Lowest Raw Score Ever on the SAT

An anonymous reader writes "Lowest Raw Score Ever on the SAT. Relax! You are practically guaranteed to have done better on the SAT than this guy! But the competition for most extreme negative raw score is just beginning..."

Comments

Top 2%

[Taral]

Is 1250 really a top 2%? There's something really disturbing about that...

(That's only about 2.5\sigma from the mean...)

Re:Top 2%

[KiahZero]

My understanding is that the mean is roughly 950 or so, which means that a lot of people are very tightly packed between there and 1250.

Re:Top 2%

[ctr2sprt]

1250 is no longer the top 2%, it's about the top 10%. At or slightly before the recentering in '95, it was probably the top 2% (because it was roughly equivalent to a present-day 1400).

That's my reasoning, anyway. I wonder if figuring all this stuff out is part of the test. (Is there a reason that what any sane person would call a "zero" is a 400 on the SATs?)

Re:Top 2%

[Motherfucking Shit]

One potentially poignant note is the date restriction on that stat,

For example, an SAT combined score of 1250 ( 1974-1994 SAT editions) correlates with a Stanford-Binet IQ of 132, the top 2% of humanity, and thus qualifies a person for Mensa.

I took an IQ test in '93 (though I don't know whether or not it was of the Stanford-Binet variety) and scored 140. I took the SAT in '96 and scored 1360. Wonder what a 1360 at that point in time boils down to, percentile-of-humanity wise...

Though I'll agree with you about the disturbing factor - I consider myself to be intelligent, but if I'm in the top 2% of all humanity, then God help us!

Re:Top 2%

[fearlessrogue]

I scored 138 on an IQ test and got 1230 on the SAT's...

Re:Top 2%

[Whyrph]

(Is there a reason that what any sane person would call a "zero" is a 400 on the SATs?) Yeah. It lowers the apparent difference between equal scores. A 1000 and a 1600 look a lot less apart than a 6000 and a 1200.

Re:Top 2%

[Whyrph]

Er . .that should be 600, not 6000 . ..

Re:Top 2%

[Anonymous Coward]

Though I'll agree with you about the disturbing factor - I consider myself to be intelligent, but if I'm in the top 2% of all humanity, then God help us!

The top 2% is one person if 50. It's not a tiny number of people.

Re:Top 2%

[darien]

Interesting to note that the top 2% of the population includes people who chose names like "Motherfucking Shit."

Re:Top 2%

[ichimunki]

Sometimes makes you wonder if the large number of "2% smartest" people are related to the large number of people who think they are in the "top 5% wealthiest" category. :)

That said, our society doesn't generally deal well with extreme intelligence. As soon as it is realized that you score well on standardized tests (which is what these measures actually measure, not "intelligence"), there is extraordinary pressure not to "waste" that intelligence. It is usually assuming that a rigorous program of schooling-- and usually in schools controlled by people who are decidedly average intelligence-wise-- is the best course. This is probably a mistake.

Most schools are not designed to nurture independent learning (or thought, really). The medium is a large part of the message and that message is, "obey arbitrary authority, move around at the sound of the bell, you are smart enough to learn the world's history, physics, and advanced match, but you are not smart enough to manage your own time or decide who should teach you what."

Is it any wonder, then, that some of the nation's brightest stars get bored or upset or choose fairly antisocial ways of expressing themselves? The worst case is when those "smart" kids come from otherwise average families. Those parents may act like they've hit the lottery, or simply continue to apply pressure (apparently even subtle sticks are more common than any kind of carrot in these situations) to urge the kid to "use their full potential" or whatever. It's a bit like a gardener who would try to grow his plants faster by sitting in the garden and pulling on the tops of the plants.

Re:Top 2%

[devnull17]

Nope. Each portion is centered at 500 with a standard deviation of 100 points. That puts a 1250 at 1.5 standard deviations from the mean, or somewhere somewhat close to 80th percentile. I'd try to get closer, but I haven't slept in a good 24 hours. (:

Re:Top 2%

[ichimunki]

Yet another Jon Katz alias....

I think if you look over the 1500+ posts I've made to Slashdot in the last few years, you'll see that I am hardly Jon Katz. In fact, I've responded to others with "Jon Katz, is that you?" on probably more than one occasion. So your reply is neither accurate nor novel. But thanks for playing. :)

Re:Top 2%

[oyenstikker]

Its the dual-purpose F density curve, proposed by on of my professors:
In any give class, The first exam(s) will have the most Fs, the middle will have the least, and the final will approach the first, leading to something resembling an inverted bell curve, biased to the low end. It is also a plot of frequency of the F word versus intelligence.

Re:Top 2%

[PsibrII]

Cool!! My IQ tested in the mid 130s, but I only scored 1100 on my SAT when I took it. With recentering now maybe I can retake the test and get that massive self esteem boost of finally achiving the numbers of my geekier math nerd friends back then.

Re:Top 2%

[Smudgy]

"(Is there a reason that what any sane person would call a "zero" is a 400 on the SATs?"

The idea is that each section of the SAT is theoretically scored from 0 to 1000, with a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100 points. After calculating the scores, they drop the low and high outliers and shift them to 200 or 800 respectively, keeping three standard deviations from the mean.

Re:Top 2%

[Anonymous Coward]

Just an observation (based on a world population of 6 billion and defining 98th percentile as 130 IQ).

• 50th percentile: 50.0% is 3 billion (100 IQ)
• 80th percentile: 20.0% is 1.2 billion (112 IQ)
• 90th percentile: 10.0% is 600 million (119 IQ)
• 95th percentile: 5.0% is 300 million (124 IQ)
• 98th percnetile: 2.0% is 120 million (130 IQ)
• 99th percentile: 1.0% is 60 million (134 IQ)
• 99.5th percentile: 0.5% is 30 million (137 IQ)
• 99.8th percentile: 0.2% is 12 million (142 IQ)
• 99.9th percentile: 0.1% is 6 million (144 IQ)

Isn't it a bit humbling to know that no matter how smart you think you are, there are probably millions of people alive today who are even smarter? :-)

Re:Top 2%

[Anonymous Coward]

That about describes my experience.

I got mid 170s in an IQ test that the school/state put me in for - at the time I didn't even know I was doing an IQ test. I was just doing fun and fairly easy spatial and verbal puzzles for an afternoon - some part of which was talking to an entertaining and interesting person (an educational psychologist).

If I had realised the implications of what I was doing I would have flunked it. Twenty-two years later I can look back at a lot of bad-times and finger that test as a cause.

It is usually best that most people do not think of you as belonging to a privileged group.

Schools are awful - merely open prisons for children, ways of keeping them of the streets while their parents work society's treadmills, while preparing them for the same life of indentured servitude. :-)

Read some Ivan Illich . He frames his arguments better than I do.

"Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question." Ivan Illich Deschooling Society (1973)

Re:Top 2%

[WizardX]

This sounds just like my ACT experiance. Stayed up most (all? don't remember, I do think it was all) of the night. Scored a 28, would have been better except that damned english part fo the test.

Neeless to say, I have attended 2 post-secondary institutions, withdrew from both. I am now making more than 98% of the people I know in my age group (mid 20's), honestly enjoy my job, and am learning more and more that will make me even more marketable in the future.

I scored a 145 IQ in the mid to late 80's. I was so bored in HS my senior year I slept half of the day and if I hadn't graduated at semester, I would have dropped out.

Re:Top 2%

[Mr. Piddle]

It is usually assuming that a rigorous program of schooling-- and usually in schools controlled by people who are decidedly average intelligence-wise-- is the best course.

I've witnessed some really smart people burn out of rigorous schooling. They are pressured by some sort of idealism that is really without basis, get in too deep, and then just burn out. I'm not sure where they are now.

There was also a story on 60 Minutes or a similar show about a guy with a 190-or-so IQ who was working as a bouncer at a bar. How many people would consider that as a waste rather than some guy doing what he likes?

Re:Top 2%

[ksheff]

The English part on the ACT lowered my composite score to a 31. The verbal part on the SAT did the same thing (down to 1340 - taken in 1986).

Re:Top 2%

[ksheff]

Is there a reason that what any sane person would call a "zero" is a 400 on the SATs?

Grade Inflation. SAT scores have been one measure of how good the school system is doing and the scores were slipping. The secondary schools didn't want to admit they were graduating an increasing number of morons and the colleges didn't want to be seen lowering their entry requirements in order to admit the same number of students per year. The 'recentering' was a cheap, easy way to 'fix' the problem.

Re:Top 2%

[PetWolverine]

I've witnessed two really smart people get totally tired of school and come close to flunking and not graduating from high school. They were me and my brother.

The odd thing, from my perspective, is that most of my friends get along just fine. I tend to consort with people about as smart as I am (146 IQ, 36 ACT, 1490 SAT, if you think standardized tests have much to do with intelligence), and they don't have the problems I have. I think my failure, and my brother's before mine, has more to do with the type of habits we've learned from our parents than with our intelligence. My parents are both fairly anti-establishment, and have both made relatively successful careers despite (or in my dad's case, because of) that. They've taught my brother and me to hold similar views.

While I call them anti-establishment, I don't mean in a knee-jerk kind of way. There are elements in the System that my parents believe in, and there are elements that they don't believe in. They taught my brother and me to weigh the facts and decide for ourselves what we believe and how to behave because of it. Now, I can't vouch for my brother, but a big part of any explanation for my poor performance in high school isn't so much apathy for learning itself as for demonstrating that I've learned something. I love reading Shakespeare, but I'm not much for doing some silly homework assignment meant to prove to the teacher that I've done the reading. I read books about physics in my spare time, so why should I bother completing some little bit of physics homework? My biggest complaint is classes that grade based on attendance. Quote from my piano teacher this past semester: "I am sure this section was the only one you could fit into your schedule, but if you ever have a chance to take another class piano course, try to schedule for later time; so that your grade will reflect what you can on the keyboard [sic], not when you wake up." That was in an email informing me I had gotten a C in the course. Now, why should what time I wake up ever, ever affect my grade in a class? I obviously came to class enough that she knew I could play the instrument as well as...well, as well as a bassoon major can be expected to; why should I get a C because I didn't come any more often than that? And this is in college!

Too often, performance in school reflect not a person's ability, nor their commitment, nor anything else that's relevant, but instead their ability to get up in the morning, follow a set schedule, do what they're told, and not get into any trouble (since suspensions, at least at my former high school, count as unexcused absences which then affect a person's grade adversely).

Re:Top 2%

[j3110]

This is the most insiteful thread I've ever read on Slashdot. The education system is broken at all levels.

In college, I took an uppor level math class for fun. I watched everyone in class scuddle about doing homework instead of actually thinking about the problem. I spent my time only thinking about and relating the problem, and pretty much only during the class itself. By not opening the book more than 4 times throughout the semester, I was able to think about the problems the way that I do, so I didn't have to memorize any stupid formulae or other non-sense.

My way of learning was shown to be a considerably better way of learning on just the first test. In fact, on every test in the class, I made at least a 95%, but I completed several perfect tests.

However, since I missed a lot of class, and didn't do any homework the entire semester, I got a B in the class. I would have failed the class had it not been a Math class where the prof. had a little knowledge about the goals of the class and me accomplishing them. I'm sure the only reason I got a B instead of an A was she was afraid that I was always lazy. Maybe I'll do an experiment and try to go back and get a math major without doing any homework at all.

Public education is a tricky thing. There are always people that just don't care about learning. You might as well send these students home because all they do is disrupt the others. You can't force anyone to learn. Make their parents deal with their issues for a while, and I'm sure they will make sure their children understand the importance of learning real quick when they have to hire a baby-sitter while they are at work, etc.

If teachers can't disipline children (and rightly so I think they can't) then parents should have to deal with their undisiplined children. Give them a tax rebate they can use to send their children to a military school or whatever they think will fix the problem. If you make the parents have to deal with their problem children, they children will be dealt with more often than they are now. Teachers don't get paid enough to put up with the shit they get handed. If you aren't going to give them the money to do the job and the freedom to do the job, ship the children back to the source of the problem to be dealt with. Then we can all go back to a public high school for mature, responsible youngsters. They need to start learning to manage their own time and other self-disciplines.

Re:Top 2%

[javiercero]

The fact that one is "smart" according to any IQ test doesn't guarantee that one is not a "lazy ass"

This is what spoiled American kids who complain about how school is destroying their precious little brains fail to understad.

Life ain't fair, deal with it.... Just because you have an IQ of 180 doesn't mean shit, you have to work for what you get. And guess what working hard sucks... and yeah there is a reason why schools evolved in such way it is called human natures.

Tired of pancies with their "look I have an IQ of such and I failed, there must be something wrong with the system" No there is something wrong with you, deal with it.

Re:Top 2%

[WNight]

I had a similar experience. I coasted through high school, doing very little because it didn't seem to matter. Come grade 12 I realized I needed a diploma instead of a GED so I made sure I passed, but that was simply a matter of being there 60% of the days, my school using a system where your mark could not be better than your attendance, excepting doctor-approved absences.

The first term I got 98%+ in all classes and was in the top five in the school (dunno precisely where). It was the only semester I got on the honor roll. But, they didn't apply attendence-based grading in the first term, only to the over-all mark at the end of the year. At the end I got Cs in some classes, Ps in the rest. My work hadn't changed. I aced every test, etc. But because I didn't put in the hours they said I didn't know the material. Feh.

And before anyone drivels on about how school is really to prepare you for 9-5 life, I've never had a boss who would let you get away without doing anything provided you had perfect attendance. Instead, most of my bosses seemed quite happy with giving me a flexible schedule and using performance-based milestones. They cared a lot more about the final result than "perfect attendance". School may prepare people for life, but only the busted down life of a gas-station attendant.

Re:Top 2%

[joggle]

Now, why should what time I wake up ever, ever affect my grade in a class?

This is a sign of a poor educator. From my experience, whether or not the teacher actually believes in the grade-based system (I've had some that didn't), this is strictly indicating the teacher's lazyness of assigning grades (attendance is always the lowest denominator). Even if a teacher doesn't believe in the A-F grade system (from my own experience), they usually then simply either a) let you give yourself a grade (physics teacher in high school) or simply give you an A unless you do horribly on tests or seem to not care about their course.

Gee, and I thought my piano class for non-music majors was aweful...

Re:Top 2%

[sootman]

sweet! I got a 1250 (exactly) in 1990. nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah... seriously though, when I first saw it, I thought it was like getting a C, since 1250/1600=78%. I heard it was enough to get into mensa but never tried--just 'cause I'm smart doesn't mean I'm not lazy. :-)

Re:Top 2%

[MegaHamsterX]

I had a 1250 as well(same year), I thought it was an average score myself as I knew people with higer scores and not many with much lower than 1100.

I still don't accept it, I fell asleep in the middle of the test and never retook it as it seemed to be good enough (I was not a stellar high school student, did really well on tests, all my assignments were done in the previous class just to turn something in to avoid a "0")

Re:Top 2%

[PetWolverine]

I can't fault the teacher, since she was an excellent teacher, and seemed honestly regretful of giving me a low grade when I'd done fine on the tests and quizzes. It's the policy of the University of Michigan School of Music Piano Department to grade class piano based in part on attendance, so I fault the professor (my teacher having been a GSI, or graduate student instructor). Of course, she could have concealed my poor attendance from him, but since she was being graded in how well she taught the course, I presume she would only have taken such a risk in the case of someone truly amazing at the piano (meaning, maybe, someone who played at the level of an actual piano performance major), if at all.

The GSI system is an interesting way to teach, I'll say that. I haven't decided yet whether or not i like it.

Re:Top 2%

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a seriously distorted view of what commitment is. I would say commitment very much includes "ability to get up in the morning, follow a set schedule, do what they're told." Just showing you can do the work when You want to does not show you are committed to anything. It just shows you are a stuck-up snob who thinks they are too smart to bother with the little things; no wonder you got a C.

Re:Top 2%

[Jaysyn]

And I scored 136 on an I.Q. test (in kindergarten) and got 1260 on the SAT's (stoned off my ass). Only thing it proves are some people take tests better than others.

Jaysyn

Re:Top 2%

[Humpinate]

Hah! Got ya beat! I took the ASVAB twice AND the Mensa test (I was seventeen) and not only was accepted in MENSA, but was told I was "qualified" for ANY career in in AF a/o the Navy ...at a time when I was so full of shit I must have squeeked when I walked...LOL

Re:Top 2%

[Anonymous Coward]

It need not be that way.

I was Stanford-Binet tested in 1st grade (1976), and scored 196. (This wasn't shared with me until I found out by accident in high school) My parents got involved in the Gifted Children's Association, and the local school district (Los Angeles Unified)'s magnet schools never let me down, though my classmates and I moved around a lot:

1st-2nd grade: Pull out programs, nothing that caused me to be stigmatized or socially bereft.

2nd grade: We move so I can attend an elementary school with a highly gifted magnet program - classmates are all in the program, and you mostly play with folks in your class at these ages anyway.

3-6th grade: The highly gifted magnet changes locations every year or two, so lots of bussing, but it's all my friends moving around.

7-9th grade: Attended a highly gifted magnet jr. high school. 64 in my cohort. Some stigmatization from students at the school not in the "maggot program", but nothing serious. Probably helps that the host school switches to 6-8 grade, so it's only us 64 who are 9th graders when that time comes. LAUSD also had a separate gifted magnet elsewhere ("gifted" and "highly gifted" had specific definitions; the former included IQ and non-IQ talents, the latter required IQ 145)

10-12th grade: No more highly gifted programs, but magnet schools in Humanities, Math/Science, and a few other subjects. Went to one of those, got an excellent education, no sigificant social issues. About 3-4 classes/semester that are "within the magnet" and 2-3 that are "within the host school", so ample opportunities for hanging out with everyone.

In these programs I was afforded astounding educational opportunities and an incredibly good group of peers, many of whom I'm still in touch with (in fact, I'm married, with child, to my high school best friend). And I relate fine to everyone else, thank you.

The implications of IQ testing depend a great deal on the community support.

Re:Top 2%

[ErikZ]

Heh, The ASVAB wasn't that hard dude. I did the same thing.

