25 August 06 - 13:57Mensa Demographics
Ever wondered how many men and women there are in Mensa? Ages, jobs etc. US Mensa did a survey sometime back and these are the figures.
64.4% male, 35.4% female (0.2% won't say)
54% between 30-49 years of age, 14% under 29, 0.32% over 80
31.2% in first marriage, 29.82% never married, 13.32% divorced once,
9.53% in second marriage after a divorce
Just over half have no children, 12.4% have one child, 18.66% have 2, 9.95% have 3, 4.37% have 4, 1.29% have 9+
About 30% earn $20-40,000, 10% earn $50-75,000, 9% earn $40-50,000 and about 0.5% earn more than $250,000.
17.93% Master's degree or equivalent, 17.56% four year graduates, one in 11 are Ph.D.s.
41% work in private industry, 13% in government, 13% self employed.
88% have European ancestry.
49% Christian, 3% Unitarian, 9% Jewish, 7% agnostic, 3.6% atheist, 9% no religion
14% only children, 19+% older of two, 12.5% younger of two, 11.5% oldest of three, 6.8% middle of three, 5.8% youngest of three,
9.7% oldest of more than three, 10.8% middle of four or more, 4.4% youngest of four or more
Computer related occupations 10%, 3.75% own their own business, Electrical Engineers are 2.6%, 7.5% are in education, 3% lawyers, 0.11% judges, 0.02% are in astronomy.
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22 August 06 - 11:07Is the Mensa Trademark in Danger?
Recent actions by Google regarding use of the words "googling" and "googled" have been taken to protect their trademark and avoid going the way of Aspirin, Escalator, Cellophane, Nylon, Thermos, and Trampoline. All words that were trademarked but which are now generic terms. That is the ever present danger with a trademark that it enters the language and becomes a common word and trademark holders are directed to defend their trademark.
I wonder if the same might happen to "mensa"? I receive daily Google Alerts for mensa (helps with this blog) and the number of people using it- I'm getting a google alert nearly every day for it. Eg.
This page or
this page suggests that the word is being increasingly to mean 'highly intelligent'. As my favourite robot used to say "Danger Will Robinson"...
(more)
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21 August 06 - 13:08Types of Intelligence

The Seven Types of Intelligence. Psychologist
Howard Gardner is clearly a very bright individual. In 2005, he was selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. He has received honorary degrees from twenty colleges and universities, including institutions in Ireland, Italy and Israel.
He has identified the following distinct types of intelligence. They are listed here with respect to gifted / talented children.
- Linguistic Children with this kind of intelligence enjoy writing, reading, telling stories or doing crossword puzzles.
- Logical-Mathematical Children with lots of logical intelligence are interested in patterns, categories and relationships. They are drawn to arithmetic problems, strategy games and experiments.
(That was me- David!)
- Bodily-Kinesthetic These kids process knowledge through bodily sensations. They are often athletic, dancers or good at crafts such as sewing or woodworking.
- Spatial These children think in images and pictures. They may be fascinated with mazes or jigsaw puzzles, or spend free time drawing, building with Lego or daydreaming.
- Musical children are always singing or drumming to themselves. They are usually quite aware of sounds others may miss. These kids are often discriminating listeners.
- Interpersonal Children who are leaders among their peers, who are good at communicating and who seem to understand others' feelings and motives possess interpersonal intelligence.
- Intrapersonal These children may be shy. They are very aware of their own feelings and are self-motivated.
Well I say that number 2 was very strongly me, but I also feel that something of numbers 4 and 7 was also true. I used to love jigsaws and mazes and did a lot of things on my own. This is interesting stuff so I'll be reading up on this.
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Used tags: howard_gardner, intelligence, iq, seven_types