Is there any evidence that his IQ score was that high? I searched around a little bit, admittedly not much, but actually curious if we're ultimately just taking his word for it.
I don’t think there are any psychometrically approved tests for IQs that high, so any estimates for Chris’s IQ are just that. He calls himself 190-210. It’s a serious challenge to even create such a test, since you basically have to be as smart or smarter than the person being measured in order to have meaningful questions. Most IQ tests break down somewhere in the 3-4 standard deviation range (roughly 145-160).
Basically, Langan took some mail in IQ test challenge (created by Ronald K. Hoeflin) and missed only one question. He actually took it twice and the first time didn’t attempt to answer some of the questions, but his second attempt he attacked them all. The test creator, Hoeflin has a high IQ himself and part of the reason he made the test was because standard IQ tests were inadequate at challenging very smart people (since they all basically max them out). Chris’s second attempt is the frequently touted ~200. He also took it before the answers had been published. A couple other famous big brains (Marylin Vos Savant, Rick Rosner) took the test and scored similarly. Fwiw, Rosner (who is a creepy weirdo) considers Langan smarter than himself.
But he did take a psychometrically valid WAIS-III iq test administered by ABC’s 20/20 show, and he hit the ceiling of 160, so we can comfortably say he is north of 160.
Is there any evidence that his IQ score was that high? I searched around a little bit, admittedly not much, but actually curious if we're ultimately just taking his word for it.
I don’t think there are any psychometrically approved tests for IQs that high, so any estimates for Chris’s IQ are just that. He calls himself 190-210. It’s a serious challenge to even create such a test, since you basically have to be as smart or smarter than the person being measured in order to have meaningful questions. Most IQ tests break down somewhere in the 3-4 standard deviation range (roughly 145-160).
Basically, Langan took some mail in IQ test challenge (created by Ronald K. Hoeflin) and missed only one question. He actually took it twice and the first time didn’t attempt to answer some of the questions, but his second attempt he attacked them all. The test creator, Hoeflin has a high IQ himself and part of the reason he made the test was because standard IQ tests were inadequate at challenging very smart people (since they all basically max them out). Chris’s second attempt is the frequently touted ~200. He also took it before the answers had been published. A couple other famous big brains (Marylin Vos Savant, Rick Rosner) took the test and scored similarly. Fwiw, Rosner (who is a creepy weirdo) considers Langan smarter than himself.
But he did take a psychometrically valid WAIS-III iq test administered by ABC’s 20/20 show, and he hit the ceiling of 160, so we can comfortably say he is north of 160.