The true test of intelligence was what you did next, did you join the AF or the Navy? :)

Re:Top 2%

[ebh]

What I should have been told when I was a senior in high school:

You're at the top of your class. You aced your SATs. Your IQ is 99.5th percentile. In the college you're going to, do you know what they call that?

"Average."

Man, did I get my ass handed to me in college after coasting through high school.

Re:Top 2%

[j3110]

I don't think so. Most other students in the class that were math majors were striving to make B's on the tests. I actually looked at the homework questions from time to time. They were pretty much the same caliber as the test, she just assigned MORE problems instead of different problems. Ever looked at the work section of any math text book, even higher levels? They are the same questions over and over. There are only like 5 different kinds of questions in a section.

I looked at some of what the text book said as well. Most of it was just proofs. Any book that tells you how to do everything is bad, and most math books are this way: "This is how you take a derivative of e^f(x)" etc. Books should concentrate on why things are the way they are, not on the way things are. I used to tutor math back in highschool, and I find more times than not when someone is doing poorly in class it's because they are trying to "learn" the way things are, not the way they work. The more of these shinanigan teaching methods hit a student, the less likely they are to ever learn real math and problem solving skills.

This is where the clash occured in my class. Other than myself, I would say only about half the students in the class actually understood the material, the other have just knew the material. This is where tests differintiate between the two. If you just know the material, you'll be able to solve problems that you've seen before. If you understand the material, you'll not have a problem doing any variation of the problem.

My hypothesis is that tests are only share about 80% material that is in the text book. The teacher has a mind of his/her own and will sometimes throw in questions they think students should be able to get, that they haven't seen before. This is where understanding the problem will give you an A, where knowing the problem will give you a B. Other mathematicians have tried to sumerize this difference between intelligence and knowledge with the phrase "Math isn't about knowing the answers, it's about what to do when you don't know the answer."

Re:Top 2%

[Davethewaveslave]

My buddies and I collectively decided to flunk our ASVAB test at the end of high school (a day out of class, and a jarhead who gave us coffee and donuts, what more incentive do you need?). We were later surprised to be called (out of our AP English class) into the guidance counselor's office and grilled about how we defied the law of averages, and didn't even get one question right.

I think the scariest thing about that whole incident was that for years I STILL received calls from our armed forces asking when I was going to come in and enlist.

"A few good men." HA!

Re:Top 2%

[majestyk2000]

1370 on SAT in 1988, and subsequent testing of 160 or so on IQ tests. According to MENSA in 1990, my SAT score was in the top half of a percent, or roughly the 99.5th percentile or above.

On reading this article, I'm tempted to go take the thing again when my 15 year old niece does just to see if I ace it this time.

Re:Top 2%

[stanmann]

Ok, I understand the purpose of homework in an english/history/language class ie either reading or writing. But science/mathematics? WTH? I don't need to factor 40 numbers for homework... It proves nothing... I can't go home and mix up chemicals for bio either... I don't need to spend 45 minutes identifying that cats dogs ... etc are mammals reptiles etc. And I'm certainly not learning social skills sitting home doing homework.

Re:Top 2%

[stanmann]

If the test is easier than the "coursework" then why bother giving tests. I understand using easy problems in more advanced math IF you are testing methodology and not correctness.

Re:Top 2%

[Hognoxious]

That's a good reply, but unfortunately not to the question that was asked.

Bush

[Anonymous Coward]

This is nothing, compare this with G Bush's!

Re:Bush

[Anonymous Coward]

George W. Bush got a verbal score of 566 and a math score of 640, for a combined score of 1206. According to this site, this means he has an IQ of approximately 129. This places him in the 97th percentile, assuming a normal gaussian distribution with mean 100 standard deviation of 15, or the 96th percentile, assuming a standard deviation of 16.

Re:Bush

[GreggyBUIUC]

Personally, for my choice as president, I'll rather have a man with an IQ of 129 that has excellent intrapersonal/leadership skills and the abillity (and humillity) to suround himself with advisors smarter than him over an egotistical "I'll do it all myself" type with an IQ of 180.

Re:Bush

[jez9999]

Erm, are you measuring IQ on a different scale to the rest of us or something? When we take an IQ test here, we're told that 100 is average, so that's where the 50/50 split occurs. An IQ of 129 is pretty damn good, and 180 is almost impossible to get on a standard IQ test.

Re:Bush

[GreggyBUIUC]

My notion of his IQ was based off of the post which I replied to:

"George W. Bush got a verbal score of 566 and a math score of 640, for a combined score of 1206. According to this site [members.shaw.ca], this means he has an IQ of approximately 129."

Re:Bush

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally off topic, but your sig caught my attention:

Abolish the UK TV licence fee!

Erm, why? The BBC is one of the best damn things about the UK. And you want to sacrifice it just to save a few quid.

"Television companies are not in the business of delivering television programs to their audience, they're in the business of delivering audiences to their advertisers. This is why the BBC has such a schizophrenic time - it's actually in a different business from all its competitors." - Douglas Adams

Re:Bush

[TheRaven64]

Frankly I just want a decent human being in the oval office at this point in time.

Sadly, one of the defining characteristics of such a person would be that they would not be egotistical enough to enter a nation-wide popularity contest. I generally regard anyone who chooses to stand for election to be unelectable on those grounds. This makes voting difficult.

The only exception to this I have seen was an independent candidate who stood in the UK elections a few years back. The incumbent had been accused of corruption, and the independent stated that he would run against him, but would not run against another candidate that the Conservative party selected. They didn't back down, and the independent candidate won.

Re:Bush

[TheRaven64]

Erm, why? The BBC is one of the best damn things about the UK. And you want to sacrifice it just to save a few quid.

I agree that the BBC does a lot of good, but most of that is not TV. Out of 8 (I think) BBC channels, I watch one program a week, and I object to paying £10/month for that, since it works out at about £5/hour of TV. Their news web site is superb, however, and I would not object to paying a moderate subscription to access it.

As a side note, you actually don't have to pay a TV license fee. There is a clause in EU law which gives citizens the right to receive broadcasts, making the TV license illegal. If you quote this clause to the TV license people then they will never bother you again. If they do then they will have to take you to court, and they know that they will lose (the issue is as clear cut as a legal argument can be) and if the establish such a precedent then no one will ever pay a license again.

Re:Bush

[mickwd]

".....its inherent unfairness to the British people....."

"...it's British, and it goes to pay the BBC, an organization whose benefits are felt the world over! Extremely unfair to the British people, IMHO."

Hmmmm, I don't suppose the BBC actually sells things to companies abroad by any chance, does it ? I think you might find it does.

Even if it didn't, as a British person, I have to say I couldn't give a toss about trivial little things like this.

Re:Bush

[Zeinfeld]

Personally, for my choice as president, I'll rather have a man with an IQ of 129 that has excellent intrapersonal/leadership skills and the abillity (and humillity) to suround himself with advisors smarter than him over an egotistical "I'll do it all myself" type with an IQ of 180.

I would prefer an honest President to either. No IQ score that is above the mean has much significance and if you go more than an SD above the mean there is NO significance. IQ tests were developed to measure the progress of mental patients under various therapies. They were never designed as general purpose tests.

Stephen Jay Gould gives the definitive debunking of IQ tests in The Mismeasure of Man. There is a big history of junk science, mostly in the service of racist theories of eugenics. Lots of untested facts being repeated for decades etc.

One of the many IQ myths is that you can't improve your score with practice. That is absolute rubbish. I had to practice IQ tests every week when I was 10 to take the exam for the senior school. I ended up with perfect scores on the multiple choice questions for several weeks in a row.

Getting back to his fraudulency, the guy has no character and no honesty. He lied to sell his tax cut and he lied to get his war. He promised not to bust the budget and then did exactly that, he even lied about the alleged 'trifecta' of exclusions to his promise. He never told the US people that there were exceptions, it never appeared in any press release of speech. Not only is he a liar, it is a character issue, he is in effect saying 'I had my fingers crossed behind my back'.

Before Bush's war the justification given was scary weapons of mass destruction. After the 'proof' that nuclear material had been bought from Niger was shown to be a fraud he invades anyway (or at least orders the army to). Then afterwards the story changes 'oh it was just regime change all along'. I wonder what the story is going to be once the funddies elect an ayatollah.

I suspect that after he looses the 2004 election the aircraft carrier antics are going to be seen in a different light. He is campaigning on his national guard stint - risky at best when daddy pulled strings to get the place and especially so when you then went AWOL for a year.

It is really difficult after being lied to to believe anything the man says.

Re:Bush

[Cyberdyne]

Too right. If you ever hear of such a candidate I'd suggest voting for him or her and get the current retarded red-neck criminal draft-dodging lying wife-beating hypocritical usurper and his money-laundering, weapon selling, oil sucking, evil, vicious, dishonest, corporate-controled cronies out of power ASAP.

Too late: Clinton's already been replaced. Before he achieved the regime change in Iraq he pledged back in 1998, too (Iraq Liberation Act); never managed to get round the Senate's unanimous (95-0) rejection of his beloved Kyoto treaty, either...

Re:Bush

[jez9999]

There is a clause in EU law which gives citizens the right to receive broadcasts, making the TV license illegal.

I'm not sure how 'clear cut' this clause is; that's why we're having the test cast on Jonathan Miller right now to see whether it will hold water. Isn't there something in the very same EU law (human rights legislation?) that gives countries a right not to follow the law if it's in the interests of the people, or something?

Re:Bush

[Cyberdyne]

Sadly, one of the defining characteristics of such a person would be that they would not be egotistical enough to enter a nation-wide popularity contest. I generally regard anyone who chooses to stand for election to be unelectable on those grounds. This makes voting difficult.

Indeed: almost by definition, everyone appearing on the ballot sheet is seeking power - a definite bad sign in itself. In their attempt to gain power, they all claim to have the purest motives, wonderful intentions and be above reproach - despite being politicians, which tends to discredit all those claims.

The only exception to this I have seen was an independent candidate who stood in the UK elections a few years back. The incumbent had been accused of corruption, and the independent stated that he would run against him, but would not run against another candidate that the Conservative party selected. They didn't back down, and the independent candidate won.

The great irony being, the independent candidate in question was a journalist - probably the only legal occupation as morally questionable as a politician! (This particular one was actually a war reporter; an honest and respectable guy, especially by politician or journalist standards.)

I sometimes wish politicians had to write a contract, rather than a mere "manifesto". Instead of vague waffle, they have to give concrete aims. We then vote based on that, and the successful candidate is then judged based on that contract. Fail to meet enough aims, you're disqualified next race; make trivial aims, you won't get elected.

Re:Bush

[RobotRunAmok]

I suspect that after he looses the 2004 election

Come now! Even the Democrats don't believe Bush is beatable in 2004, else they would be fielding someone from their first string, and not the bench-warmers that stultified a nation in last weekend's debate. Karl Rove's goal is way beyond merely winning; he's looking for the royal flush of winning in all 50 states. Love him or Hate him, the world has Bush through 2008.

Granted, if voting in America was restricted to particpants on slashdot, college students, inhabitants of LA, NYC, and Boston, and members of the press, Bush would be gone in '04, but inasmuch as the Rest of the Country is allowed to vote, he's got another four years.

Re:Bush

[nagora]

Before he achieved the regime change in Iraq he pledged back in 1998

On the other hand, he didn't tell the FBI and CIA to lay of any and all investigations of rich Saudi families (including at least one investication of the Bin Ladens) in case it was embarassing to his friends. Although Clinton told them to tone it down (for the same reasons), Bush told them to stop everything, even after being told something big was coming. The man that told him this -John O'Neil, deputy head of the FBI - quit and became head of security for the WTC and consequently died when Bush's old-boy's-network bore fruit.

Clinton was a very dubious character but as far as I know he was never actually involved in mass murder. Bush on the other hand failed to act to stop 911 (although he did not know exactly what the threat was, he still thought it less important than helping his oil-friends) and has supported Rumsfeld who was instrumental in getting Saddam his weapons of mass descruction while Bush senior sent people over to help Saddam "calibrate" those weapons which he was using to gas Iranians and would later use on his own people.

never managed to get round the Senate's unanimous (95-0) rejection of his beloved Kyoto treaty

Which just shows that the Senate can be as bad as any President when it puts it's mind to it.

TWW

Re:Bush

[nagora]

probably the only legal occupation as morally questionable as a politician!

You're forgetting lawyers. Tony Blair is a lawyer...

Re:Bush

[Jon Abbott]

That doesn't change the fact that his college GPA was in the mid-C to low-B range...

Re:Bush

[chrisos]

Surely you can just keep sending them on their way when they turn up at your door. Just keep on refusing them entrance (they do need a warrant without your express permission).

You can also fail to fill in any declaration, stating that you do not have a colour receiver. And as I see it, the ball is in their court.

Either they have to monitor you and see if you are secretly watching a TV with their little vans (easily evaded with a Faraday Cage in the living room!), or get a warrent to search the premises.

Should be hilarious if they get a warrent and then fail to find anything. I Wonder what your legal recourse would be then, given their spurious assertion that you had a TV, with no facts to back them up?

I had this problem several years ago, I bought a small TV as a Christmas present for use at a friend's house (with their kid's N64). Of course I gave my details at the shop as they where required for a warranty, What I didn't realise is that the shop is legally required to inform the Licensing Authority of your purchase (Something which I might add was not made clear, and something I had words with the shop about).

Shortly after Xmas I started receiving the letters, telling me I wasn't licensed and I may have to pay a fine of £1000, or I could just fill in the declaration.

I'm afraid I just ignored the letters, it was their assumption that was wrong, and I wasn't going to waste my time correcting them.

A few months later, a guy turned up on my doorstep and we had the following (paraphrased) conversation:

Him: "Hello, I'm MR X from the Licensing Authority, Can I see your TV license please?"
Me: "No"
Him: "Do you have a license?"
Me: "You know I don't or we wouldn't be stood on my doorstep having this conversation."
Him: "Can I inspect your property to prove you don't have a TV?"
Me: "No"
Him: "I can have a warrent issued, and we can come back and inspect then. Or you can just let me look around the property now, and this whole problem goes away. Can I come in please?"
Me: "No"
Him: "I'll have to go and get a warrant then."
Me: "Yes you will won't you"

That was the last I heard of it...

Although It should be said that I did dismantle my Faraday Cage that evening and sold the TV on e-bay :)

Re:Bush

[FallLine]

That doesn't change the fact that his college GPA was in the mid-C to low-B [americanpolitics.com] range...

What is your point? The average GPA at the schools at around the time he attended them was around in fact C, the way they SHOULD be, not the B/B+/A- it is today at most schools these days. In other words, his grades were at least average and probably above the average. What's more, he attained these grades at very good schools, namely, Andover, Yale, and Harvard. Being average at, say, Andover, where 99% of the class goes onto respectable 4 year schools, year after year, and most of those highly selective ones, is a lot different than being average at Podunk public high school, because virtually everyone is competing to some extent. This is especially true when the person in question was not really struggling to attain those grades (there are a lot of people that extend their performance beyond their actual intelligence by working, after a certain fashion, harder than all of their peers). Bush had a social life, other activities, and still managed to attain those grades. It's hardly proof of stupidity. Does it prove he's a real intellect? No, of course not, but it is indicative of a certain level of intelligence.

This is all besides the point though. All I care about is his job performance. I, for one, think he has performed very well, even if not perfectly. I voted for him in 2000 and I will vote for him again in 2004. Academic performance is not the same thing as intelligence and even (allegedly) high intelligence is not sufficient to succeed as a leader. There are many other factors to consider. Case in point: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, two smart people that failed in most important respects as President for different reasons.

Re:Bush

[Cyberdyne]

You're forgetting lawyers. Tony Blair is a lawyer...

As is his wife - who makes a fortune out of human "rights" cases, many of them created by her husband's Human Rights Act. *cough*conflict of interest?*cough*

OTOH, "behind every sleazy lawyer is a sleazy client" - lawyers distort facts to serve their client's interests, politicians do it to get power, journalists do it to get money. I'd rank politicians as the worst in that respect, followed by journalists: at least lawyers help someone else in the process! (Of course, Blair manages to combine two of those categories, making him worse still...)

Re:Bush

[0x00000dcc]

Ok , using a left-winged extremist source (this article actually has the nuts to call Newsweek "Clinton haters". This, the same mag whose cover once featured Newt Gingrich with the huge caption "Loser".) like americanpolitics.com does not help credibility in proving a point.

If that were the case, I could do the same with Al Gore's grades

Re:Bush

[0x00000dcc]

I would prefer an honest President to either.

It is really difficult after being lied to to believe anything the man says.

I agree. I'm glad Clinton is out of office. And that whole Kosovo/Milosevic regime change thing, and all the innocent people bombed in that country because of him ... glad that's all over.

Re:Bush

[SN74S181]

Al Gore? The absentee slumlord who couldn't even carry the electoral votes in his own home state?

(if he'd gotten the Tennessee electoral votes, he wouldn't have needed the Florida votes to win. What is it his local constituency knows about their 'favorite son' that keeps them from voting for him?)

Re:Bush

[Zeinfeld]

"promised not to bust the budget" I'll tell you what. The budget was already worked out a year before 9/11. They weren't anticipating any wars.

They were not anticipating anything. The numbers for the tax cut were phony when the tax cut was proposed, the war and the recession have made the deficit worse but they are not the cause.

A responsible President would have recinded or delayed the tax cuts when it became apparent how serious the deficit was going to be. Even if the tax cuts were redirected from being targetted at the very very rich (1% get over 40% of the benefit) to poor and middle income earners it would at least have had some stimulative effect.

When a guy lies about his criminal record and went AWOL from the army he has forfeited the right to run as a 'character' candidate.

Re:Bush

[0x00000dcc]

Comparing Kosovo to Iraq is stupid.

Actually, it's not. The arguement is that innocent people will die from the bombs. This happens in either case, Iraq or Kosovo. You say the purpose was to eliminate ethnic cleansing. If war is bad because it kills people, then your Kosovo war is just as bad. Selling it as a way to end ethnic cleansing is pretty much on the same level as ending Saddam's gassing of the Kurds and the torture of innocent civilians. Tell, why would you care only about people in Kosovo dying, but not the people dead at the hand of Saddam Hussein? Are you a racist? I don't think so, maybe just a bit politically biased towards leftist politicians, and not necessarily their actions. Personally I supported both presidents, because it was the right thing to do in both cases.

