Data IQ

Data is the fastest and most complete mind on the Enterprise, and the show says so constantly. What it shows is more interesting. He is thrashed in his first strategy game, fooled again and again by his brother Lore, and needs Picard's nudge to see how to play the rematch. That is why we do not put him at the ceiling. What keeps him well above any human genius is that he can build a working android child and once worked out how to message himself across a time loop.

Adult android. Human age-norming does not apply. Human IQ scales do not really apply to this character, so the number is for ranking only.

Six ratings out of ten, each based on what is shown on the page or screen. They are how the estimate is built, not a substitute for it.

Deduction8/10

Solving new problems from thin information

Strategy7/10

Multi-step plans that account for other minds

Knowledge10/10

Depth and breadth of what they know

Invention8/10

Building or devising something genuinely new

Adaptability7/10

Recovering when the plan breaks

Reading people5/10

Understanding what other people want and will do

1. The Holmes case with no answer key

   Minor evidence

   The Next Generation, 'Elementary, Dear Data' (season 2)

   Dr. Pulaski taunts Data that he can only solve mysteries he has already read. Geordi asks the holodeck for a Holmes adversary capable of defeating Data, and the computer takes the wording literally, producing a Moriarty smart enough to challenge an android and aware enough to know he is in a simulation. Data and Geordi work out that the phrasing of the request caused it. It is a decent deduction, though the episode also hints that much of Data's brilliance is retrieval rather than invention.

2. Drawing a game he could not win

   Strong evidence

   The Next Generation, 'Peak Performance' (season 2)

   Data faces the Zakdorn strategist Sirna Kolrami and loses the first game outright, then treats the result as proof that he is malfunctioning and steps back from duty. After Picard reminds him that a person can make no mistakes and still lose, Data returns and plays for a stalemate, sacrificing chances to advance. Kolrami, frustrated by the deadlock, quits. Data changes his objective once he understands the opponent, and wins by a route a pure calculator would not choose.

3. Building a daughter

   Moderate evidence

   The Next Generation, 'The Offspring' (season 3)

   Data builds an android child, Lal, using his own design and Federation cybernetics, and lets her choose her own appearance. She soon overtakes him in one small but telling way, by using contractions. It is real invention, since nobody in the series has done this before. The story also marks the limit: when Lal suffers a cascade failure in her positronic brain, Data cannot save her and can only preserve her memories in his own neural net.

4. Covering for the crew

   Moderate evidence

   The Next Generation, 'Clues' (season 4)

   After a wormhole encounter, Data claims the crew was unconscious for thirty seconds, when they actually lost a full day. He has tampered with the probe's readings to hide a Class M planet, protecting the ship from the secretive Paxans. Data lies to his friends and holds the line under questioning. It unravels because Dr. Crusher's moss samples and Worf's set wrist bone contradict him. Even so, planning around other minds is high achievement for a machine.

5. A message to his own future

   Strong evidence

   The Next Generation, 'Cause and Effect' (season 5)

   The Enterprise is stuck in a time loop that ends in a collision every cycle. Data proposes using his positronic brain to send a short message to himself in the next loop. Next time round the number three keeps turning up, in card hands and elsewhere, and Data realises it stands for the three pips on Riker's uniform. He then carries out Riker's suggestion instead of his own, and the loop ends. It is lateral thinking, plus the good sense to drop his own idea.

6. Noticing the wrong hand

   Strong evidence

   The Next Generation, 'Ship in a Bottle' (season 6)

   Moriarty seems to have escaped the holodeck. Data spots that Geordi La Forge's handedness is wrong, matching an anomaly from earlier, and concludes that he, Picard and Barclay are still inside a program Moriarty built. Picard answers by staging a simulation inside the simulation to convince Moriarty he has been beamed out. Data's contribution is the observation and the inference, which lean on a perfect memory for small details. The counter-trap that finishes the job is Picard's idea, not Data's.

• Steered by his brotherThe Next Generation, 'Descent' (seasons 6 and 7)Lore turns Data against the Federation, and Data prepares an irreversible experiment on Geordi's brain. The away team traces a carrier wave from Lore and builds a device to restore Data's ethical subroutines, and only then does he refuse. A mind that can be redirected by a signal is not reasoning independently. It shows that emotion, not logic, is where he is weakest.
• Trusting familyThe Next Generation, Lore episodes across the runLore is a similar machine with fewer scruples, and he repeatedly manipulates Data, who readily believes in family and in others' good faith. Reading people is the skill Data lacks, and Lore exploits it every time they meet. That is a pattern, not a one-off, and it keeps Data below the top of the scale whatever his computing speed.
• Beaten, then convinced he was brokenThe Next Generation, 'Peak Performance' (season 2)Data expected to win as a machine and lost the first game outright. His reaction, deciding he must be faulty, is not the mark of a superintelligence. He recovers, but the episode shows that knowledge and calculation do not automatically produce the best strategic judgement against a specialist, and that he needed a human to point out the difference.

Human IQ scales measure a human distribution, and a positronic brain sits outside it, so the number is for ranking only. Data scores at the top for knowledge and speed, well for invention, and lower for insight, because the series keeps returning to his blind spots about people and emotion. The popular claim treats him as unbounded. We disagree: an entity that loses a game to a specialist, then earns a stalemate by declining to chase the win, is brilliant but not omniscient.

IQ estimates for fictional characters are fan analysis: an argument from what the story shows, not a measurement. Read the full method and the standards we hold every profile to.

Fans ask whether Data is smarter than Spock, or than any human, and usually answer with computing speed. That is the wrong yardstick. On memory, calculation and breadth he wins outright, and no human on the show comes close. On judgement he loses a strategy game, is fooled by Lore and has to be told by Picard how to read a loss. We rate him the highest raw intellect in the Star Trek cast and an imperfect thinker, which is why he sits in the superhuman band without hitting the ceiling.

• Spock IQ: 165Logic, plus a sharper mind than it looks
• GLaDOS IQ: 195Machine mind, human-sized blind spots
• Sherlock Holmes IQ: 165Deduces the world from small details
• Tony Stark IQ: 160Builds the future from spare parts