Mensa is an international organization for "smart
people."
In
1946, two men from England met on a train and decided to start
an organization for people of high IQs. They originally wanted
to develop a society of great thinkers that would benefit humanity.
"It
was developed to foster intelligence and offer a stimulating
social environment," says Phyrne Parker, President of Mensa
Canada.
Globally,
Mensa has over 100,000 members in 80 countries with approximately
1,700 of them being Canadian.
To
qualify to become a member of Mensa you must be able to show
you have an IQ greater than that of 98% of the world's population.
That may sound a little daunting but with a global population
of over six billion people, there should be over 120 million
potential Mensans out there.
"The
tests aren't based on knowledge or memory," says Parker,
"because knowledge and memory don't really have anything
to do with intelligence."
"The
tests are based on spatial thinking and verbal and mathematical
skills. They measure how fast the brain reasons, plans, problem-solves,
thinks abstractly and understands complex concepts," she
says.
"However,
you must be able to think quickly because a large part of intelligence
is how fast you can look at a problem, analyze it, solve it
and move on," she explains.
Parker
acknowledges that some people have called Mensa elitist. "You
can accuse any organization that has any sort of membership
criteria of being elitist," she says. "If you really
want to, you can call the Boy Scouts elitist because you have
to be a boy to join," and adds, "our only criterion
is you have to be bright."
Mensa
welcomes all members regardless of age, sex, race, beliefs or
income.
Parker
feels that young people would greatly benefit from Mensa as
she believes that, "many are presently in an environment
where they aren't being mentally challenged or stretched. Mensa
could offer things that perhaps the educational system is not
providing," she says.
So,
are you curious? Are you Mensa material? If you can correctly
answer three or more of the following questions in less than
ten minutes you might want to consider contacting www.mensa.org!
Answers at very bottom of this page
Click
here to do an official 30 minute Mensa workout on their website,
and get back test results:
www.mensa.org/workout.html
TOP
Answers:
1. A
2. 2500 (Karen likes squared numbers)
3. EAR
4. 0-1-2-4-8+16=1
5. strongest