Bush just wants some dough for himself and his buddies out of the Iraqi oil.

I love this one. Unfortunatly, I live in the real world and would like to see some proof about "the buddies" - I can't just unobjectivly accept "theories" that my political team throws at me, I try to think with an open mind .Oh, and the one about "We're going to war so you can drive an SUV." I actually saw a sign in San Francisco that said "No blood for Jews."

than to a right wing christian ayatollah - the republican right is NO DIFFERENT from the extremist muslims.

Amazing how a political ideology can try to cloak itself in an all-inclusive and peaceful shroud only to spew vitriolic hate about those who are different from them politically.

Re:Bush

[bellings]

I'll rather have a man with an IQ of 129 that has excellent intrapersonal/leadership skills

I would appreciate that also. Any idea when such a person could be convinced to run for office?

Re:Bush

[tres]

Nah, although living in proximity to a bunch of Clearchannel zombies chanting "United We Stand" scares me more and more all the time, there's still some sanity over here.

I used to wonder how people could let Adolph Hitler do what he did. Now I'm living in the midst of it. Let me tell you how it works: fracture dissent through fear, demonize a minority population and ride the ignorance inherent in nationalism and zealous religion by uniting 'merikans against the rest of the world.

Remember, we elected someone else. I have to believe we still would, and will elect someone else again.

The "supreme" court, decided that tallying votes wasn't all that important.

We elected Gore, they selected prezitend retard.

Re:Bush

[Horizon_99]

Or as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom put it:

"To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of a summary: people are a problem."

Re:Bush

[nagora]

Sorry, mis-remembered his anti-social activities: he was a drunk driver, not (as far as I know) a wife-beater. So he was only a danger to strangers rather than his family. Same as today, really.

TWW

Re:Bush

[MillionthMonkey]

> Comparing Kosovo to Iraq is stupid.
Actually, it's not. The arguement is that innocent people will die from the bombs. This happens in either case, Iraq or Kosovo. You say the purpose was to eliminate ethnic cleansing. If war is bad because it kills people, then your Kosovo war is just as bad. Selling it as a way to end ethnic cleansing is pretty much on the same level as ending Saddam's gassing of the Kurds and the torture of innocent civilians. Tell, why would you care only about people in Kosovo dying, but not the people dead at the hand of Saddam Hussein? Are you a racist?

In Kosovo, genocide was happening up to and including the actual time of the war. The gassing of the Kurds happened in 1988, and Saddam's political repression, while reprehensible, was in no way comparable to what was going on in Kosovo and in fact that level of human rights abuse is still occurring in almost a hundred countries. But I suppose pointing out simple facts like that makes me a "racist".

Re:Bush

[kent_eh]

Sadly, one of the defining characteristics of such a person would be that they would not be egotistical enough to enter a nation-wide popularity contest. I generally regard anyone who chooses to stand for election to be unelectable on those grounds. This makes voting difficult.


Zaphod Beeblebrox for president?

Re:Bush

[Politburo]

Yeah. Clinton was already president for 8 years :(

Re:Bush

[Politburo]

Tennessee didn't vote for him because the Southeast has departed from the Democratic stronghold it used to be. Remember, they hadn't voted for him directly since about 1988.

if he'd gotten the Tennessee electoral votes, he wouldn't have needed the Florida votes to win.

Yes, but because it was so close, you can say "If he had gotten _______ (any state he lost), he wouldn't have needed the Florida votes."

Re:Bush

[pi_rules]

I would appreciate that also. Any idea when such a person could be convinced to run for office?

Hmm.. maybe Ross Perot is up for another go at it?

I hear Ted Nugent is going to run for Governor of Michigan in 2006. That'll be a hoot. He's got my vote.

Re:Bush

[SN74S181]

It's almost unheard of for a Favorite Son candidate to not carry his own state.

And yes, the Dixiecrats don't carry the same weight they used to in the South. There are still former Ku Klux Klan leaders who are Democratic Senators, however. Hint- it's someone who kept fairly quiet during the whole Trent Lott lynching.

Re:Bush

[rnd()]

Wrong. The best thing to do would be to lower taxes further so that Americans can invest and risk their own money rather than trusting the government to do so. BTW, asking congress to lower taxes is like asking a kid to give up his allowance.

Further, there is no moral justification for progressive taxation. Of course the richest Americans will benefit most from a reversal of progressive taxation, since they have had to suffer under it the longest.

The other thing that you have missed is that a minimal tax cut will likely fail to stimulate the economy.

Laffer curve models describe the governmnent's revenue maximizing tax strategy. The Reagan era tax cuts (cutting taxes from 70% down to 40% for the very rich) did actually result in those very rich people paying more dollars in taxes to the government. Further, there is no reason to believe that the 40% level is anywhere near the optimal point on the laffer curve for the very rich.

What you witnessed in financial markets after 9/11 was the result of widespread uncertainty about the solidity of those organizations. Would the insurance industry survive? Would markets be able to continue functioning? Bush's focus on eliminating the double tax on dividends rightly puts shareholders' incentives in line with those of CEOs and board members. The double tax led investors to believe that there were good reasons why they were not receiving a dividend, which was part of an overall deception that allowed corporate leaders to act in ways that were largely unscrutinized by those who provide capital (shareholders).

Once the double tax is gone, companies will have no reason not to pay dividends, and investors will be able to rationally decide whether the company needs that money for growth, or if it is just using it to inflate the stock price, etc. This will strengthen the underpinnings of our financial institutions and restore investor confidence. Confidence in what? Confidence in the idea that markets are operating on accurate information: That one's dollars are going toward the company that is actually performing the best.

Re:Bush

[Politburo]

ITS ROBERT BYRD HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!! Yes i know! He has admitted it, and talks about it! Not ashamed of the past. Too bad it's all you can talk about. And too bad the GOP doesn't believe people can change (like going from an alcoholic to president!)

Re:Bush

[Some Dumbass...]

Comparing Kosovo to Iraq is stupid.

Actually, it's not. The arguement is that innocent people will die from the bombs.

No, there were many arguments against the Iraq war, including:

* The lack of international support. Note that despite popular belief in the US, the rest of the world didn't like Hussein and weren't necessarily against fighting him. Hans Blix said on CNN that he felt that he didn't sense pacifism among UN delegates, but rather a sense that a procedure had to be followed. In other words, if those inspectors could have found enough evidence, or if the US could have presented enough evidence, then the UN would have voted for war. This is also why France and other nations said that if Iraq used chemical weapons in the war, they'd jump right in. That evidence just never materialized (and still hasn't).

* The lack of a clear rationale for the war (first terrorism, then real but long-since-past crimes, then "to finish what we started", then WMDs, none of which were sufficiently proven to compel the UN). This is of course related to that first argument.

* The fact that Iraq was already crippled by international sanctions while more dangerous nations (e.g. North Korea) were running free. Also related to that first argument.

* The way the US supports dictatorships (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) and genocidal governments (e.g. Turkey, re. both the Kurds and the Greeks of Cyprus) while trying to justify a war against an enemy nation (in part) on those grounds. Also related to that first argument.

Notice a pattern here? This is what the rest of the world was thinking this whole time: "The US is messing with the Middle East again? Probably just more oil politics. Just like the US, to do whatever's best for themselves without thinking about the rest of the world."

* The lack of a plan to rebuild Iraq, especially one which accounted for disparate needs of the various ethnic factions in Iraq (e.g. the Kurds want a homeland).

* The argument that with the nature of the US/Britian/Iraq relationship in the past decade (Iraq was bombed regularly during that time, plus there were a few no-fly-zone run-ins) that some other nation should have done the job. The US did have a _few_ allies, you know...

* The argument that the US should have just assasinated Hussein. Wasn't that first missile strike an attempt to do just this? If you believe the US, then Iraq would have been happy to get rid of him, and then with the UN's help the remaining government could have been steered in the right direction. Now, I'm no fan of assasination, but if the alternative is a war, it's probably the better choice.

And so on.

None of these arguments applied in the case of Kosovo, which is why comparing Iraq and Kosovo is foolish.

Re:Bush

[caouchouc]

Amazing how a political ideology can try to cloak itself in an all-inclusive and peaceful shroud only to spew vitriolic hate about those who are different from them politically.

Don't be stupid, now. The spew came from a person, not a political ideology. Political ideologies have a hard time spewing anything, as they're not people and can't speak.
It's hard to take you seriously when you acuse an abstract concept of vitriol, and in a rather venomous tone at that. Even if you were to correct yourself in that you refer to people who follow an ideology, it's still a baseless generalization.

Re:Bush

[0x00000dcc]

It's hard to take you seriously when you acuse an abstract concept of vitriol, and in a rather venomous tone at that.

WOW you REALLY turned the tables on me there! Boy I really look like the hateful one NOW, don't I? How funny. You might as well have said "In SOVIET RUSSIA, YOU are the one who spews vitriol!"

Even if you were to correct yourself in that you refer to people who follow an ideology, it's still a baseless generalization.

Fortunatly, I think most people have the ability to reason through my statement. My apologies for offending you. The question is, would you afford others whose political positions are not in alignment with your own the same dignification?

Re:Bush

[caouchouc]

Boy I really look like the hateful one NOW, don't I?

Both you and the poster you originally replied to, actually. The Soviet Russia joke wouldn't have quite fit in this case.
Not that I'd use such a tired cliche in the first place, though.

The question is, would you afford others whose political positions are not in alignment with your own the same dignification?

Of course. I've done just that.
I might add that you don't even know what my political position is, though you seem to have made an assumption.

Re:Bush

[0x00000dcc]

which is why comparing Iraq and Kosovo is foolish.

You've made some decent points, but I still think it's reaching a bit to try to say that comparing the two is foolish. I'm certainly not saying this war had just as much of a clear cut case as Kosovo, or as international support as did the first Gulf war or Kosovo (although I believe Clinton circumvented the UN and went through NATO on that one, correct?). The majority of the antiwar proponents out there from my experience at least just cite "No blood for oil" or "Don't kill babies." In that sense, the two can certainly be compared and hardly discernable, because although innocent people did die on both occasions, it was prophilactic against future deaths. When one gets to take it a step further, certainly I will be the first to admit the Kosovo situation more effectivly warranted military action.

Where I think we differ is that I don't think the difference between the two in urgency, be they different reasons, is as profound as the case that you are trying to build here. But for those who are putting up the argument that war is bad because it kills people, the two are quite comparable because it shows sheer bipartisanship. It makes me wonder why there is not more outspokenness against Liebermann (who I plan to vote for!) and Edwards for supporting the president, but of course we all know it's politics. As someone who leans completely in the middle politically, that infuriates me.

"The US is messing with the Middle East again? Probably just more oil politics. Just like the US, to do whatever's best for themselves without thinking about the rest of the world."

I agree, and I'm a bit afraid of the lack of diplomacy we've had lately. I fear the "other" Osama's that could be running around now. But much of this is perception. How can we change those people's perceptions of us, provided we are not immediatly involved in machinations against their people? If we ARE, they are justified, and yes, there have been times where we have been wrong. But should we stop doing what we feel is right because of what others THINK of us? It is difficult to balance diplomacy with firmness, indeed.

If you believe the US, then Iraq would have been happy to get rid of him,

I'm not sure if it can be that simplistic. Remember, the guy had a 100% unanimous election in his favor. That screams of a terror-run regime. Vote against Saddam means off with your head. Rising up against him is certainly not any easier.

That evidence just never materialized (and still hasn't).

I think it would be wise to afford the same patience to finding the weapons now after the war that was so desperatly asked for the inspectors to "do their job", since intellegence points to weapons being moved in mobile laboratories. Iraq's a big country, I wouldn't jump the gun.

Lastly, when people start to condemn only the wars that republican presidents were a part of, it makes their credibility crumble into a conglomerated mess of bipartisanship. I have to question people's motives just as others question Bush's. As a centrist, I have both fiercly questioned Clinton's enemies (that whole thing with the Lewinsky scandel was damn near entrapment for the guy, although he really irked me when he lied to the people, and entrapment or not it does not excuse lying) as well as Bush's now. I do not like it when people jump the gun to the "oil" argument. Perhaps an independent counsel should be sought to clear up the matter on Bush's intentions. I'm all for that one, partially because that whole concept sounds like paranoia gone rampant in the minds of those who can't stand loosing an election, but if the IS wrongdoing, I would like to know personally.

Re:Bush

[0x00000dcc]

Both you and the poster you originally replied to, actually.

Wow, with that kind of reasoning, your comments are hateful as well, as long as we're reaching.

I might add that you don't even know what my political position is, though you seem to have made an assumption.

I'm not sure that a specific political position applies in this case; there are fools of both sides of the fence, and I'd love to know how you arrived at the conclusion that I've made an assumption. I've given so such indication. I simply observed that there doesn't seem to be much tolerance on your side, as was apparent from the "don't be stupid" remark.

The Soviet Russia joke wouldn't have quite fit in this case.

Actually it would, if you're reaching.

I thought it worked quite well, personally.

Re:Bush

[caouchouc]

I'm not sure that a specific political position applies in this case; there are fools of both sides of the fence

Since when are there only two political positions? For that matter, how is it relevent to the poorly-chosent statement I'm chastizing you about?

and I'd love to know how you arrived at the conclusion that I've made an assumption. I've given so such indication.

You stated this:
The question is, would you afford others whose political positions are not in alignment with your own the same dignification?
As if I were of the same political alignment as the poster you replied to, defending his statements and maligning yours based soley on the political alignment of both posters.

I simply observed that there doesn't seem to be much tolerance on your side, as was apparent from the "don't be stupid" remark.

Tolerance is one thing, but acceptance is another entirely. There's no politics whatsoever behind my comments to you. There was a rather large fallacy in the logic of your biting comment to the original poster, and you were vitriolic towards that poster's political ideals; the very thing you were accusing him/her (or by the wordage of your post, that entire political ideology) of:
Amazing how a political ideology can try to cloak itself in an all-inclusive and peaceful shroud only to spew vitriolic hate about those who are different from them politically.
I found that rather stupid, and interjected.

Wow, with that kind of reasoning, your comments are hateful as well, as long as we're reaching.

Good to see you've come to grips with what it was you were doing in the first place with that original post. ;)

Re:Bush

[NDPTAL85]

Anthony Blair is one of the greatest Prime Ministers Britain has ever had. I'd rank only Churchill and Thatcher (for her dissolving the ownership of the commanding heights of your economy and privitising them thus preventing the UK's economy from retarding like the rest of Europe's) above him.

As an American I salute Blair and can only hope that someday the people of the UK will realize just how great of a leader he is.

Re:Bush

[Cyberdyne]

Anthony Blair is one of the greatest Prime Ministers Britain has ever had. I'd rank only Churchill and Thatcher (for her dissolving the ownership of the commanding heights of your economy and privitising them thus preventing the UK's economy from retarding like the rest of Europe's) above him.

As an American I salute Blair and can only hope that someday the people of the UK will realize just how great of a leader he is.

I agree with all of that - from a non-UK perspective, he's great. Unfortunately, his domestic policies so far have been the opposite; he stood up to corrupt liars like Chirac over Iraq, but has so far appeared determined to grovel to the Franco-German agenda on domestic issues, from EU-wide arrest warrants (instead of extradition), to the Euro, and the Euro-army. Hopefully recent events have changed his mind, at least on that last element...

Ironically, Blair was originally elected as an MP on the back of a promise to withdraw from the EEC, as he attacked Thatcher for "getting us into" the Falklands conflict and pledged to abandon nuclear weapons and cruise missiles!

Re:Bush

[Nedlum]

I, for one, think he has performed very well, even if not perfectly.

I'm sorry, but I don't quite see what you're refering to. What exactly has Bush done that makes you feel he's done well:
He won a war in Afganastan? (Is there any nation that couldn't beat the Afgan army?)
He passed a tax cut?
He defeated Iraq with merely the use of the world's most powerful army?

I really can't think of a real good call on his part. The only thing he has going for him is that he's the September Eleventh President; he didn't rise to the ocasion, it fell to him. And if the rest of the nation realises that, then he can go back to Texas.

Re:Bush

[FallLine]

He won a war in Afganastan? (Is there any nation that couldn't beat the Afgan army?)

LOL, please read up on your history. You mean like the USSR at its peak with over a half million troops? They lost at least 15,000 soviet soldiers (their own stats, not including their Afghan soldiers fighting on their behalf) and toiled for roughly 10 years before they decided to call it quits. So, to answer your question, yes, many people in the media actually were questioning our ability to wage war and shut down al queda in Afghanistian without ultimately loosing--whether we could beat them no holds barred is an academic question. They were predicting another Vietnam, especially because we relied heavily on special ops instead of brute force. How many did we lose in reality? A couple dozen. Did we achieve our goals? Yes. Was victory attained short order? Yes. Did we have to deploy hundreds of thousands of troops? No.

He passed a tax cut?

Yes. I support the tax cut, but, besides that, it took a certain amount of political muscle to enough the Dems and many more centrist individuals in the GOP.

He defeated Iraq with merely the use of the world's most powerful army?

Yes, Iraq is part of it. He invaded Iraq because it was the right thing to do, despite naysayers of all stripes, despite UN finger wagging, and so on. I give him tremendous credit for being independent, having the confidence to act with conviction, and for taking that sort of political risk. We fought the war in a way that was not entirely traditional either and was wildely critized in the media (until just before we walked into the center of baghdad). We won the war in far less time, with far fewer friendly casualities, and relatively few civilian casualties than was generally predicted. Even on purely humanitaries grounds it was a success and it was worth the price. Eliminating Saddam and his WMD program WAS the right thing to do, especially given the fact that the cost is now essentially a known quantity. I think Clinton would have been tempted to continue with sanctions

he didn't rise to the ocasion, it fell to him. And if the rest of the nation realises that, then he can go back to Texas.

Sure. Whatever you say-it just fell in his lap and everything would have been the same if it were another President? If that is the case, then do you want to tell me that Clinton or Gore would have gone to war with Afghanistan--especially in the same way? How about Iraq? With respect to Iraq, at least, both Clinton and Gore publically critized any war on Iraq without UN approval. Either they were being less than forthright or that IS a difference right there. You may disagree with that action, but that is a very important difference and it is a difference that I come out in support of (Bush).

