Gregory House IQ

DeductionSolving new problems from thin information

9/10

StrategyMulti-step plans that account for other minds

6/10

KnowledgeDepth and breadth of what they know

9/10

InventionBuilding or devising something genuinely new

4/10

AdaptabilityRecovering when the plan breaks

8/10

Reading peopleUnderstanding what other people want and will do

9/10

1. Differential diagnosis as a method

   Strong evidence

   Series-wide, especially Season 1

   In a typical case, House has his team list every condition that fits the symptoms and then challenges each one, often pushing for a test or treatment that sounds reckless. The value of the method is that it treats every assumption as a hypothesis. It reflects a mind that does not trust authority or the obvious answer. His refusal to accept a diagnosis that fits too neatly is a genuine sign of abstract reasoning, and it underlies almost every solved case in the series.

2. A tapeworm in the pilot

   Moderate evidence

   Pilot (Season 1)

   A kindergarten teacher, Rebecca Adler, has a seizure and loses her speech in class. House first suspects cerebral vasculitis and tries steroids, and she gets worse. The team then searches her home and finds opened ham, and the case turns to neurocysticercosis, a tapeworm infection from undercooked pork, confirmed with a simple X-ray that Chase suggests. It is a miniature of the whole show: a wrong first theory, treatment used as a test, and an answer that comes from a small domestic clue. Good deduction, but not one clean leap.

3. Two common problems or one rare one

   Strong evidence

   Season 1, 'Occam's Razor'

   A college student, Brandon, collapses after sex with abdominal pain, fever and low blood pressure, and no single illness fits. While the team argues over one cause, House bets on two unrelated but common problems, working out that two everyday conditions are likelier than one exotic one. He turns out to be wrong. He keeps testing anyway and lands on a medication mix-up at the clinic pharmacy involving colchicine, which explains almost everything. It shows flexible reasoning and a willingness to abandon a theory that fails, though it is also a miss on the first try.

4. Three leg-pain cases

   Strong evidence

   Season 1, 'Three Stories'

   Covering a lecture for medical students, House presents three cases of leg pain. A farmer thought to have a snake bite turns out to have necrotizing fasciitis from a dog bite. A teenage volleyball player has a tumor behind her symptoms. The third case is House's own, from the days when his leg infarction went wrong and he chose a risky bypass. The lecture demonstrates his method of asking what the patient's story leaves out. It also explains his limp and chronic pain, and shows him at his sharpest as a teacher.

5. Reasoning his way out of a hallucination

   Minor evidence

   Season 5 finale, 'Both Sides Now'

   House has been seeing Amber, Wilson's late girlfriend. In the finale he checks his own memory of the night he believes he spent detoxing, and the details do not hold together: Cuddy never came to his apartment, and the lipstick in his pocket is really a bottle of Vicodin. He concludes he is hallucinating, and admits himself to a psychiatric hospital in the next season. It is his skeptical method turned inward, and it works, though it arrives after the hallucinations have already distorted his judgment.

1. Wrong before right

   Series-wide

   The format is built on House and his team reaching wrong diagnoses before the right one, sometimes at real risk to the patient. The pilot and 'Occam's Razor' both do it. It is partly a device, but the errors are treated as real. A doctor with unbeatable accuracy would not need a team, and House's misses are what stop him from scoring higher.

2. Addiction and self-sabotage

   Seasons 5-7

   House's dependence on Vicodin, from the Amber hallucinations to his stay at Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital in Season 6, shows a mind that does not protect itself. He wrecks his relationship with Cuddy, ending Season 7 by driving a car into her house, in ways a good planner would avoid. The harm to his judgment is visible.

3. Faking his own death

   Series finale, Season 8

   Facing prison, House stages his own death and spends his remaining months with Wilson, who is dying of cancer. It is a clever escape, and also the end of a long pattern of reckless choices: a top strategist would not have been in that position. It is clever and also a symptom.

Gregory House's fan estimate of 148 falls in the genius level IQ range. See what an IQ of 148 means, or place it on the IQ chart.

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