Earlier I blogged about the freakishly high scores commenter “Jesse Watters” claims to have obtained on the WAIS-IV IQ test.
As I explained in that post, the WAIS-IV is an IQ test that actually consists of 15 mini IQ tests (subtests), however to differentiate the subtest scores from overall IQ scores, the subtest scores are expressed as scaled scores. Unlike the overall IQ scores, which have a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 in the U.S. population, the scaled scores have a mean of 10 and an SD of 3, and as commenter Animekitty noted, can be converted to IQ equivalents by multiplying by 5 and then adding 50.
So for example, a scaled score of 16 is equal to an IQ of 130 (top 2%). Many people think that if your average scaled score on WAIS-IV subtests is 16, that your full-scale IQ is 130, but in fact your full-scale IQ would be 143 (the top 0.2%). That’s because far fewer than 2% of the U.S. population can perform in the top 2% in at least half of all brain functions measured by the WAIS-IV, which is typically required to average in the top 2%.
Roughly speaking, full-scale IQ = 6.97057(average scaled score) + 31.533486.
Typically only 10 core subtests are used to calculate the full-scale IQ but there are 5 supplementary subtests that are more or less interchangeable with the core subtests, and in Jesse’s case, it is useful to look at them all..
Now because Jesse claims to have obtained scaled scores of 19 on most of the WAIS-IV subtests, his average scaled score (18.73) is misleading because the maximum scaled score the WAIS-IV provides is 19, thus spuriously imposing a ceiling on his average scaled score.
However Jesse also provided raw scores on each subtest, so I looked at these to find evidence that he could have scored beyond 19 on some subtests if the WAIS-IV had allowed it. I found evidence that if the WAIS-IV allowed it, he could have obtained a scaled score of at least 20 on the subtests known as Similarities, Information, Comprehension, Symbol Search, Cancelation, Digit Span, Letter-Number Sequencing, and perhaps several more subtests had they included harder items.
Especially impressive was the 30/30 raw score he claims to have obtained on Letter-Number Sequencing, because only 27/30 is required to get a scaled score of 19 in Jesse’s age group (18-19). Now without revealing too much about this subtest, it’s one of those uncommon psychometric tasks that increases in difficulty in a very quantifiable objective linear way, at least once you get past the easier items , and as a result, there was a very steep but linear increase in scaled scores as a function of raw scores, once you make it to the hardest third of the test.
From this linear relationship, I calculate that had the WAIS-IV allowed for scaled scores beyond 19, Jesse’s raw score of 30/30 would have equated to a scaled score of 23.5! And even that might be an underestimate because he correctly answered every single item, allegedly.
Now Jesse claims that his lowest WAIS-IV scaled score (Vocabulary) was 17. If we conservatively assume that if the WAIS-IV had unlimited ceiling, his highest scaled score would be 23.5 (Letter-Number Sequencing), then we might very crudely guess that on a ceiling-free WAIS-IV, his average score would be half-way between both extremes: 20.25
Invoking the formula above:
Full-scale IQ = 6.97057(average scaled score) + 31.533486.
Full-scale IQ = 6.97057(20.25) + 31.533486.
Full-scale IQ = 173
This is somewhat higher than the full-scale IQ of 168 I had estimated for Jesse in my earlier post, assuming his claims are true, but that was before he claimed a perfect raw performance on Letter-Number Sequencing. If these claims are true, then 173 (U.S. norms) is a better estimate, and a conservative estimate, though James Flynn would probably argue it should be reduced to 170 because if I’m not mistaken, WAIS-IV norms are nearly a decade old.
There are only about 519 Americans with IQs of 170+ but because a lot of them are children or older adults, and because IQ is normed for age, they wouldn’t need to perform as well as Jesse allegedly did to obtain their 170+ IQs. The fact that Jesse allegedly obtained this IQ while being in the peak age group for raw brain power, suggests that in an absolute sense, he might be one of the 100 smartest people in America!
If he’s telling the truth 🙂
Pumpkin Person 
Holy shit! Jesse is the KING of the blogosphere, not only the lion. I know you’ve offered some biographical details, Jesse, but if you don;t mind, can you please tell me
1. Where in the U.S. you reside. (SE, NE, NW, etc… no need to be very specific.)
2. The ethnicity to which you belong.
3. What your parents do for a living.
4. What your favorite beer is.
Thank you.
1. SW
2. Caucasian
3. Both work in STEM occupations
4. I don’t/won’t drink for fear of becoming addicted/dependent, plus I’m under 21
Thanks!
What are some of your political beliefs?
He need to be study by Nasa and red army too.