Re:Bush

[Nedlum]

Fine, sure. The USSR didn't fare well in Afganastan. However, I'd like to point out that, unless I'm mistaken, they weren't losing the war all at once. They set up a pro-Soviet government. They lasted ten years in there, even with the CIA giving Afgan fighters the latest in millitary hardware. We've been there one and a half, with no world power aiding the resitance, and we're already getting tired of it. They're not kicking us out, but we haven't been there long enough. Lets check back in a few more years.

The tax cut? How much political muscle does it take for a popular president to force his will? And on the other hand, how is a hundred billion dollars a year supposed to jump start a five trillion dollar economy

On Iraq: how are the WMD a "known quantity"? And I don't mean a container that held anthrax in 1995. Until I see ton upon ton of VX and Sarin, I'm not buying it.

I do agree, though, that it would have been different with Gore or Clinton.
I think that we'd have Osama by now.

Re:Bush

[0x00000dcc]

Good morning, my friend :-). Glad to see you responded. I've thoroughly enjoyed this little debate, although I question whether it's truly pragmatic or not, since the original thread was political in nature, not about writing style.

I'm not sure that a specific political position applies in this case; there are fools of both sides of the fence

Since when are there only two political positions? For that matter, how is it relevent to the poorly-chosent statement I'm chastizing you about?

Oh here we go again with your projections about "what I'm 'really' saying". It appears that you want so desperatly to find a 'problem' with my statements that you will attempt to read into my statements. Since when did I imply that there are only two political positions? Fools on both sides of the fence refers to the phenomenon that extremes exist sometimes in argumentative viewpoints.

For that matter, how is it relevent to the poorly-chosent statement I'm chastizing you about?

I don't believe that it is, and that's why I said: I'm not sure that a specific political position applies in this case.

And you were vitriolic towards that poster's political ideals; the very thing you were accusing him/her (or by the wordage of your post, that entire political ideology) of:

and are you not being vitriolic towards my statements as well, by sheer action of scrutinizing my words? If not vitriolic, perhaps defensive? If you reach far enough that my original statement was indeed vitriolic, then under that same rationale you are doing the same thing.

I think it's very interesting that you are criticizing someone's choice of writing style. Should one not be allowed a creative license to anthropomorphize? I don't think so, especially if one had made specific observations about the object in which they seek to give action. Do I find one person's statements 'stupid' because they chose to generalize? Should one stick to only terse, exacting, and mundane ways of writing, as to make sure not to offend someone because of the way that the other person might perceive their ramblings? I don't really believe that's very prudent. Is generalizing stupid? Sure, in a statistical plot, outliers can skew data such that means are not what they appear to be, and data in any ongoing statistical collection need to be regarded as dynamic, provided that more data will be collected. When arriving at conclusions, the most seasoned scientist knows this, and will make valued decisions regarding the data according to subject size, existence of outliers, etc. If you see the metaphor here (note I didn't say 'forgive' ;) ), we all do the same thing with politics, but there are some who don't scrutinize the data before making such generalizations. I am not saying my opinion is better or more correct than others, hell I could be completely wrong, in which case I would love to know, because such is the only way in which to learn. I would say though, that I think a bit more carefully than the average joe about such matters, and that generalizations, on the wings of opinion, should not be attempted to be banished at every available opportunity. And that's exactly what they should be - informed opinions. Of course political outliers exist that can make one group appear in a single way. Al Sharpton and Strom Thurmond both come to mind on that one. Comments that they make may thwart people's opinions about the ideology to which they cling into a certain direction. But are they not a part of that ideology because of such statements? How exactly did they get outside the group of their belonging alignment by virtue of their statements? No, they still belong to that group, but there are some that are quick to point out that they are outliers and they do not "truly belong" into the group.

However, to go back to the original statement: Amazing how a political ideology can try to cloak itself in an all-inclusive and peaceful shroud only to spew

Re:Bush

[FallLine]

Fine, sure. The USSR didn't fare well in Afganastan. However, I'd like to point out that, unless I'm mistaken, they weren't losing the war all at once. They set up a pro-Soviet government. They lasted ten years in there, even with the CIA giving Afgan fighters the latest in millitary hardware.

Nonsense. The Soviets were about as successful in Afghanistan as the United States was in Vietnam--it was an abysmal failure by any count. They controlled some points, like we did,. They established a government, like we did. But the point is that they never accomplished a lasting anything and they lost thousands of their own lives and killed thousands more. So yes, they failed to accomplish their objectives--they lost. We have accomplished our stated objective, namely, to destroy one hell of a strong hold for Al Queda. Many people predicted that we couldn't even do that. Afghanistan's ultimate success as a Western-like democracy is a secondary objective, a nice and worthy one, but hardly necessary to justify the former.

The tax cut? How much political muscle does it take for a popular president to force his will? And on the other hand, how is a hundred billion dollars a year supposed to jump start a five trillion dollar economy.

You do know the tax cut was passed BEFORE 9/11 right? Whatever popularity he had there cannot even be argued to have fallen into his lap. He certainly did not get the automatic support of TWELVE Democratic Senators. Many people in the media were predicting that it'd never come to pass or that it was a long shot. Jumpstarting a falling economy is not the ONLY objective of a tax cut. One huge reason is just plain old justice--many people just have pay too much taxes. Another reason is LONG term economic support; history has taught us that unspent money WILL be spent to create even more NEW programs. The trouble is that once a program is created it is very hard to get rid of. They're much easier to create than they are to destroy. Lastly, large tax cuts can provide significant stimulus in the short term provided that they are properly targeted. Remember that the benefit to the economy is not just the sum of the tax cut, it's the size of the multiplier effect. A properly targeted tax cut to, say, wealthier people or busineses, who are, in turn, more inclined to invest, cause the effect to be multiplied many times over. For instance, if I invest 1m dollars into a company, that company is apt to buy more equipment and hire more people. Those employees will in turn increase their spending. The suppliers of my company will too and so on. Every step is multiplied--1 trillion USD over 10 years can easily equal 20 to 30 trillion in actual wealth creation.

Sure, not every firm is going to invest, many might just use the resources to bolster their reserve, but those that recieve investment are those that are most apt to expand. There are still a good number of employers who do not lack a market, they just lack access to cheap capital. This sort of money can have a very real effect.

On Iraq: how are the WMD a "known quantity"? And I don't mean a container that held anthrax in 1995. Until I see ton upon ton of VX and Sarin, I'm not buying it.

The WMD aren't a known quantity, but the COST of the war is. As I said, even on purely humanitarian grounds, even completely ignoring the millions of lives that might have been saved from WMD by our actions, it was worth it. A couple dozen Allied troops and a couple hundred Iraqi and innocent lives is a PITTANCE in comparison to the amount of lives that were lost as a direct result of Saddam's rule.

As for the whole case of WMD--How many tons of nukes does it take? How easy do you think these are to find in a country the size of California? What makes you think we would magically know AND be able to produce the kinds of evidence that you and others demanded before it was too late to stop him

Re:Bush

[NDPTAL85]

Seeing as how the EU is moving towards a "United States of Europe" concept whats wrong with EU-wide arrest warrants?

Re:Bush

[Cyberdyne]

Seeing as how the EU is moving towards a "United States of Europe" concept whats wrong with EU-wide arrest warrants?

First, read this story - about a Belgian court trying to prosecute General Franks for his role in the Iraq war. Then bear in mind, with the proposed warrant system, any British soldier could simply be arrested, in Britain, by Belgian police, to face similar charges. For that matter, Blair himself could be arrested that way - and the UK would be powerless to stop it legally.

Then look recent prosecutions - Yahoo!, for example - by French courts. Freedom of speech is giving much less weight there. Then remember French law is very different from British and American law: the burden of proof is reversed - guilty until proven innocent!

Chilling enough, I think. Finally, I would point out the US itself doesn't have such a system! Instead, an extradition request is made, allowing your arrest in that state by that state's officials, followed by a court appearance in that state. (Article IV of the Constitution.) This grants EU member states a power over each others' citizens which is denied even to the States within the US - even without the grotesque parody of justice practiced in parts of Europe, I find this alarming...

Re:Bush

[stanmann]

So a flat tax of 19% on all income greater than $12000 will cause Mr B to starve??? A well planned flat tax will take into account cost of living... Some people will still not pay taxes.

Re:Bush

[stanmann]

in 1996 Sudan invited the US to arrange to take Bin Laden off their hands and turn him over to the Saudi's. Guess what Clinton sat on his hands. So I KNOW that Clinton couldn't have done any better.

Re:Bush

[Hognoxious]

A sordid past association does not in itself scientifically invalidate a theory or a technique of measurement.

Someone who knows that should also know that eugenics is no more racist than chemistry is.

on the positive side...

[inkedmn]

at least he's got a bright future in politics or with Microsoft's QA department

Re:on the positive side...

[MoonFog]

Actually, he claims to already have a masters degree:

On 2003 April 5th, a Saturday, at the age of 33, I threw away my dignity, mocked my Ivy League education, disgraced my Master's degree, and proved, in just over three hours, that humans can do things "The System" didn't anticipate. Things didn't turn out exactly as planned, but it was a crazy experience!

I'm not American, so I'm not to familiar with SAT tests but do you send in your SAT when applying for a job when you've already got a Masters ?

Re:on the positive side...

[foog]

I'm not American, so I'm not to familiar with SAT tests but do you send in your SAT when applying for a job when you've already got a Masters ?

no. not ever, to the best of my knowledge, though it's possible that a background check might include your high school transcript, SAT scores, etc.

Re:on the positive side...

[MoonFog]

no. not ever, to the best of my knowledge, though it's possible that a background check might include your high school transcript, SAT scores, etc.
Ok, I get it, but if someone where to run a background check on this guy, would this SAT come up ? If so, it seems kinda stupid to do something like this, even if it is just to have fun...

Re:on the positive side...

[hazem]

I don't think I'd ever want to be associated with an organization that would look at me, then say "well sure you have a masters degree, you only got a 200 on the SAT. I'm sorry, we can't hire you/give you a security clearance/let you ride in our airplane/marry our daughter."

Actually this might be a good sanity filter! Where do I sign up?

Re:on the positive side...

[Alsee]

but if someone where to run a background check on this guy, would this SAT come up?

Well, if I were reading over a background check and I saw a 1200+ SAT, a masters degree, and a "perfect" 400 SAT I'd probably be more likely to hire the guy. It shows he's got a sense of humor, a brain, he's unconventional, he's creative, he enjoys a challenge.

On the other hand I'm not a corporate drone personel director. An uptight suit might reject him for exactly the same reasons I listed, lol.

-

Re:on the positive side...

[TopShelf]

Believe it or not, but there are companies that hire like this, in thinking that by doing so they refine their list of potential candidates. I'm at the opposite end of the scale - I scored well on tests, but got a lousy GPA in college because I couldn't bring myself to give a damn for most of the time. My career since then has gone well, but there are many places that I don't have a chance of getting hired because of a GPA from years and years ago...

Re:on the positive side...

[DuctTape]

Microsoft has a QA department?

DT

Best line

[GreggyBUIUC]

As I can only assume that this page is going to be slashdotted in the next few minutes, I feel its important to share with everyone the best part of the page...

Premise -- dude tries really hard to do really bad on the exam, ends up by accident getting 2 questions right, and scores a 400 on the exam.

"This experiment grew on me as time passed by, and now I am thinking of other
funny angles, like asking Princeton Review or Kaplan if they would be interested
in being able to make the claim that a person who participated in their SAT
preparation course improved his test score by 1200 points!"
--------

Re:Best line

[BurritoWarrior]

My guess is he got two "right" because those questions got thrown out and therefore everyone was marked correct on them.

Re:Best line

[Uart]

he would bring a calculator so that he could determine the correct answers and b sure not to choose them, silly. If you want a zero you gotta work for it, blindly guessing still gives you a 25% predicted success rate - thats for chumps, this guy was going for the gold!

Re:Best line

[Alsee]

My guess is he got two "right" because...

Both questions were in the geometry math section. My guess is that he's weak in geometry. He probably tried to solve them and got the wrong answers on more than two geomtry questions. With one wrong answer eliminated (because thought it was the right answer) he's more likely to pick the right answer by accident.

-

Re:Best line

[m3000]

He brought the calculator to make sure he would get it wrong. He calculated the right answer first, to make sure he didn't pick that one.

Lowest REAL SAT score?

[LamerX]

I would like to see what the real, honestly trying, low score is. I bet that nobody has all that low of a score...

Re:Lowest REAL SAT score?

[inaeldi]

I guess if the person can't speak English, then s/he would be hooped.

Re:Lowest REAL SAT score?

[Scorpio1]

When I was in high school, this incredibly feeble-minded girl in my class got a combined scored of 600. I have yet to hear of someone whose combined score was lower than that and was honestly trying. I mean, one half of mine beat hers.

Re:Lowest REAL SAT score?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Mmmm...ask football recruiters for big schools like Miami and Ohio. I bet they could tell you. I bet you would be horrified.

Re:Lowest REAL SAT score?

[Ummon_i]

one of the moron football players in my HS got either a 560 or a 580. That was confirmed

Re:Lowest REAL SAT score?

[zzyzx]

I knew a 590 combined, but she got frustrated with it and started making patterns with the scantron sheet.

Re:Lowest REAL SAT score?

[inaeldi]

Haven't read the parent post, have you?

So...

[WegianWarrior]

...getting a low score on your SAT means you're stupid*, unless you want to score low, in which cause a low score is nerdy... it makes a weid kind of sense.

Disclaimer: We don't have SATs in Norway. However, we do run all our raw military recruits (and remeber we have a military system based on conscriptions) thru a simular sets of tests which includes mathskills, skills in norwegian, skills in english, logicskills and a light touch at the physical sciences. Never heard of anyone willingly aiming for a bad score, as that would land them in a shitty job...

*) Wether a person is 'stupid' or 'smart' has little to do with raw inteligense.

Re:So...

[MoonFog]

Those test doesn't mean much though. Unless you fail everything on the intelligence part and end up in "Storm"(Norwegian Storm unit, Mechanized Infantry)

Re:So...

[DNS-and-BIND]

I'm somewhat of a military buff myself. I met a Norwegian once, and I knew that they all serve in the military unless they're cowards. I asked him in a friendly, inquisitive manner, "So, what kind of infantry weapon does Norway use?" "A gun," he replied. Undeterred, I asked, "What kind of APC did you serve in?" He said, "A green one."

No wonder the USA gave up on the conscript army concept after the Vietnam experience.

Re:So...

[MyHair]

Never heard of anyone willingly aiming for a bad score, as that would land them in a shitty job...

Could they willingly retake the test later? In this case the man is in his thirties and had already taken his GRE (after college graduation, where SATs are generally taken in high school). I don't think anybody even looks at SATs after you have a degree, especially a Masters, so it was no-risk folly for him while surrounded by people to whom it really mattered for college admission. You can retake the SAT as much as you want, though.

I didn't think I did all that great, but I overhead my classmates proud of scores 400 points lower than mine!!!

Re:So...

[MoonFog]

Not exactly.. We train with other NATO forces once every year, and it's not like they don't know what weapons we use.
Some things are kept more secret than other, but I would have no problem saying I used AG3 weapon and served in Recon if someone asked.
Heck, some Americans even got to testshoot our weapons, as we did theirs.

Re:So...

[DNS-and-BIND]

The information is freely availible everywhere. It's more a testament to the complete lack of enthusiasm for defending his country. Imagine mandatory computer training for all citizens..."What kind of computer did you use?" "A beige one."

Re:So...

[WegianWarrior]

Unless they sign up for officer-training? No.

Re:So...

[WWWWolf]

Never heard of anyone willingly aiming for a bad score, as that would land them in a shitty job...

We have the same sort of thing in Finnish military to find potentials for the NCO / reserve officer training - two tests, if I remember correctly, one that has math skills and logic, one that tests ability to withstand pressure (They ask stupid questions about the subject's mental health repeatedly in different ways =). Of course, we were not told that was the strategy until when we got the results, everyone assumed the actual answers to the questions are important... clever.

When I did that there actually were people who did try to answer randomly. Most of these people weren't actually insane, but rather were of those 17-year-olds who had volunteered to come to the service early. Some of these individuals were unfortunately still quite immature =)

(Likewise, we don't have tests like this for academia - the decisive factor here is the matriculation examination, combined with entrance examinations for individual institutions.)

Re:So...

[Sycraft-fu]

Different situation here. The SATs are tests put out by a private group, ETS. They just happen to be tests American universities like (there are others too). Basically, ther only relivance in life is university admissions. Noone will care after that, and they aren't something that people can really check on.

However, nothing stops you from taking them again later in life. ETS is happy to take your money a second time.

Re:So...

[gl4ss]

however the time for the test is way too long, and intelligent answerer can use it to his liking (the pressure test has enough time to check the previous answers, and anyone who wants a high grade sure as hell knows what are the masculine 'right' answers.. the logic test is quite hard on time though, but it is very easy to answer so that you get under the limit to 'get' into higher military rank training..). not that the tests matter at all in most places, it's very easy to get into higher training in places where people don't want to go there. and they end up sending people who have 'flunked' the logic test too, so it doesn't actually matter that much for now except maybe in the few special places. the matriculation exam would roughly be the equivalent of SAT, though with less choice questions so it has more point to it(more expensive to arrange and check of course)...

Re:So...

[aiabx]

He may have thought you were just some Tom-Clancy-style army groupie, and was trying to tell you to piss off without being openly rude.
-aiabx

Re:So...

[DNS-and-BIND]

Nah, it wasn't like that at all. The guy genuinely had zero interest in his military service. He was a cool fellow, but I was just rather shocked at his uncaring attitude. Heck, could you serve in the army for a year and not know you carried an M-16?

Re:So...

[Xabraxas]

This reminds me of tests I have taken for jobs. They look more for consistency to your answers than what you answered specificly. Basically they ask you the same few questions repeatedly using different wording.

Re:So...

[BoneFlower]

Asvab is pathetically easy. Only the speed sections gave me trouble. My computed scores from last time- maximum in all but one of them... They go up to 130, I've got 7 130s and one 126...

