People have been trying to get a hold of Barack Obama's IQ score ever since he entered the Democratic primaries. He's smart, but enquiring minds want to know just how smart. The bad news is that his IQ scores can't be found anywhere on the net. The good news is that his LSAT's give a rough estimation of what his IQ might be.
A little note on percentiles: LSAT percentiles will always be higher than the general pop since you are drawing from a narrower pool of people. Further more while the general pop contains everyone, the LSAT pool contains people selected by their performance on academic tests: school and university work plus LSAT scores. So if you score in the top 5 percent of the general population, that might only put you into the top 50% of a law class. Remember that the deck is stacked. However the gap narrows as you approach the top, simply be cause there are so few people who score that highly (it's a bell curve thing). So being in the top 2% of the general population would put you in the 95th percentile of law students. When we get beyond 1% general pop, the gap continues to decrease.
Obama's LSAT score was 171 - putting him in the 98.8 percentile of law students. Hi IQ org MENSA accepts LSAT's as grounds for membership - requiring a score in the 95th percentile, roughly equivalent to the 98th percentile of the general pop. Since Obama scored in the 98.8 percentile of law students, he's well over the 95 minimum, and so easily qualifies for MENSA membership. Incidentally a LSAT percentile of 95 - which is comparable to 98 percentile in the general pop - translates to an IQ of about 130. Obama is 3.8 LSAT percentiles above that. A reasonable guess would put him in the 150 - 165 IQ range (150 being higher than 99.7 of the general pop according to stats below, & 160 being higher than 99.9 - or 1 in 1000. To put that in real life terms 140 would've been the smartest kid in your class, 160 would've been the smartest kid in your high school. 140 is the smartest guy in the room, but 160 is the smartest guy in the building. Obama would fall somewhere in between. Now when you get to 180+, you've got a contender for the smartest guy, or gal, in town!).
One Standard Deviation Above the Average (IQ = 116)
Approximately 84% of the public has an IQ of 115 or below. Only 16% of the population, or about 1 in every 6 has an IQ of 116 or above.
Two Standard Deviations Above the Average (IQ = 135)
Approximately 98% of the public has an IQ of 134 or below. Only 2% of the population, or about 1 in every 50 (the entry level for Mensa), has an IQ of 135 or above.
Three Standard Deviations Above the Average (IQ = 157)
Approximately 99.87% of the public, has an IQ of 156 or below. Only about 0.13% or about 1 in 750, own IQ's at, or above 157. (There would be about 360,000 such individuals in the United States, or about 400,000 in the United States and Canada.)
Four Standard Deviations Above the Average (IQ = 182)
Approximately 99.997% of our population has an IQ of 181 or below. Only 0.003% or about 1 in 30,000 possesses an IQ of 182 or above. (There would be about 9,000 such individuals in the United States, or about 10,000 in the United States and Canada.)
Five Standard Deviations Above the Average (IQ = 212)
Approximately 99.9997% of our population has an IQ of 211 or below. Only 0.0000287% or about 1 in 3,500,000 can boast an IQ of 212 or above. (There would be about 77 such individuals in the United States, or about 15 in the United States and Canada.)
Six Standard Deviations Above the Average (IQ = 246)
Approximately 99.99999990% of the world's population lies below an IQ of 246. Only about 1 in 1,000,000,000 , or about six people on Earth can claim an IQ this high. (We might expect to find 1such person in Europe, North America, and Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, with the rest residing in the rest of the world.)
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