Congratulations to Dundee lad Agnijo Banerjee, who is all over the news again after a phenomenally early pass in Higher Maths, aged just 12.
This year, Master Banerjee scored 162 in a Cattell 3b “culture fair” IQ test, which as the name implies is a more modern method of testing.
His score has been compared to that of Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Cattell’s test is a more modern invention (1960s) and not strictly comparable but it’s still a small ball park in which to play.
Agnijo took his test in Glasgow, one of the more recent Mensa-run trials which often visit Dundee.
The high IQ society occasionally sweeps the country in the hunt for new members, and applicants sweat through exams in their own search for something less tangible.
Intelligence, of which testable IQ is really only a portion, often seems as divisive as class, money and religion. So why seek to define it?
Unlike status and bank balance, I think nous is a pile of pebbles doled out by nature. That’s not to say potential can’t be improved by a few pages from An Eternal Golden Braid but we only get to add or subtract a few shiny rocks on the pile the spicy bon mots kept for conversation at that dinner party, to which we’re never invited.
Perhaps it’s this lack of a social/financial mobility that makes some very protective over their pile of stones. This might be a tired analogy but bear with me because it turns into a poker one very shortly.
As a journo and writer, I often encounter intellectual snobbery that seems to work in two directions. Smart alecs are mainly unwelcome at Rotary functions or poetry readings up at Dundee Rep. However, heavens forfend the utterance over canaps of “schedule” with a hard k, or committing to print a faux pas of the “read letter day/tow the line” variety. Walls cave in, great fissures open up, and the moon suddenly turns red.
The advent of Twitter, Facebook, et al makes fights of the intellect even worse. Get a sum wrong on the news, or mix a metaphor during Olympics commentary, and someone spits their cornflakes out over a keyboard in British Columbia.
That adds up to a large number of people throwing lots of heavy objects let’s call them alluvial deposits in a glass house. If asserting mental superiority is a contest, no one really wins because you don’t know what cards the other guy or gal has, and the flush never arrives.
Considering this, you’d really have to be brave to consider sitting a MENSA exam. So, well done again Agnijo. You have a bright future ahead of you.
Many years ago, after a secondary school argument, I signed up for a test in the city with youthful bravura. Older, more scared me would baulk at the prospect now but it was a great experience. Biting my nails on the bus, I wanted to know whether I was holding a decent Jack-Jack or merely an Ace-Three and a talent for the odd barnstorming bluff.
I’d scraped together enough lunch money to test; enjoying 13p Swiss roll school dinners for what seemed an interminable stretch of time. Looking back, and down at my belly, I wish I’d also tested for common sense.
To those thinking of taking the plunge when the invigilator’s next around? Don’t be afraid of showing your hand, or coming up short. Statistically, those with an inclination to test will get a good result it’s not rocket surgery, when you really think about it.