Re:So...

[HuguesT]

There is a big difference between going to the Army because you are forced to or going there because you are interested.

Most people I know who did their compulsery military service ended up loathing the army with a vengeance. The usual measure of discipline was how tight you made your bed in the morning (at 6:00 am) and camaraderie was all about how fast you could open bottles of beer with your teeth. Believe it or not a lot of people do not want to live in that way.

BTW I don't like your sentence `most people do a military service unless they are cowards'. There are other reasons not to want to do a military service, such as hating discipline and the repression of independent thought. In fact doing one's military service is just going with the pack. Not doing it requires thought and action.

Re:So...

[DNS-and-BIND]

There is a big difference between going to the Army because you are forced to or going there because you are interested.

Yes, and that's exactly why the U.S. military no longer uses conscripts, and is an all-volunteer force. European armies still haven't caught on to this and fill out their forces with worse-than-useless draftees.

Re:So...

[HuguesT]

Actually most Europeans armies are already or moving to all-volunteers now, it's only a recent development though, since the end of the cold war. Before that there was a very serious possibility that Europe could be invaded by Warsaw Pact countries, which all had huge conscript armies. The remote possibility of land invasion of the US made the systematic conscription unnecessary there.

In case of land invasion you really want the cannon fodder because the threat is widespread and a volunteer-only army, while better trained, is never big enough.

So it's not a question of `catching up to the fact' than a change of circumstances.

BTW I hadn't realized that draftees were less-than-useless, or even more so than volunteers in Vietnam. What about in Israel, are they useless there too? Are you just trying to be offensive or am I too sensitive?

Every democratic country I know has some sort of deal for they citizen that basically say they can be drafted at any moment. BTW this holds for the US too.

Re:So...

[DNS-and-BIND]

In case of land invasion you want cannon fodder? Er, being a soldier in an army isn't holding a rifle and firing in the direction of the enemy any more. It's a highly technical position comparable to at least an MCSE.

Yes, conscripts were useless in Vietnam. Their units had a terrible record, frequently did not achieve their mission goals, and had a reputation for atrocities. You can't just take a kid out of the inner city, give him 60 days of training, and expect him to perform to the high level that the U.S. Army expects.

Re:So...

[HuguesT]

Not so. In case of land invasion you want everything you can throw the enemy at. That includes conscripts, for sure. Look at Iraq, they did not stop at using the so-called elite republican guard.

> Yes, conscripts were useless in Vietnam.

I wish I could find the reference, but not long ago I read an article about conscripts vs. regulars, and the findings were that in a serious enough conflict (and they had looked at Vietnam too) the line between them blurs quickly. Provided regulars and conscripts are mixed, the reality of war makes everyone perform (or not). Regulars are better trained but not necessarily well enough prepared for a real conflict, except maybe the elite sections that do see a lot of action regularly.

Look in Iraq, only a few months ago, the difficulties did not come so much from the elite Iraqi sections, but from the conscript sections. At least that's what I read in the paper.

You have to realize that the US army is one of a kind. No other can stand in its way now, but look at the tag price too. No other economy can sustain such an expensive tool (if you can call it that way)

more

[ramzak2k]

more people do this,the percentile score of the real test takers will increase.

I 'll do better!

[Newer Guy]

He got two right! Hell, That gives all a chance to do two worse then him! Let's git ceackin'!

Makes me feel good.

[Raven42rac]

Makes me feel good about my 1190, and not doing anything with my life up to this point.

Re:Makes me feel good.

[Anonymous Coward]

I also got 1190 on my SAT. I thought it was a pretty terrible score. Oddly enough, I scored better on verbal (640) than I did on math (550). Abnormal for a self-proclaimed geek, you would think. I didn't think I could even get into a state school with a score like that.

My friend goes to UC Santa Cruz and is always trying to convince me to quit my job and go to school. I'm reluctant, and a little discouraged. Do I even have a chance at getting accepted, considering my fairly crappy SAT score and mediocre grades in HS? I've been working full time in IT since I got out of HS (about 4 years). I like having a job more than I ever liked school, but after so long working at tedious jobs, and with the IT market looking so grim, I'm starting to consider it. Still, I read stories in the SF Chronicle about tougher entrance requirements, more competition, etc. Plus it's been so long since I was in a classroom, I don't know if I could ajust. Could I even get accepted? Any advice for a stagnating geek?

Re:Makes me feel good.

[Raven42rac]

Heh, I had about the same ratio of verbal to math, you are actually much better off with 4 years of experience. Just finish up a degree at night, do it in something unrelated to IT like basketweaving, criminal justice, firefighting, just in case you end up loathing IT. Hey, it could happen, just don't pigeonhole yourself into IT. I am, however, not a good fountain of advice, as I only *wish* I had a job in IT, but no one will hire me. Oh well. One Day.

Re:Makes me feel good.

[hazem]

Sign up for a class or two as a non-matriculating student. Doing well in those will count more than your SAT score.

Or take some classes at a community college (often, for lower division, the level of instruction is better - IMHO.. you have a "real" professor, rather than a student teacher), then transfer in. The standards and requirements are often different than for incoming freshmen.

Ultimately, though, go talk to the admission counselors at the school you want to attend. They'll be able to give you the most thorough answers.

Plus, by just taking a couple classes, you'll know pretty quickly if it's something you want to do - without investing much in tests and application fees.

Re:Makes me feel good.

[HanzoSan]

Go to school, this is the best time, the economy is shit, get your degree.

The SATs dont matter, spend a year at a community college, get all As, and transfer to a university.

Its that simple. You do not need to take the SATs after you prove yourself by getting enough college credits.

1250 is a 132 IQ?

[Kirby-meister]

I must be very smarty with my 1350. A friggin jeenius. 100 points more than 1250, so 132 + 100 = 232 IQ. Very jeeniousy of me.

Re:1250 is a 132 IQ?

[Tyreth]

I imagine a good IQ test measures your ability to learn and apply common knowledge.

SAT's, are they something people study and prepare for? For me, an IQ measures a person's intelligence best when they don't prepare for it - and it tests generic things which are based as little as possible on culture (unless examining general knowledge).

Re:1250 is a 132 IQ?

[cyroth]

Now looking for the "grammer" trolls

Re:1250 is a 132 IQ?

[Gareth Williams]

Um, I don't think a good IQ test should have any general knowledge questions at all, should it? How does general knowledge relate, at all, to intelligence?

Re:1250 is a 132 IQ?

[Alsee]

How does general knowledge relate, at all, to intelligence?

There are several facets to intelligence, so they test for a variety of things. One aspect of intelligence would be how fast and how thoroughly you pick up and retain general knowledge.

Unfortunately you need a very large number of questions or the results get overwhelmed by the inherent random nature of the specific knowlege you ask about. It is also extremely easy to introduce all sorts of unintended bias in what knowlege you ask for.

So you're right that it's not a very good type of question for IQ tests, but it's not entirely useless.

The real flaw was that you equated SAT with an IQ test. SAT does not claim to be an IQ test, it claims to be a "scholastic aptitude test". In this case "general knowlege" questions can be somewhat narrowed down to the sorts of knowlege that should generally be presented in average highschool classes. By narrowing down the purpose of the questions and narrowing down the range of knowledge you check for you can increase the "value" of the questions.

-

Re:1250 is a 132 IQ?

[Tyreth]

That's a significant increase. So if at 18 I have an IQ of 100, I can expect it to be ~140 by the time I am 60? 130+ is considered genius I believe.

I do this all the time:

[westyvw]

Its the Scotty syndrome: It will take a long time, I dont know enough about it! I will try hard to get it done in a week. Then you get it done in 3 days, and everyone loves you. Look stupid, be smart.

monkeys on the ACT

[mjdth]

it has been proven that monkeys can score a 12 on the ACT.

this is pretty sad being that i know someone who actually got a 12.

Re:monkeys on the ACT

[magnum3065]

Yes, and given enough monkeys, typewriters and time they'll eventually type out the source code to Linux or something, but that doesn't mean they're smart enough to do it intentionally.

Re:monkeys on the ACT

[NevermindPhreak]

where, exactly, was this proven? ive heard this statement be used countless times (mainly in making fun of someone in my school who got a 9), but i find it hard to believe that a monkey can fill in those damn tiny circles with a pencil well enough to even score, let alone score a 12. :P ill just let it go as rumor.

Re:monkeys on the ACT

[Davak]

Given an infinite number of shotgun-carrying hicks and an infinite number of road signs -- evidentually you will find a passage of Shakespeare in braille on some back road in Mississippi.

Davak

Re:The need for a well rounded education

[westyvw]

dont make fun of this.

Its very important to me:

WWJD: is just too important to make fun.

WWJD:?
WHO would Jesus DO?

On topic, ok:
What test would Jesus take?
Doesnt Matter, hes been replaced with Col. Saunders, cause hes got popcorn chicken to throw into Gods mouth.

What does it measure though?

[GreggyBUIUC]

Scoring well on the SAT, or any other standardized test does little more than to prove that you can do well on standardized tests.

I'm in college now, and did relatively well on my SAT, but I'm a slacker... especially when it comes to academics. Just a plain lazy bastard.

The thing is that I had alot of friends who didn't do so well on the SAT, but they got into their undergrad school and worked their butt off and are now on their way to Med school. Now granted, in order to get into a good one, you still have to go through a nasty little M-CAT, something I know nothing about.

It seems though that something like the SAT shows little more than how you prepare for a very specific test and how you perform on a very specific day. What it shows to a lesser degree is your level of persistence, self discipline and perhaps most notably, your common sense. I have alot of friends who are going to be sucessful at what they do someday, but just don't do well sitting in a room answering multiple choice questions for three hours.

Perhaps this is why its a blessing that your standardized test scores are not the only critieria for admitance into higher learning institutions.

Re:What does it measure though?

[claygate]

I fall into that same "i don't do anything at school category". On the SAT I received a 1270 after no preparation. I actually came home at 1:30 the night before the test from playing a show with my band. Turns out I get into a top tier school and just go to waste as well. I have a GPA well over 3.0 but I do absolutely NO work compared to most people. I am a waste of space, oh well. I actually have a networking exam in 4 hours and 38 minutes. But I couldn't fall asleep so I thought /. might make me tired. So far it hasn't worked.

Re:What does it measure though?

[HanzoSan]

What you said makes absolutely no sense. You do no work but you have a 3.x GPA?

Please tell me do your teachers hand out As just for showing up? If you truely did no work, you wouldnt have a high GPA.

Re:What does it measure though?

[claygate]

No, they don't hand out As. What I'm saying is I do the minimum. I turn in the assignments and I take the tests. I don't really study and I don't always read the material asked of me. So, I'm lucky. I have a feeling it will creep up and bite my arse sometime though. Until then, happy slacking!

Re:What does it measure though?

[HanzoSan]

if you do the minimum how are you getting all As?

simple, your teachers pass out As to anyone who does work, instead of passing out As to anyone who does GOOD work. If you get 70s and 80s on all your work you shouldnt get an A at the end of the semester.

So if you are just passing by the skin of your teeth, and you get an A or a B, its your teachers being nice to you giving you inflated grades.

Re:What does it measure though?

[Soul Colossus]

I think he means that for him it's really easy to get 3.0+ GPA and he puts minimal effort to get that... so it's like being a natural.

Re:What does it measure though?

[NevermindPhreak]

you must not have went to high school in a long time. teachers give out grades based almost entirely on effort anymore. 90% of the people in my high school who got above 3.0 GPAs, got them while doing almost no work, skipping classes often, and just copying any work they had to do from others. in highschool (at least, mine was like this), your homework only gets graded on how much of it is completed.

also, teachers feel that a lack of knowledge can be made up for by showing strong determination. unfortunately, this has become so out of hand that having all the knowledge required for the class (in some cases, having *more* than the teacher) doesnt get you anywhere in high school, anymore.

Re:What does it measure though?

[thynk]

if you do the minimum how are you getting all As?

The same way I did. I think I turned in maybe 50% of the homework and in my entire 4 years of HS, actually studied for maybe 3 tests. I had a 3.4 or there about simply because I was smart and the school system is set up for the Average.

Now, being smart and slacking your way through school doesn't make for a good college experience. I started college out with a 3.6 my freshman year, then I got bored and by the time I "took a break" to join the Army, I was down to a 2.something. Now I'm 31, have 2 years (at least) to finish my degree and it's not easy to take time away from the "adult" things I like to study or write code that does nothing but get graded.

Re:What does it measure though?

[Chump1422]

It all depends on your definition of the minimum... completing all your work isn't really the minimum, especially if you get all A's, but to someone who doesn't work very hard, it does feel like they're doing the bare minimum they can. I'd imagine this guy is skimming the reading, turning in his papers as first drafts, and not studying too much for exams. Thus 'the minimum.' But he stillg ets good grades ont he work he completes.

I was the same way in college and got roughly the same grades. I went to one of the toughest colleges in the US. I did well because I can play the academic game better than almost anyone else I know, not because I'm the smartest person ever. Once you can figure out what the teacher really wants to hear, your scores will skyrocket.

Re:What does it measure though?

[The Herbaliser]

99th percentile on all three categories of the PSAT. I walked into a fire hydrant yesterday. You can draw your own conclusions.

Re:What does it measure though?

[HanzoSan]

I'm talking about college, but your school must suck, too bad for you eh?

College and highschool are not the same.

Re:What does it measure though?

[HanzoSan]

Thats basically it, you give the teacher exactly what they want and the closer you are to what they want or expect, the better your grade.

Most people skim the reading for exams, I just read the summaries, memorize the points and usually its those points from the summary that end up being on the exam.

College isnt really about being smart, its about doing your work accurately, if you do precisely what the teacher asks, and its accurate, you usually get a good grade.

Sometimes the teacher gives a challenging paper thats simply not easy to do, I got a 75 on one of my papers, but you can make up for that if all your other papers are over 90.

Re:What does it measure though?

[NevermindPhreak]

ah, sorry, thought you meant high school. yeah, college is much different.

and yeah, my school did suck like that. but, im out of it now, so its all good.

Re:What does it measure though?

[weston]

Malcolm Gladwell's article about Stanley Kaplan and the SAT should be required reading on the subject. Cool biography, and interesting examination of the idea that there is such a thing as an "uncoachable test" -- one that measures "innate" intelligence, rather than learning. Now tests don't claim that, but they do try to predict success in college.

To some extent, I can see how the latter is possible (if not perfectly accurate). If you can take a subset of subject matter, study it and master it to the point where you can bang out answers in hour-length periods, then you can probably do standard courses in education. Create original research, new thought? Maybe not, but you don't have to do that for many undergrad programs, and proably a number of grad programs. Just master what exists.

I aced several standardized tests in High School. 99%ile scores in multiple categories and overall scores. The interesting thing was that my grades rose steadily as soon as that happened... B to A-, and then my freshman year A- to A. It's a heady thing, to walk to the table, get evaluated, and get given an awful lot of chips to play with. I wrote a personal narrative about it after I had a less spectacular experience with the GMAT and the GRE.

Curious to know if anyone else has had this kind of experience, or has figured out a good way to goose their scores....

Re:What does it measure though?

[ErikZ]

Conclusion:
You are very, very short.

This guy is awesome!

[graveyhead]

I started to think of how radically different my mental state was from that of the high school students in the same room, taking the same test. An earlier show of hands indicated that most of the students were taking the SAT for the first time. So, I think it's very likely there were some people in the room who were terrified. For better or for worse they were confronting destiny. Meanwhile, I was confronting silliness. The difference in perspective seemed so extreme that there were moments when I shook with desperately suppressed laughter.

Damn this is funny. It makes me want to go and take the test just for the hell of it. I never actually took it because I changed high-schools and the timing was weird. I rocked that ACT test though and I was sweating it. Anyway, the point is now that I'm older, calmer and have more practical knowledge, I could probably rock that test hard and get into Yale. Oh yeah I forgot, Yale is a Bush party school.

Re:This guy is awesome!

[TheRaven64]

I find it very difficult not to laugh in exams at the best of times. Most of our exams are 2 hours long, and most take exactly 1 hour and 30 minutes and 1 second for me to complete. The extra second is important, because you are not allowed to leave the exam room during the last 30 minutes.

Rather than have a spare half hour at the end, I usually take regular 5 minute breaks during the exam and let my mind wander (this also improves my score, since it reduces stress, which inhibits brain function). During this time, my brain is highly active due to the exam, but unfocussed due to the break, and so generates a large number of random thoughts, many of which are entertaining.

Some more exam hints:

• Stop revising two days before the exam. If you haven't learned the stuff by then, you're not going to.
• Do a small amount of (planned) revision 30 minutes before the exam. We all know exams are a waste of time for measuring anything meaningful, so abuse the system. Your short term memory is a very good place to store a large amount of data that you will never actually need to have in your brain again.
• Get drunk the night before. Not so drunk that you're hung over the next day, just drunk enough that you are still quite relaxed the next morning. Two of my best exam results come from doing this, but I don't really want to test it enough to prove a direct correlation. If anyone else has tried it, please let me know...
• Don't get stressed. Adrenalin is one of the best ways of making your brain stop working, and this is not useful in exams (usually).

Re:Standardized tests

[Trurl's Machine]

Give me a break, people -- standardized tests measure *something* well, but we're not sure what.

Standardized tests measure very well the ability to solve standardized tests. The question is - can they measure anything else?

Re:Standardized tests

[graveyhead]

Standardized tests measure very well the ability to solve standardized tests.

Yes, this is how the board of education hires more test writers to write more standardized tests. Don't you know anything about beurocracy?

MCAS vs SAT

[Anonymous Coward]

On standardized testing being a joke: According to the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System for those of you outside of the state, a test that aims to determine graduation eligibility and falls...short.) I'm supposed to be *barely* average in math and below standard in english. SAT I Verbal : 800 (99%) SAT I Math : 790 (99%) SAT II Lit. : 770 (97%) SAT II Math IIC: 760 (81%) SAT II Math IC : 730 (93%) Currently, a rather frightening percentage of Mass. high school students are being denied their diplomas because of MCAS scores...and I picked up a total of some $100,000 per year in academic scholarships from six different colleges...and I'm currently getting $26,000/year from the one I chose to attend. The class one year before me had to pass the MCAS in order to graduate. Were it not for that one year...I might still be a high school senior. Standardized tests are a joke...and aren't really that funny.

