Estimating the IQ of Terence Tao

Publish date: 2024-06-30

A summary of his accomplishments:

I think it’s safe to say that Terence Tao is the best mathematician in the world, which translates to a math IQ of 200. He also performed very well on the ravens, he scored a 32 on the RAPM when he was 10, which is the 95th percentile for a white adult in the USA.

Given that a large mathematical composite test has a g-loading of about 0.77, Terence Tao has an IQ of about 173 with a standard error of roughly sqrt(1-0.77)*15 = 7.2

A commenter notes that he scores about 3.7 standard deviations below verbal in mathematical ability - though his mathematical ability is about 6.6 SD above the mean, so his relatively low verbal score isn’t particularly meaningful.

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