Impressive!!!!!
These are some truly astonishing figures. Jesse, could you provide a screenshot to substantiate these scores?
I only have a paper copy of my score report, and I don’t own a scanner, but I’ll try to scan it the next time I go to the library (this weekend).
What ? One of the top 100 smartest American can’t even afford a scanner ?
Man, you should consider selling some of your pretended IQ points to make a decent living…
I’m just kidding.
I’m in college ;>)
You don’t have access to a digital camera or a phone with a camera? Not realizing a camera could do this does not help the believability of your claims.
What was your SAT score? If you took it multiple times what were your various scores and the various ages for each of those scores?
Also have you found any courses in college at least somewhat challenging? If so what kind of courses are those?
I’m doubtful that my extended scaled score is quite as high as you propose. The above curve seems to have negative concavity, which would make a straight line approximation inappropriate. Based solely on inspection, I would say my true extended scaled score is around 21.
Interesting. I’m inclined to think it’s linear because the test itself increases in difficulty in a very linear way (at least once you get past the easier items, which also increase in a linear way, but less steeply, because they want to make sure everyone gets the hang of it)
Anyways here’s the scaled scores for each raw score:
1 = 6 or lower
2 = 7
3 = 8-9
4 = 10-11
5 = 12-13
6 = 14-15
7 = 16
8 = 17-18
9 = 19
10 = 20-21
11 = 22
12 = 23
14 = 24
16 = 25
18 = 26
19 = 27 or higher
It looks fairly linear above and below 10= 20-21, though the slope is much steeper above because the jumps in difficulty between items become greater, however it’s possible that a more sophisticated mathematical model is needed.
Scaled scores are forced to fit a Gaussian curve, but many have argued that mental ability itself is only Gaussian within a few standard deviations of the mean, so one could argue that the linear relationship breaks down at the extremes. This is well documented at the lower extreme where you have chromosomal abnormalities creating a surplus of low scores. At the high end, the evidence is more ambiguous.
Do you have an account on Facebook? If yes, may i have it in order to add you? How often do you use Facebook?
Are you asking me or “Jesse Watters”? I don’t use Facebook.
I’m asking Jesse Watters….
You should estimate Eliezer Yudkowsky’s IQ. He got a 1410 on the old SAT at age 11. Verbal: 670 and Math: 740.
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll add him to the waiting list.
Then you should estimate Sho_Yano IQ who got a 1500 SAT at age 8 in 1999. Vinodhini Vasudevan at age 12 got a perfect 1600 SAT in 1999 too.
Sho Yano got a 1500 at age 8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sho_Yano
PP, Can you do an IQ estimate of sho yano?
One concern that I have regarding Jesse is his previous interest in psychometry. I would be interested in Mr. Person’s take on whether or not his general knowledge of IQ testing, including cursory familiarity with the type of tests used and their general objectives would greatly inflate his scores.
It’s possible, depending on the specificity of any research he might have done.
Especially in regards to knowledge of previous test items.
Is it possible an 18 scaled score on the Arithmetic subtest? For some subtests, you cannot get certain scaled scores.
On the WAIS-IV you can get 19 on all subtests at all ages iirc
Also, is [redacted by pp, nov 9, 2018] common on [redacted by pp, nov 9, 2018]?
No it’s not. Please don’t make comments that could potentially compromise these tests by giving people ideas about how to score higher.
I’m new to your blog, and I’ve been enjoying it so far. It’s very interesting.
I have a theoretical question about the Wisc and WAIS. How possible is it to get completely different scores on both of these tests as a 16 year old. I myself happen to be 16, so I’m curious.
Anything’s possible, but the full-scale IQ of both tests correlate almost perfectly when taken contemporaneously, as one might expect since they’re essentially two versions of the same test. A large gap between scores suggests something went wrong during the administration of one or both tests or the person was not tested under normal conditions.
Also, how would these extended norms be extrapolated to find the averages of all the sub tests per respective age group?
Click to access WISCIV_TechReport_7.pdf
Not sure I understand the question. The average scaled score on all Wechsler subtests I’ve seen is 10
What I meant was the raw score averages.
All you can do is a simple linear extrapolation from the relationship between raw scores & scaled scores but there’s no guarantee the relationship will be linear, unless it’s a subtest like digit span where items get harder in a linear way.
I actually took a WAIS iv test and a WISC iv test, I got pretty much the same score on everything except Block design, which my scaled score was 9 (on the WAIS) and 11 (on the WISC). I did get a little more confused on the WAIS items. I also looked at the WAIS and the WISC items online, I still got confused with the WAIS items, not the WISC.