Re:MCAS vs SAT

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

and below standard in english.

Well, you do post on Slashdot...

Well..

[Loki_1929]

I did ok with my 1330, although had I taken the test more than once, I'd have probably ended up with the magic number of 1400 or higher.

To those who don't know much about the SAT, they take the highest score for the math and the highest score for the verbal section from all the tests you take (there's no limit I'm aware of), and they're added together for your total score. So if I score a 600/700 on my math and verbal respectively on my first test, and then a 700/600 on my math and verbal respectively on the second test, my final score is 700/700, or 1400. The reason I mention 1400 as a "magic number" is because that's the score at which most of the SAT-based scholarships become available.

But why??

[Billly Gates]

Doesn't this guy have anything better to do with his time? Taking a test ranks right up with going to the dentist. It sucks and is the most boring thing I can think of that I do not look forward to doing.

Also I am supprised they let an adult out of highschool take it. I finished my senior year in Canada so I did not take the SAT. I decided back in the states on my junior year to take it a year later so I can have a higher score.

Since I am in community college now I might as well take it again since I can score really high and get into a good 4 year school.

Re:But why??

[MyHair]

Since I am in community college now I might as well take it again since I can score really high and get into a good 4 year school.

You're considered a transfer student now, and the admission rules are different. Get the current catalog from your desired school and check the transfer admission requirements; you may not need the SAT at all, in fact I'm not sure it will necessarily help you.

Re:But why??

[Billly Gates]

I am an American so that does not apply. There is the International SAT but it includes a section on French in the Canadian version. I do not know French because I only finished my senior year in Canada. That is why I did not take it.

I do not need the SAT at all at my age but if I get a high score anyway and include it with my grades and credits it sure would make me look better during admission time.

Re:But why??

[panda]

I enjoy going to the dentist. Don't you?

She has the pretty, little hygienist who cleans my teeth.

She has the really good dope for when she needs to drill holes in my teeth and slather in the goop.

Not to mention that my dentist is pretty damned attractive herself. Oh, the fantasies!

I keep my regular 6-month check-ups like a religion.

Re:But why??

[ces]

Also I am supprised they let an adult out of highschool take it. I finished my senior year in Canada so I did not take the SAT. I decided back in the states on my junior year to take it a year later so I can have a higher score.

Since I am in community college now I might as well take it again since I can score really high and get into a good 4 year school.

There are reasons an older person might take the SAT. A number of colleges require the SAT from entering freshmen regardless of age, some will even require it from transfer students or students with associates degrees. Many of these people might not have taken the SAT in high school
for various reasons.

Besides ETS likes to collect test fees from whoever will pay them.

Essay questions on the SAT

[autopr0n]

Does anyone else find the idea of essay questions on the SAT at least, idiotic?

I mean, without a keyboard and a spellchecker I'm nothing! My handwriting is absolutely terrible. But none of that matters in collage, since papers will be turned in after being typed on a computer. And even if a grader isn't going to look at those things specifically, they'll still be affected by them, as well as whether or not they agree with the essay. Not to mention the fact that it's going to be insanely expensive to grade these things. They'll need about 1,500 graders each grading 1,500 papers. Can you imagine grading that many boring essays about random subjects? My brain would just go numb. The only fair way to do it would be to have each essay graded by a diverse group of graders, and then average the score. But that would cost even more per test. Or perhaps they could figure out some way to grade essays by a computer. Teach a neural net the properties of a good essay and see what it comes up with.

Or they could just not do it...

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[hazem]

When I took the GMAT (to get in to an MBA program), there were essays. Each was graded by 4 professors. They discarded the score that was most different and took the average of the remainder.

Poor profs - the ones who grade these are no doubt the untenured saps who have to scrap for every bit of money.

But, at least with the GMAT, it WAS on a computer - no spellcheck, of course.

I just took the Foreign Service Exam to get into the State Department. Damn thing was with pen on paper. I pitty the fool that has to try to read mine... then again, they already have their nifty job in the diplomatic corps... and I probably won't!

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[CyberWolf]

I mean, without a keyboard and a spellchecker I'm nothing!

The essay, afaik, is to be used to test your level of spelling (hence no spellchecker), grammar and your aility to write a valid essay in one draft. Then I could be wrong about this.

This remindes me of the written option for the TOEFL exam

Just my 2 cents

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[Anonymous Coward]

Phonetically, TOEFL is nearly: Teufel, the German word for "devil."

I must have my test-taking hat on :)

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[cosyne]

Does anyone else find the idea of essay questions on the SAT at least, idiotic?
Not much more so than the idea of a multiple choice test determining the rest of your life. Although it's impossible to grade essasy on a truly objective scale, they still provide useful information. All else being equal, the student who can spell at least half their words correctly, form sentences with something resembling proper grammar, carry a coherent argument for more than a sentence at a time, and write somewhat legibly (pre-med students aside) will probably do better in college.

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[arcanumas]

Actually this is done in Greece (at leat when i was a student trying for University). You were tested in essay (about 4-5 pages hand-written) and then 2 graders would read and grade your paper and you would get the mean. IF their grades differed by a few point (2-3 in a scale of 0-20) then a third grader yould examine your paper. Yes it is time-consuming and expensive but the worst thing is that it was the ONLY way to get into higher education. (It has changed since).

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[TheAJofOZ]

And even if a grader isn't going to look at those things specifically, they?ll still be affected by them, as well as whether or not they agree with the essay. Not to mention the fact that it's going to be insanely expensive to grade these things. They'll need about 1,500 graders each grading 1,500 papers.

Actually, the marking of essays is a problem that's been pretty comprehensively solved here in sunny Queensland Australia. The trick to it is to have a statistician on hand. Then you take a whole bunch of markers from all around the state and they come together to mark the essays. You give them a whole bunch of training on how to mark the essays, what they should be looking for etc. Each essay is then independently marked twice (ie: two markers read and grade it without knowing anything about what the other marker thought of the paper). Then the results are collated and handed to the statistician who looks for any grades that don't match up - one of the markers isn't marking properly. Which one is easy to pick because during the day each marker will have marked several essays and the pairs of markers always change, so you just look for any marker that shows up in more than one grade mismatch and you have your problem case.

Once you've found the problem cases for the day you prioritise them and take out the most significant problem markers for more training (there's not enough money to retrain them all). If a marker is picked up as a problem case twice they're sent home and won't participate in any further marking (usually for quite a few years, teachers around here have long memories...).

So now we have a system that keeps markers consistent, what do you do with the grades that were mismatched by markers? You have the essay graded by a third person who is very experienced in the marking process and see what they think. If they have trouble deciding they can refer it to a fourth person and so on.

So in short, the way to mark essays reliably and fairly, lots of training, lots of money, and a damn good statistician (yes only one statistician for the entire state of Queensland).

Also note that the test we use (the Queensland Core Skills test or QCS) is regarded as one of the best tests in the world, takes about 2 years to write (they're already working on the 2005 test) and is sold off to other countries like Japan. You should also note that your mark on the QCS test does not affect your tertiary entrace score, rather the results of the QCS test are groups in various ways and use to scale your marks for the rest of your senior year to accomodate for different difficulties of subjects (Physics vs Chemistry vs English vs Art vs Typing etc) as well as differences in marking between schools and a whole host of other things, but never an individual basis. In other words, it takes probability into account which suggests that some students will perform below their normal standard and others will perform above their normal standard since the test is held over only two days (a small sample of the students actual work thus leading to high variance).

The whole process is actually very carefully and very well designed so you're of the belief that tests don't judge personal ability, you should do some research on this process because it's as good an example of test usage you're likely to find. The biggest downside is that because of it's complexity (or particuarly because it's different to the normal way people think about tests) most students don't actually understand the process and really panic about their QCS test results.

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[NeoSkandranon]

Not sure abuot where you are, but in North Carolina the lower grades (elementary and middleschool i believe) have a "writing" test, and then we get one in sophomore english. Those essays get graded in just the way you describe--in Raliegh (state capitol) they hire temps for a weekend to grade all the essays. Basically they sit there and read them ALL, and mark them either US (unscorable) or 1-5 in .5 increments based on a set of criteria.
Result? Girl in my class who i know (know, as in, i proofread her practice essays) has trouble writing with proper grammar gets a 4.5, i (who had been getting high marks on my practices) got a 3.5 (barely passing)

The whole system is completely idiotic--especially the part where they hire temp workers, to grade the tests.

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[DarkEdgeX]

If I had to wager a theory, the reason they're adding essay questions is so they can charge more for the tests while paying their graders roughly the same (ensuring once and for all that your test scores are graded, uh, fairly, and stuff).

But I agree, essay questions should remain off the test for the very reason the writer of the linked to article mentioned-- it introduces a level of objectivity on behalf of the person grading the essay that's impossible to avoid. Better to have multiple choice and right/wrong question/answers than to introduce something that can really skew your score if the person reading your essay is a) having a bad day or b) doesn't like your point of view.

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[zzyzx]

A third grader would read your paper? I personally would want someone older than that.

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[Aidtopia]

The AP (Advanced Placement) tests typically have essays. In particular, I took the Computer Science AP test in 1985. At least a few of the questions involved writing code (pencil on paper) in Pascal. I assume they were simply read and graded by humans. I wonder if the modern version actually transcribe them into a computer and test the solutions. Should style be graded? Appropriate comments? Good variable names?

I recall that the wording of one question (deleting a subtree from a binary tree) was ambiguous. I wrote a paragraph explaining this and then wrote two versions of the procedure depending on which interpretation they meant.

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[arcanumas]

That's what i told them when they gave me back the results but they insisted that my essay was not trouble at all for third graders... go figure...those idiots..
:)

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[dolbywan_kenobi]

I know what you mean ( I've scored these high-school standard tests 2x ) Basically what happens is that some temp agency or a third-party hires these people who are for the most part unemployed. Actually it's a boring, repetititious, really low paying, fairly demeaning wage-slave type job, like telemarketing or package-handling. But it's really easy since the hardest part of the job is fighting sleep. http://www.idler.co.uk/html/library/crapjob.htm

The people who grade( actually most companies prefer the less objectionable term "score" to the term "grade") these tests do not determine the scores without guidance. The companies usually have a set of guidelines that must be followed by each scorer. These guidelines tend to devalue a clearly written, well organized response and to value a not so well written response where the writer piles on concrete details and/or write with a strong tone evidencing an outgoing personality (i.e, expression ). Of course an expressive well organized response will receive a high score. But under the guidelines, I have seen some shittily written papers get higher scores and some well written papers get lower scores.

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[Mr.Ned]

Not in the least. It's much more difficult to write a good essay then pick one of five answers.

AP (Advanced Placement) exams have a free response section on all tests. For the math APs the free response is pretty objective - you get a point for this setup, a point for that answer, or a point for this explanation, but all of that is still graded by hand. Most other exams, at least those in English, have three essays that make up more than half of the total score.

For example, in both the US and European History exams, there are two essays dealing with two different time periods and an essay on several provided documents. For the English Literature exam, there is an essay on poetry analysis, prose analysis, and an "open question" where the student provides a work he has read to answer the topic.

All AP free responses are graded on a scale of 1-9, the higher the better. Every summer, hundreds of teachers get together in a large gym or similar structure and sit down to grade them. The graders are given examples of each type of essay and grade until they grade as the College Board wants them to - usually only takes a day. Then they're turned loose on the real ones. The process takes 1-2 weeks.

In terms of quality control, random essays are taken out and re-graded. Scores on essays are correlated to scores on the multiple choice sections. All in all, the graders I know say it is frighteningly consistent. By the end of the day their brains are numb, but scores are still consistent.

It works, and has worked well, since the 1970's. I'm just suprised that the SAT's haven't gone to an essay sooner.

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[MasonMcD]

Not much matters in collage. Nor decoupage, nor basketweaving, nor watercolor. It's about the creativity, rather than technique, for the most part.

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[kria]

Hmm, lots of essay questions? I had a standardized test like that - it was one of the AP English tests. We had to answer several essay questions, actually, three, I think.

Re:Essay questions on the SAT

[TPFH]

Interesting system and it sounds like it works good (or is that "works well"), but while reading this I kept thinking why not have 3 testers so that you can have a majority and minority report.

But then what do you do if you get 3 minority reports? It's probably less expensive to weed out the inconsistant graders from pairs, and maybe more effective. Not to mention the risk of getting sucked into a PKD universe.

Will this comment be reviewed for grammar?

My own minirant

[Adam9]

I think the thing that pisses me off the most is the amount of preparation people can do for the tests. I mean, if these tests are supposed to measure (whatever they think it measures).. is it really that accurate when taking a Kaplan course guarantees to improve your score by 300 points? (I'm making up numbers, sorry, but you get the point) So far, I've seen it good for 3 things.

1. The tutors who get the money for test preps
2. Annoying egos (the same people who "failed" a test because they got a 96% and not a 99%)
3. Distinguishing people with high gpas without any other significant experience in h.s.

I think that was one of the things I hated most about high school.

Re:My own minirant

[HanzoSan]

Ok now you said a few things which are stupid.

1. The tutors who get the money for test preps

I agree with this, alot of rich kids have tutors and think they are somehow smart, if you buy your knowledge you arent intelligent, just rich.

2. Annoying egos (the same people who "failed" a test because they got a 96% and not a 99%)

This was a stupid comment, perhaps you need to take school more seriously, but if you want to keep a high GPA, you need to go for 100% on every paper, every exam, every peice of work. You need to learn to submit high quality work, and to not accept anything other than an A if you want to be successful in school.

3. Distinguishing people with high gpas without any other significant experience in h.s.


I have a high GPA in college (4.0), I was a slacker in highschool, maybe I learned to stop being lazy and not accept anything less than an A.

Why hate people for taking school seriously? Go get your GED if you are too lazy to compete in school.

Re:My own minirant

[JanneM]

One premise of tests like this (we have something roughly analoguous in Sweden) is that they more or less directly test your reading comprehension, numbers reasoning, language ability and other skill sets that are directly useful and related to your ability to handle university studies. The test here is Sweden has been shown to correlate very well with success in university studies later on.

So, there are courses, books and private tutoring programs to improve those abilities. So what? Does it reallly matter _how_ you acquire those skills, as long as you have them? Does it matter whether someone is good at picking out the relevant bits (or faulty premises) from a paper because they're naturally talented at it, or because they've practiced hard at doing it? In either case, they will have good use for that skill in school (and, arguably, in life).

I don't think anybody have ever claimed these tests measure innate ability; they claim they are a decent measure of how well you are expected to do in higher education. Well, being able and motivated to compensate for lower talent by extra work is certainly as good a characteristic as being able to get good scores without trying.

Re:My own minirant

[thynk]

Ok, not to step all over your minirant here, but

if you buy your knowledge you arent intelligent, just rich.

By this statement, doesn't that infer that you should quit college? There is nothing wrong with hiring a tutor if you have problems with a subject and need to work extra to beat it into your thick skull. I guess what I'm getting at, it doesn't matter if the knowldge costs you half a million bucks or it comes to you in dreams.

This was a stupid comment, perhaps you need to take school more seriously, but if you want to keep a high GPA, you need to go for 100% on every paper, every exam, every peice of work.

His comment was not in the least stupid. If 3% on a test (both in the 'A' range) makes a bit of difference to you, well then maybe you should switch to decaf or something.

I seem to remember, that GPAs are not printed on a diploma, so a degree in X with a 2.0 works out to be about the same a degree in X with a 4.0. However, a person with a degree in X and 4 years of experience (ie - not learned in school) is a lot more valauble to an employer than a degree in X with no experience.

Yes, you can be proud of what you've done in school. Maybe if I had applied myself a little better in college, I wouldn't of taken time off to join the Army and drive tanks, get married and start a family, then get divorced and have the heart break of having my kids live 2 states away. :(

BTW - going back to finish that degree, and thus far (one class) have a 4.0 myself but it just kinda worked out that way, really didn't try all that hard - maybe I'm just lazy.

Re:My own minirant

[Alsee]

I think the thing that pisses me off the most is the amount of preparation people can do for the tests.

But the SAT isn't an IQ test. It attempts to predict future acadademic performance. Someone who prepares and studies for a test is in fact more likely to do well in college. If you get extra points by putting in more work then those extra points are a perfectly valid and accurate predictor.

I mean, if these tests are supposed to measure (whatever they think it measures).. is it really that accurate when taking a Kaplan course guarantees to improve your score by 300 points?

Yes. If you have enough dedication academic achievement that you go out and take a Kaplan course then you are more likely to be dedicated to your college education.

And before you attack my argument, let me say that I did not not prepare for the SAT in any way whatsoever. I got a crazy high SAT score because of my IQ, but I did lousy in college because of lack of motivation and dedication. I felt like most of my classes were a waste of time. I got tons of (I)ncompletes and (W)ithdrawns.

So in my case the SAT failed - it gave me too high of a score. It over valued IQ and undervalued the "kaplan effect".

I just said I should have gotten a lower SAT score. Now go ahead and critize my argument :D

-

Re:My own minirant

[thynk]

(Don't feed the AC trolls, don't feed the AC trolls, oops too late)

Or maybe you're just too stupid for it to matter to you? That 3% matters a lot to some people who are in real competition with others at the same level (i.e., not you).

Your probably right. I'm far to stupid to think that the difference between a 96% on a test and a 99% isn't a HUGE deal. Pretty low thinking of me that 3% on a test isn't going to get you a better job, prettier wife or anything like that. Yes indeed, how could I be so short sighted in thinking that competition on a test wasn't a "real compitetition". Nothing like those "petty" competitions we had in the Army that didn't mean anything or those silly little evaluations we have at work that only effect raises. Percentage points on a test in school must have a far greater importance than I had placed on it before. Maybe next time I want a bigger raise, I won't bring up job performance or anything like that, I'll just state that I did 3% better on a test in school than some other idiot and watch the extra money flow in.

You're absolutly right that these "real competition[s]" are not at my level. Thank goodness for small things, eh?

I always have viewed tests, performace in school and the like as a cut system. You do well enough in HS and on the ACT/SAT to get into the college you want. You do well enough in college to get the degree you want. Hopefully, with the degree you wanted in school, you can then do with your life (school, business, beach bum) what you want.

