For all the press ink spent on the subject of IQ, or intelligence quotient (the results of a test given to people to find out how "smart" they are) there is an aspect of intelligence testing that is rarely mentioned. Intelligence, as measured by modern science, is a function of age. If a ten-year-old, say, answers half of all the questions on the test correctly, his or her age will be a factor in converting this "raw" score into an "intelligence quotient", or "IQ". If a twenty-year-old answers in precisely the same way, with the same number of correct answers, his or her "IQ" will not be the same as the ten-year-old's. Assuming that testing for something styled innate intelligence, having nothing to do with education, is a reasonable thing to do, using age as a factor must be reasonable as well.
It does, however, mean that our grandparents were right--that you should "learn something new every day"--otherwise your score on an IQ test would actually be lower as you age. If you got the same "raw" score at age forty as you did at age twenty, you would, in fact, be getting dumber.
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