Are intelligence and I.Q. two separate concepts?

Intelligence is that ability to acquire and use knowledge, including being able to extrapolate an answer from existing evidence, or discern when information is insufficient to reach a conclusion.

I.Q. is only what is measured by IQ tests.

Intelligence is how smart you are.

IQ is an entrance exam for French school children in the 1800s

Yes, IQ stands for “intelligence quotient” in the context that someone can be asked to take a test with X questions and T time to complete, and a calculation involving division will yield a useful number to approximate their intelligence in some sense. It’s one attempt to measure intelligence as a single test score.

Intelligence itself is a far broader concept. Studies of intelligence by people trying to understand more of the fullness and subtlety of the subject (as opposed to trying to reduce it to a convenient single number for education/industry purposes) recognize that there are many different types of mental capacities. (e.g. in 1983, Howard Gardner invented a framework that posited 9 types of intelligence .) Others have noticed that many (or, it seems to me and others) all people have some sort of personal genius, and it may be more useful to search for that rather than to reduce to certain categories and evaluate those.

There is a much more serious problem than lack of accuracy with rating intelligence as a numeric score, or even of evaluating 9 types of intelligence: it creates an inaccurate comparison system that suggests that some people are deficient. It also encourages people to work on improving scores or ways of thinking that may not match their actual genius, which can actively interfere with their ability to find their actual genius, and also to mess with their self-esteem and feelings of worth and belonging.

IQ can also mean “imbecile quotient.”

I.Q. is measured in a culturally bound context. Intelligence is a fluid natural ability that peaks at around 16 and starts to decline thereafter. What one loses naturally they make up for in experience and learning, which is crystallized intelligence. I.Q.s are measured using a lot of basic learning skills that are deemed important by that educational system at the time.

I.Q. is an attempt to measure intelligence. The accuracy of the score for a given individual is questionable, but there may be significance in the score over an entire population. I.Q. scores rose dramatically for the past century or so, mostly in the area of abstract reasoning. This has been known as the Flynn effect, named for the -psychologist who studied it. Flynn attributes the rise in test scores to environmental causes – better education and increased use of technology.