Don't get me wrong, competition is a wonderful thing, with out it business would stagniate and the liberals would rule the world ::shudder::

Re:My own minirant

[HanzoSan]

Its a huge deal if you are trying to go to Harvard.

What if you want to go to Graduate school? Competition is fierce, you need a 3.5 or above to get into certain schools.

Re:My own minirant

[thynk]

Its a huge deal if you are trying to go to Harvard.

What if you want to go to Graduate school? Competition is fierce, you need a 3.5 or above to get into certain schools.

Right, so that would fall under my thoughts of do well enough in school and tests to get into the college you want.

My orignal point was that the comment that started this whole mini war wasn't stupid. If there is a reason you're applying yourself to do your absolute best, then by all means, do it. But if the only reason you "failed" a test at a 96% was your ego, then yes - switch to decaf or something. If your final grade at the end of the class is an A, then that's all that's going to go on your transcript.

Best of luck with your endevors to get into Harvard!

Re:My own minirant

[HanzoSan]

well without that ego, what keeps you doing your best? I mean ego is a big part of it.

You claim having the ego is bad, but its the only thing keeping me from procrastination and settling for anything else, I believe I'm smarter than that and better than that and wont accept anything less than an A.

Now, if I get a B I wont commit suicide, but I wont but I wont be happy about it because its not the absolute best I can do, i try to do my absolute best at anything I do, so that if I do bad I can at least say I gave it my best shot.

Re:My own minirant

[Adam9]

I'd like to clarify. I'm all for someone trying their best at a course. What I meant is that some people seem to lose perspective of the whole thing (imho). If you wish you would've gotten a 99% instead of 96%, cool. But if you start whining to other people about it and making a big deal out of it, then I don't think that's warranted.

Re:My own minirant

[Adam9]

My minirant was too 'mini', I don't think I was specific enough. I agree with most of your response. What I really meant is the type of test preparation. The type that comes to my mind is the type that focuses on the test and not the abilities. (Or over-emphasizes on the test) For example, the books that find trends in the tests and what the test authors tend to do, etc.

If you want to improve your own abilities (and not SAT test taking abilities) then I applaud that.

Re:My own minirant

[Adam9]

I replied to another comment similar to your first answer. What I really meant was preparation for the SAT test itself (like finding SAT trends, tricks, etc.) instead of the abilities its supposed to test.

Well, I think taking the Kaplan course (in some/most cases, not all) reflects the obsession to do well on the SAT test, period. Not improve abilities or whatever. If anyone has taken the test and wants to say otherwise, then your opinion of it may very well be more credible than mine. This is just my perception from the people I know who have taken it.

Hehe I like your SAT story. I think that it may be a flaw within a single test trying to determine that. Your case, like others, is probably just another that the SAT's crystal ball fails to predict. I don't see anything better out there that could replace the SAT. I think most of what just annoys me is people obsessing over getting a high score. This would include the stereotype I mentioned in my first post of some people freaking out over getting a 96% instead of a 99% ;)

Re:My own minirant

[HanzoSan]

I dont know if I whine, I only tell people who care what grade I got.

If you ask me how I'm doing in school or I think you care I might tell you, but you dont see me on slashdot complaining that I got a 75 on one of my papers.

I dont know, maybe some people do whine, I never had that problem. I especially wont tell another student (competition) what grade I got if its anything less than an 90%.

Re:My own minirant

[Alsee]

I think taking the Kaplan course (in some/most cases, not all) reflects the obsession to do well on the SAT test, period.

Yeah, but that obession is likely to carry over to their college work. The kind of person who freaks out over a 96% is exactly the sort of person who is driven to get a 4.0 in college. Not perfectly predictive, but certainy correlated.

I hadn't really thought about these effects before, but it's kind of funny how they all seem to have an effect in the "right direction" for predicting college performance.

-

Re:My own minirant

[sjames]

Or maybe you're just too stupid for it to matter to you? That 3% matters a lot to some people who are in real competition with others at the same level (i.e., not you).

It could also be an optomization that takes diminishing returns into account. If I can effortlessly score 95% in 6 subjects and have plenty of energy to pursue other self improvements at the same time, that is preferable to scoring 99% in 4 subjects with no time at all left over. The former scenerio will result in a much more rounded and practical knowledge and will probably outperform the latter in the real world.

Re:My own minirant

[sjames]

What if you want to go to Graduate school? Competition is fierce, you need a 3.5 or above to get into certain schools.

Which will be achieved with a consistant 96% just as well as a consistant 99%.

My experience...

[crashnbur]

When taking the PSAT during my sophomore year in high school, I decided that the school didn't need to know my ethnic origin, whether the information was gathered for statistican purposes only or not. The choices were typical (White/Caucasian, Black/African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, etc...), and there was a seventh blank marked "Other", suggesting anyone of any ethnicity not listed to list their brand name. I thought I did a very noble thing for a white boy in urban central Georgia, and I checked the "Other" box and wrote in, "I'm human. What does it matter?"

The test proctor, a Geometry teacher, didn't like this very much and sent me to the principal's office. I gladly took my test answer sheet up to the principal's office and told them the story I wrote here. The principal took the answer sheet and showed it to a couple of people around the office, presumably to get second and third (reinforcing) opinions, and then returned the test sheet to me and told me to get back to class, finish the test, "and if she has any further problem with this, send her to me."

My first reaction was, whoa, "send her to you"?! I don't have that authority. She made me understand that I had done nothing wrong and should definitely not be punished for it. (To be honest, I do not remember if my main purpose was to be a smartass or to promote social colorblind-ness, but it shouldn't matter if anyone reads it properly.)

Anyway, the moral of this story is: if you let them get used to you simply falling into line and always doing the expected thing, you get locked into it. On the other hand, if you let them know you're just less than predictable, and perhaps even a bit crazy or eccentric, then you can get away with much more and even get them to think harder about things. I succeeded that day, and my ego swelled from that of a skinny, nerdy white boy into that of a taller, more confident, skinny, nerdy white boy. :-)


p.s.-- my favorite line from Colin Fahey's site:

So, in this latest experience, when I worked very hard to determine the correct answer for each question, and then proceeded to pick the exact WRONG answer (in fact, the most RIDICULOUS answer), I had a very strong emotional reaction. For a while I worried that this new peculiar feeling of freedom was in fact insanity; I was finally making the transition to madness.

Yeah, I feel that ALL the time. Marching to the beat of a different drum is liberating, but self-liberation is viewed as insanity until it catches on...

Re:My experience...

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be great if someone would take the test in 2005, and answer the essay question:

"I refuse to answer the essay portion of this test on the grounds that any answer I give will be judged subjectively and any grade not given by a machine is arbitrary. As proof I submit that if I were to grade my answer to this question, I would give myself full credit."

Re:My experience...

[Alsee]

As proof I submit that if I were to grade my answer to this question, I would give myself full credit.

Actually that argument probably fails. I think there will probably be precise and detailed list of criteria for scoring the essay. Yes, it will be partially subjective, but not entirely arbitrary. Giving yourself full credit for that essay would probably be a violation of the rules.

-

Re:My experience...

[tortap-0]

Hehe that makes me think of when I was in high-school. We were supposed to think up a moral problem, then play a little scenario in class like "you find pile of cash, do you hand it to the police or keep it?". You would say one thing was the right thing to do and debate with the class in terms of moralas and ethics and the other groups would have to take a stance, was this right or wrong. I figured - lets sit on our ass and don't do anything, then argue we still completed the assignment. We had a pretty good case going for us until some Miss Goody Two Shoes said we were just lazy and wanted to get away without doing the actual work, the other guys were rooting for us but the teacher eventually sided with the girls. Thus we completed the assignment :)

Re:My experience...

[HeghmoH]

And as we all know, official essay graders never violate the grading rules.

Re:My experience...

[SagSaw]

That reminds me of a funny experiance in high school. One of my classes (an AP class) was randomly selected to take a "drug use/risky behavior survey" administered, IIRC, by some student volunteers from the local university. Anyway, none of us really wanted to take the survey, so as we walked down to the room where they were giving the survey we decided we should see how quickly we could get kicked out of the survey. I think we lasted about ten minutes. The administrators started loosing when one (white) girl demanded that there be an African-American choice for ethnic background since she was born in Africa. They finally lost it when we started discussing (by shouting accross the room) how bongs and other objects from the survey worked. I don't think the survey people were too happy, but the AP teacher thought it was pretty funny.

Re:My experience...

[crashnbur]

Using demographic information in that way -- "to tweak future tests" -- only boils down to racial discrimination. I don't stand with that within my own family, so I sure as hell won't sit for it on a test that most of the educated (American) world must take.

Re:SATs are a filtering device

[Rinikusu]

What are you *talking* about? I grew up poor, so did quite a few of my friends. We went to shitty public schools, where the teachers didn't care. I still took the AP courses when they were offered but never took the tests (because we couldn't afford them!). I didn't take the damn test until one month before I graduated, and guess what? I still got a scholarship. My friends still scored high, and we were all *poor*. We did well not because we enjoyed learning and pushed each other to learn new shit.

Then I got into college and slacked off and lost the scholarship. :( I'm now almost 30 and returning to finish one degree and hoping to get into grad school.

job offer from microsoft

[b17bmbr]

i hear this guy was offered a job at microsoft to head their server division.

I feel sorry ...

[WeeBull]

... for the guys either side of Colin in the examination room ... glancing across ...

"He answered 'D' on Question 26? But, I'm sure it's 'B'! Shit ... uhm, maybe it IS 'D'. *rubs out, ticks 'D'*. WHAT? 'A' for Q27?!? SHIT SHIT SHIT! *rubs out*"

Disclaimer: Don't cheat on tests, cheating is bad, mmmmkay?

Re:I feel sorry ...

[perky]

Reminds me of a friend of mine who finished his engineering degree a couple of years ago with three thirds. Doing a compulsary mechanics paper in the second year, he hadn't the first idea about how to answer anything. So he got out his pair of compasses and protractor and started drawing a variety of elaborate geometrical constructions. The guys sitting nearby were allegedly very, very confused.

Re:I feel sorry ...

[Rimbo]

You just highlighted right there the #1 reason why I (almost) never cheated on tests by peeking at someone else's paper: God only knows what moron or lunatic happened to be sitting beside me that day, or what his/her motives were. I trusted my own ability to get the correct answer far better than anyone else's.

As a TA in college, and now with my girlfriend TA'ing, we see all the time where people have cheated by copying answers -- answers that are so bizarrely wrong that cheating is the only possible explanation for why three people got the same answer.

Keep checking that mailbox....

[CPgrower]

"This is a key time in the college admission process. Stay organized, keep your grades up, and before you know it you'll be checking your mailbox for fat envelopes."

Yeah, the Dell guy's gonna send him mail saying "Dude, you're going to college!"

Re:Keep checking that mailbox....

[hugesmile]

It's collage, as was articulately expressed by the guy with no spellchecker.

Interestingly enough, a collage (according to dictionary.com) is: "A work, such as a literary piece, composed of both borrowed and original material."

So if you go to college, you need to do your own work. But if you go to collage, you can "borrow" work.

Re:The need for a well rounded education

[BigBadBri]

I may be being a little narrow minded and cynsical here, but isn't socialology a bit of a Bushism?

Seriously, though - if this isn't a troll, this guy will make one hell of a sociologist - he already has Wittgenstinian relativism down pat.

And if he doesn't get tenure, at least he'll be able to assume that I'd like fries with that...

Re:SATs are a filtering device

[HanzoSan]

Your school had AP classes, not all schools do. Your school had GOOD AP classes, some AP classes suck, just regular classes with more workload. You didnt study for the test? Actually yes you did. I'll explain how you studied.

When you were in school, you enjoyed it, you liked the courseload, you took the mathbook and english books home with you, you studied on your own and finished the whole book regardless of what the pace of the class was, and you learned at your own pace even if your teacher sucked and your school was shit.

This lead you to do well on the SATs because you from the beginning trained yourself to do well on the SATs by studying the material the SATs are based on.

Take another example, of a person who thought the class was moving too slow, never learned anything, and was bored out of their brain with the material, this person would ignore the teacher, never show interest in being in an AP class if it just meant more workload from crappy teachers, and would only do just enough studying to get by, because to this person school was living hell, they didnt want to be there, they just wanted to go home as soon as possible.

You see, some peoples experience with school is, going to school to get bullied all day by students and teachers, boring materials, slowly paced classes which go over the same shit over and over because others in the class cant keep up with you, and to this person school is a complete waste of time.

SATs wouldnt be on the list of things they'd be worried about. Your experience in highschool is unique, just like my experience is unique, and these experiences lead to the results, you took the SATs because you enjoyed your learning experience, I didnt take the SATS because to me school was a waste of time.

I did 95 percent of all my learning outside the classroom, I've taught myself everything, how to read, how to write, and I would have taught myself to pass the SATs, but SATs werent an issue to a person who hates school.

See the picture?

&make him stand in the corner naked and laugh

[jago25_98]

scarred :)

lets all point and laugh

ah, reminds me when they made me do PE in my underpants ... or when they made us do country dancing.

well, that's my excuse for being a nerd with a fear of dancing and I'm sticking 2 it :p

why I won't sit an IQ test and wish I hadn't sat

[jago25_98]

... the Dyslexia test.

- Because it has a placebo effect.

** SATS SURELY BE FOR TEACHERS EYES ONLY **

Suggestion is powerful for anyone, ask a hypnotist or a anyone else phsycology related ... like a salesman.

MCAS is f*cked up

[HanzoSan]

The MCAS shouldnt even exist. They only create these things to keep poor people from going to college.

The MCAS is setup so that if you fail it, you can NEVER go to college, you can NEVER get a diploma, and all you get is some stupid certificate.

Alot of kids who went to shitty schools have to either become very mature at a young age and take matters into their own hands and teach themselves, or they are going to fail that test and never go to college.

Seems like class Warfare to me.

I'm from MA as well AC, and the MCAS sucks. Its just class warfare.

A kid could get all As in their shitty school and fail the MCAS because their school has books from the 1970s and 1980s while the richer more upper class schools have the newest books, best teaching materials ,and smartest teachers.

Thank god for the internet, kids who have no money might have a chance.

Re:MCAS is f*cked up

[ostiguy]

The MA state gov has probably pumped 10 billion extra into education in the last 5 years. The MCAS isn't about class warfare, its about making high school diplomas have some value. Without the MCAS, high school diplomas are attendance awards.

ostiguy

Re:MCAS is f*cked up

[HanzoSan]

10 billion? Where did you get that number?

Even if they did pump 10 billion, Diplomas were never and are never attendance awards unless you have shitty teachers and go to a shitty school.

If you fail your tests and do shitty work you wont pass the class, and you'll stay back, so whats this stuff about diplomas being given away as attendance awards?

I see MCAS as awarding people with money/good parents, and punishing people without financial or parent support.

SAT verbal == word memorization

[Samir Gupta]

I did my undergraduate education in India, where we didn't have the SAT -- but I did take the GRE for graduate study in the USA, and I understand the format of the GRE is like that of the SAT, just harder and with a extra "analytic" section.

The SAT verbal section is for the most part, a test of vocabulary word memorization. In India, we aspiring graduate students spent marathon sessions memorizing vocabulary words that we never used again after taking the test. It was quite a joke, really. It favors those with the wherewithal to engage in this mindless brain-stuffing, and disadvantages those who do have the skills to read critically and find meaning, but don't memorize all those esoteric (= a good example itself!) words.

While the math section seems relevant, the verbal section needs much overhaul to not rely so much on pure memorization.

Re:SAT verbal == word memorization

[dracocat]

Actually, as I understand it, the verbal section is designed so that it is very difficult to cram for. Namely that the breadth of the vocabulary is so large that it takes years to build, or a superb mind to cram for. So the fact that your group of friends is able to cram for it speaks highly of all of your potential to learn.

Re:SAT verbal == word memorization

[Robb]

The vocabulary is not that exotic. There are people who are extremely literate; typically because they grew up surrounded by other literate people, are widely read and know one or more foreign languages that are closely related to English. These people already know the vocabulary.

This just points out the difficulty of measuring literacy, which I assume is the goal, rather than rote memorization. Most tests are subject to the problem that ultimately all they accurately measure is the ability to take the test itself.

Re:SAT verbal == word memorization

[driverEight]

I understand the format of the GRE is like that of the SAT, just harder and with a extra "analytic" section.

Actually, the GRE math sections are easier than the SAT math because there is an assumption that most people do not use algebra / geometry skills after High School.

Re:SAT verbal == word memorization

[michael_cain]

I recently took the GRE for the second time, some 27 years after the previous time (some random thoughts on the experience here). While working through the math questions, I found myself wondering about what they were really trying to test. A question of the form "What's the sum of the units and tens digits of the product 34256*6783?" isn't really a test of your ability to multiply by hand, but rather to recognize how little of the full multiplication you have to carry out. Or a question like "What's the remainder of 17/3?" with answers (a) 1, (b) 5, (c) 4 and (d) 2 is testing your ability to read and remember the question, so that you don't jump at (b), which would be the correct answer if they were asking for the quotient.

Re:SAT verbal == word memorization

[caouchouc]

but don't memorize all those esoteric (= a good example itself!) words.

Obviously it's not a good example, as you used it yourself in lieu of a less elegant construct like "weird and exists to confuse me".
Language is one of the few things that does require a lot of strict memorization to be useful. You need to be able to communicate quickly and effectively. At least in calculation or coding, you can use reference material for formulas or APIs without impacting the end result.

Wow

[CAIMLAS]

Granted, it's quite early in the morning, but this guy's site isn't even being (seemingly) phased by the slashdot effect.

Re:SATs are a filtering device

[ChemicalSpider]

OK, a couple points of contention:

"They do this to filter out the poor. The rich automatically have an advantage in that they are usually trained for the SAT..."

One might say that college in general sort of "filters" out the poor. One could argue that parents who pay for tutors, not just for SATs, and buy fancy calculators, etc... give their children advantages in school and in college. They can also afford to send their child to ballet school, summer football camps, and a ton more extra curriculars than a poor student and enhance their chances of getting into school.
However, most colleges these days are willing to recognize the fact that poorer students don't get as many opportunities, so instead many admission standards aren't based on accomplishments, but on the opportunities presented and how the student took advantage of them. I'm not trying to say that rich students don't have any advantage - but its not incredibly difficult for a hardworking person, regardless of financial background, to get into college.

