How Smart Are You? The Answer's Here
Sep 14 2008 See Archive
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Out of 13,836 tests taken, men outnumbered women by almost two to one; that reflects either the website's reading demographic, or a greater paranoia among men about how smart they are.
Regardless, the statistics show that men were faster in their response times, by 9 microseconds on average. Reaction time when choices needed to be made were 443 msec for men and 452 msec for women.
The median age of everyone taking the test was 35.7 years, with a range up to someone who claimed to be 103 years old. (The test only scores brain age up to 80 years old).
People who said they were 18 to 25 years old were 64 msec faster than those between the ages of 60 and 70. That may reflect the time they've spent on computers playing video games.
Below is a graph that tells test-takers how they fit in with the 14,000 people who took the test. I took the test once and got lucky, coming out with the brain of a 25 year old—half my real age. I haven’t taken the test again for fear of coming our much older.
My editor took the test several times, and came out older than his true years, then younger—a swing that may have had to do with how old he felt after editing my columns.
In the table below, 25.3 percent of 50 year olds had a "brain age" in the 20s. At the same time, 6.4 percent of 20 year olds had a "brain age" in the 50s. Check below to see how you did.
| Test-Takers' Actual Age | ||||||
| Their Brain Age | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 |
| 20 | 60.8% | 52.7% | 41.2% | 25.3% | 27.5% | 11.1% |
| 30 | 7.3% | 9.9% | 11.8% | 8.6% | 3.4% | 3.7% |
| 40 | 7.3% | 6.5% | 6.7% | 14.2% | 9.4% | 9.4% |
| 50 | 6.4% | 8.2% | 9.7% | 12.6% | 9.4% | 7.4% |
| 60 | 5.2% | 6.8% | 4.6% | 6.5% | 7.7% | 7.4% |
| 70 | 3.5% | 4.1% | 6.7% | 11.1% | 11.2% | 7.4% |
| 80 | 9.3% | 11.6% | 19.0% | 21.3% | 31.0% | 55.5% |
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