movie has to have 20% black actors. Amazing. The latinos will be waiting a long long time for a quota as good as that.
Does anybody not find it weird that India is the world’s number location for IT staff for corporations? India is dirt poor. How is it training so many IT people? How is it possible for a country with an average IQ of 90 to be so prodigious at tech?
The answer is because south asians are actually smarter than the tests make out. The tests are wrong or they’re not taking into account severe malnutrition there.
india has 1.4b people. it doesn’t need an avg IQ of 90.
plus, coding doesn’t actually take much in the way of IQ. most of what it takes is just an interest in computer crap, which is boring to most people.
india has 1.4b people. it doesn’t need an avg IQ > 90.
plus, coding doesn’t actually take much in the way of IQ. most of what it takes is just an interest in computer crap, which is boring to most people.
india has a space program. india manufactures automobiles. india manufactures pharmaceuticals. there are plenty of very smart people in india. but the rich world steals them.
It would be interesting comparing south asians with east asians and seeing if there are any differences in intellect. Right off the top of my head south asians seem a lot better at social intelligence tasks and dealing with politics.
Yeah I think Mugabe is right about East asians language being not fit for purpose and verbal intelligence being a lagging quality. But the indians haven’t written anything much either.
they haven’t? what’re you talking about?
Pill your intellect is nil. You dont even understand what anybody says around here youre severely deprived of having a grasp on anything let alone stuff on the blog.
All you do is give opinions about things. Its called selection bias…you only talk about what you know you have no curiosity!
PP, do you think that the TAVIS is better correlated to IQ than the PATMA?
In a preliminary analysis I did the PATMA correlated around 0.9 with the self-reported WAIS which was shocking for such a short test, but then it might have just got lucky because the sample size was small. In general though, arithmetic reasoning is perhaps the most g loaded type of test there is and I think I chose the most g loaded type of arithmetic problems.
So if I had to guess I’d say the PATMA is more g loaded. Not because I made it, but because we know from psychometric research that arithmetic is now more g loaded than verbal comparison subtests. But the TAVIS has much more ceiling so is likely a much better test at the high end.
Thanks PP! I have one more question, though. Older forms of the WAIS used to include arithmetic on the verbal section. Why was that?
Because the medium through which the test is administered is verbal. You’re asked a “If I had two books and gave you one, how many would I have left?”.
You’re not asked 2-1 = ?