Second:

"If I decide to take it now and I score a 1500, perhaps I would get accepted into Harvard a bit sooner, but you'll end up in the same spot if you get good grades, keep a 3.5 or above GPA, do well in your classes for a consistant period of time and you can transfer into Harvard. Its also cheaper this way."

Getting in, via a transfer method, may be easier for some people than taking the SATs it is strictly speaking not cheaper. Many Ivy League schools, or even remotely pretigious schools have fairly strict requirements on transfer credits. An example is at my school, Harvey Mudd, one transfer Engineering major from UT Austin had completed three years, but due to transfer credits not going in his favor (and the Engineering curriculum here at Mudd is extremely rigorous) he still has at least 2 more years here - for a total of 5 years in college. UT Austin may be cheaper per year, but if you have to take 3 years of class to qualify for two years at Harvey Mudd, then it might even be a financial burden.

Third:

"SATs are useless, people should be judged by their grades, their merit, not some score on a test which could be a fluke, or which they could have used their money to train themselves for."

SATs aren't the sole admissions standard for any college - in fact most colleges are putting less and less weight on SAT scores. It is also possible to make up for low SAT scores by having strong extracurriculars or writing an interesting or good personal statement/essay. What the SATs are useful for is providing a *rough* gauge of academic potential. It's incredibly rough though. But when you think about it, its needed. Many schools go through thousands and thousands of applications, and in many cases admit only a couple hundred. SAT scores allow admission offices a fairly good way to establish a sort of minimum for prospective students. Getting a 1600 won't guarantee admission at any of the more competitive institutions (MIT, Harvard, or any of the Service Academies like West Point or Annapolis). Its only one of many things that are considered.

Fourth:
"Alot of people train hard for the SATs, get into Harvard or Yale, and drop out, mainly because they dont know how to work hard, they just know how to pass tests."

A lot of what college is, is taking lots of tests. They're not all standardized tests, but they're still tests. Its inevitable that you're going to have to take quite a few high-pressure tests in college (finals are next week!). The SAT is a good measure of how you will do under pressure. If you can train for a test, that means you can train to take a physics final or if you train for the SAT II writing test, it will show aptitude for that essay test in English class. And not that many people drop out of Yale (I'm not sure about Harvard), as there's a 95% graduation rate within 6 years - source here.

thought experiment

[WilyKit]

A better project would be to try to provoke ETS into investigating you for cheating.

Take the test twice; get ~900 the first time, then give it your best shot for a 1400+ the second time. Step two: wait for the phone call.

Re:thought experiment

[angle_slam]

3) ???
4) PROFIT!!!!!!!!

DISPROVEN

[commodoresloat]

Plymouth University just did a study on this. Put monkeys in a room with typewriters and they simply make a mess.

Re:DISPROVEN

[bint]

Well, from the article

Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will produce a mess....
"They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. "Obviously, English isn't their first language."

There wasn't an inifinite number, only 6, so "S" is quite a good start when writing Shakespeare. (sorry ;)

Re:DISPROVEN

[Unominous Coward]

duh.

what did you expect them to come up with? An operating system kernel?!

Re:DISPROVEN

[Zeinfeld]

Plymouth University just did a study on this. Put monkeys in a room with typewriters and they simply make a mess [foxnews.com].

The fact that you read and apparently believe stories in Fox News tells us what YOUR IQ is.

Re:DISPROVEN

[EMH_Mark3]

Hm.. if you had an infinite amount of monkeys, you wouldn't need an infinite amount of time :) In fact, you would need exactly the time it takes to type whatever you wanted to have. Monkey typing speed, of course.

Re:DISPROVEN

[urbanRealist]

Actually, that's kind of cool. If you go from
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
to
sssssasssssssfssssssssmmssamf
in only a month, think of what you'd have in a million years!

Re:SATs are a filtering device

[ChemicalSpider]

Another role the SATs fulfil goes beyond an aptitude test. Yes, for the most people that's what it does - measures as best it can scholastic aptitude, for better or worse. But it's also just one more hurdle in the path to college. If you think you're better than the test then you obviously don't HAVE to take it. But myself and many of my friends who thought that the test wasn't worth our time took it anyway. Why? Because if we didn't, then we limited ourselves in terms of a college education. Sure, we could have gone to a local community college instead and transfered - but even most State Universities offer higher quality education that community colleges.

In this case, the SAT measured our desire to get into college - not our aptitude for college. Its obvious that we would succeed in college based on our GPA, college essays, and other parts of our application. But by taking the SATs we showed the admissions board that we were willing to jump through a few hoops to get to college. We were willing to make a time commitment to school and a test that was meaningless and the admission boards at the various schools we are attending now took that into account. Obviously, if we lacked the fortitude just to take one more standardized test then any college would be justified in rejecting us.

Re:I should have the lowest

[CAIMLAS]

Huh, weird dude.

I know someone that filled in the dots to form pacman-type characters, and he got the second highest score in his school class. His class was of 3 or 4 hundred, and not in the ghetto or anything - it was actually a pretty good high school in suburbia. Not sure what the actual score was, though.

I'd agree, the SAT is a farce. From what I've seen, the ACT is a fair degree better at being consistent, although it definately seems to favor logically minded folks over creative folks.

my iq

[ConsoleDeamon]

m 130 iq and a still feal stupid. maby thats bicose i sese how much things there are i dont now and understand. ( yes im dyslexic so stopp bugging me abut my spelling)

Re:my iq

[Jaysyn]

I'll bite...

Don't feel bad, my younger brother has an I.Q. of 144 and he's very dyslexic as well.

Jaysyn

Re:The need for a well rounded education

[CAIMLAS]

so what then, is a real 'university'?

personally, what I've seen of US schools is sickening

Re:Standardized tests

[Cyno]

They might be able to measure how bad poverty or other factors affect education in certain areas. Which then should lead to additional funding, but I don't believe that is the case.

Re:Standardized tests

[EvilTwinSkippy]

The wonderful thing about numbers is that numbers are wonderful things...

Between grade inflation and the ever-shifting meaning of an SAT score I think te system is very self correcting. Both "scores" are absolutely meaningless.

I'll know I've done my job as a parent if my kid tells me: "Dad, I want to be a Carpenter", or a plumber, or an electrician. Every one of those guys has a house on the shore. No student loans. Steady work. They still use their brains. Most of them gross more a year than I do.

To me it would be a kick in the teeth to have a kid who wants to be a angst ridden kiss ass. I remember being one. I hated it. I deliberately wear sandels and wrinkled shirts to work to try to balance out my preppy past.

I can't believe someone hasn't said this already..

[Spruce Moose]

YOU FAIL IT!

Re:Standardized tests

[vDave420]

Standardized tests measure very well the ability to solve standardized tests. The question is - can they measure anything else?

Of course they can!

I always score near the top of these tests, 1480 sat, similar top scores in ASVAB, PSATs, MENSA test, etc.

This doesn't mean that i'm "smarter" than most others (my spelling is horrible and degrading rapidly), but I must point out that it is always people who test average or below (or, in general, are unsatisfied with the results of thier own tests) who make these statements, or say that it only tests "test taking" ability, or "book smarts".

I am "sorry" to say this (*), but there is really something fundamental about people that these tests do differentiate. I agree that exactly what that fundamental property is may be hard to determine and exactly define, but it is there, and it is far more than the ability to take a standardized test. I see it in my own life everyday.

-dave-

(*)Sorry as in, sorry that nature and evolution are cruel. I, however, am not cruel, so don't get too upset by this post. =)

Re:Standardized tests

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Your family's household income. For some families 50 bucks is a lot of money. Junior or Juniorette can only take the test once, or maybe twice. Mom and Dad most certanily cannot afford the Princeton Review we are going to drill you on the test and tutor you on all of the subjective assuptions about the questions course.

No I'm not bitter...

Re:Standardized tests

[NevermindPhreak]

as opposed to what, grades? high school GPAs are based on your ability to do acedimic work, not to learn (these days, anyways). theres really very little based on testing anymore; most teachers will let you make up poor tests with extra homework, but not let you make up missing homework by proving you know the material. i found that at least half of the people who complained about tests were the ones that didnt actually know the information. if it wasnt for tests, i wouldnt be going to college in the fall. i had a horrible GPA, but my test scores on the ACT and SAT was able to get me into one of the lesser colleges in my state. it always depressed me that i could get straight As on my tests and still fail a class, yet others could fail almost all the tests and still pass with at least a C grade.

Re:Standardized tests

[NevermindPhreak]

go figure, i forget to add paragraph tags to my comment. im too used to vBulletin and phpBB. :P also, im not saying the ACT and SAT are perfect. however, ill put more faith in test scores than in grades (in highschool, anyways) anyday.

hmm

[c.emmertfoster]

Here is my suggestion to you: Duplicate "someone's" +5 funny post, once per story. Any more than that is too obvious.

You are dim.

[c.emmertfoster]

Yes, because one result will obviously affect the average of hundereds of thousands of other results.

Worked for me

[Epistax]

I went through high school hardly doing a thing, and got an appropriate grade for it. I took the SAT, and scored better than just about everyone. Now I'm in college with a high GPA. I should be the college board's poster child.

disappointing....

[tacocat]

That we could consider failure to be cool

Don't we have enough of this already?

SAT verbal != word memorization

[The Cydonian]

In India, we aspiring graduate students spent marathon sessions memorizing vocabulary words that we never used again after taking the test. It was quite a joke, really. It favors those with the wherewithal to engage in this mindless brain-stuffing, and disadvantages those who do have the skills to read critically and find meaning, but don't memorize all those esoteric (= a good example itself!) words.

The next time you speak about Indians, do a favour, don't generalise, okay?

I'm an Indian, and five years back, I did give the SAT's, that's SAT I and SAT II. My preparation for SAT II- Writing (which, IMHO, is the toughest it can get for verbal tests at pre-UG levels, although, admittedly, it doesn't test verbal reasoning, but writing skills) was as follows:-
a) Read up on a test prep book,
b) Practise with a couple of old papers,
c)That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Actually, no, that's a lie. I did something else.

Heck, it's been five years now, the world was much younger then; yes, I spent two hours doing something else that evening before the test. You see, I couldnt bear the excitement and, when no one was around, decided to check out this new-fangled 'internet' thing that my dad and I somehow installed on our family PC.

It was a fascinating experience; there were many new things to learn. I learnt that, for instance, a certain low-profile website, offered email for virtually nothing! That, you could get all the news you want, based on your preferences, delivered to your very own inbox, again, free of cost!. I even learnt that a certain lady could adorn my wallpaper and that, it might start getting itchy in your pants if you stare at her picture for a while....

Let's just say that I think I did well for my 770 in SAT II Writing.

I liked this bit...

[Unominous Coward]

near the bottom of the page there is an overexposed photo of the test taker with this caption:

FIGURE: "Could my future get any brighter?!"

Colin is an interesting fellow....

[foniksonik]

I worked with this guy last year. He liked to work on all the tangential problems on our project... things like how to integrate Samba protocol with our proprietary API... fun stuff with actual real results...

He went on hiatus and never really came back. I heard about this particular stunt this morning from a coworker, best ten minutes of the day...

My thoughts were that this would be fun to gamble on... say put together pools or spread objectives for various test takers and bet money on how close they will come to their goals. Say you've got a guy who says he can get the absolute average... well you bet on him getting within 20 points or you say noway and take the smaller gain, whatever.. gambling on people's ability to read the test and perform how ever they want to sounds quite interesting to me...

Ummmmm Not too fast

[fataugie]

I don't want to piss in anyone's cornflakes, but I know someone who I went to HS with who scored around 400 (I don't remember exactly what, but I know it wasn't over 500) in 1983.

Now, yes, it was back in the day when the score meant a little more....so many changes to try to "even it out" for a number of reason's have probably made my friends score != Colin's score (i.e. for instance, we had no verbal stuff at all.....lots and lots of questions on paper).

My friend was not really expected to go to College, he did go(cooking school). It's really too bad because he was not a dumb kid. Well....OK, in book smarts he was. And I guess it was proven.

I should laugh....I got a 1070 (29 ACT though). I was the butt of many jokes in my school. It was a small class (83 graduating) from a college town in NY. The problem was, it was alot of college professors kids in there (mixed in with farmers and other locals) who were braniacs and skewed the test scores through the roof. Not that that's a bad thing, it makes you strive to keep up.

Re:Standardized tests

[Trurl's Machine]

I am "sorry" to say this (*), but there is really something fundamental about people that these tests do differentiate.

Agreed. But what is it, exactly? Is it your ability to achieve high social status? Definitely not, just look at some Fortune 500 executives or - as someone correctly pointed - George Dubya. Is it your ability to be a True Rocket Scientist Like The Eggheads From Old Sci-Fi Flicks? Neither, many famous inventors and scientific geniuses failed miserably in standardized tests.
Tests like SAT usually fail to measure the ability of thinking "out of the box", finding uncommon solutions (when you find an uncommon solution to a SAT question your answer is still wrong, even if you can well argue on that), transcending stereotypes etc.

Re:The need for a well rounded education

[kmellis]

How about a school where all students:

Learn Homeric and Attic Greek; and translate portions of Homer, Aristotle, the New Testament

Learn French and translate various writers -- Montaigne, for example

Read almost all of these books, in whole or in part -- a list which includes everything from Plato to Shakespeare to Heidegger to Smith to Austen to Marx

Study mathematics all four years, working from Euclid's Elements, through Newton and Leibniz's invention of the Calculus, and on through non-Euclidean geometry, Cantor, and others

Study music for one year; including history, theory, composition, and limited performance

Study laboratory science for three years; reading primary works and recapitulating experimentation spanning, for example, Lavoisier to Dalton to Miliken, Galen to Darwin, Newton to Einstein, and others

A partial semester of painting and sculpture

This is not just a gloss on the the so-called "Great Books"; and it's certainly not purely humanities or an impoverished "history or science" curriculum, either. It's heavy on both the math/science and on literature/philosophy -- not to mention that the year of music is the equivalent in some ways to more than a year at conservatory. Finally, it's really a lot of very difficult work.

Of course, it's not called a "university", it's called a "college" since it's integral and singular. This is what higher education was like in the past, and it indeed does live on in the US. St. John's is in fact the third oldest college in the US (behind William & Mary and Harvard); but the "New Program" has only existed since 1929.

Offtopic advice

[chrisbro]

Young SAT takers...the only advice I have to give concerning this test is take it over and over and over and over. Dot it so much that you memorize the spoken instructions. Take the PSATs as often as you can. Then take the SAT as often as your budget will let you.

I went to a magnet high school that seemed to be little more than a college-entry factory and we prepped for the SAT from the first day of my freshman year. The more familiar you become with it, the better you'll be at it.

Also, from what I understand, your score is variable on how everyone else did as well (kind of like a curve in a class of many thousands). So depending on when you take it, your score could go up. My 4 PSAT/SAT scores were: 1240, 1260, 1340, 1420. Screw people who say you can't jump up like that - just keep taking the thing and you have a good chance of at least marginally increasing your score.

Oh, and get there on time too. Flying around town at 90mph to go back and get your ticket was^H^H^His not fun.

Re:Offtopic advice

[Jon Abbott]

While this can be done rather economically with the SAT, retaking the GRE (the standardized test for entering grad school) gets cost prohibitive rather quickly. The GRE currently costs $105 each time you take it...

I mention this because I had a school tell me to take the GRE again because I was 10 points shy of their "recommended" minimums. I refused, and was accepted anyway. :^)

Re:Offtopic advice

[Compenguin]

"My 4 PSAT/SAT scores were: 1240, 1260, 1340, 1420."

how did you get above 240 on the PSAT?

Re:Offtopic advice

[TheKey]

They sort of tell you what your SAT scores would be on the PSAT scoresheet, even though the actual PSAT scores are only up to 240.

Re:Offtopic advice

[IanA]

My advice for SAT takers is to be sure to take the ACT also. I scored 1370 on my SAT 1 (710 V 660 M) but a 33 on the ACT, both with one try. The SAT score is decent, but the ACT score is excellent. The ACT, no surprise, is the superior test IMO :)

Re:Offtopic advice

[numark]

Simple: you add up the verbal and math scores (leaving out the writing score) and then you add a zero on the end of the result. I.e. 52 verbal + 52 math = 104, therefore your estimated SAT score would be 1040. It's a rough estimate, and frequently it underestimates your eventual SAT score (after all, you have another year of experience ahead of you) but it's a pretty good indicator of the whole thing.

Re:Offtopic advice

[$carab]

As a recent conqueror of the college application process, I think that your advice should be tempered a bit.

You can generally only take the PSATs (pre-SATs) twice, "for practice" during sophomore year and "for real" during junior year. The PSAT is curved easier than the SAT and has generally easier questions. A good score on the PSAT can make you a National Merit Scholar, but that won't guarantee your acceptance to Harvard (not by a long shot).

A lot of colleges will break apart your math and verbal scores and only look at the highest ones when your file gets reviewed. This means that if you score poorly on the math but well on the verbal, you can take the test again without worrying that you won't match your verbal score a second time.

That said, however, more presigious colleges will note if you've taken te SAT more than 3 times, especially if it is taken in succeeding months with very little score change. Take the SAT 4 times, and you're just hurting yourself.

Re:Offtopic advice

[istartedi]

It all depends on you. I was so nervous about the test, that I decided to employ a different technique on myself. I decided not to register for the test. Instead, I would go in on standby, and I would not prepare for the test. In the days leading up to my SAT, I reassured myself with the knowledge that I was not necessarily taking the test. I was just going somewhere that a test might be given. That morning I had my father drive me to the site and stick around just long enough to see if I got in. I got in, took the test, and got a 1320.

Some time went by, and I began to wonder if pre-registering and getting psyched up might have been better. So I tried again. Disaster. Time was called on the verbal portion, and I had a whole page of questions that I hadn't even touched. On my previous attempt, there had been time to review every section. I had the results from that 2nd test canceled, so to this day I have no idea how well I would have done, but missing a whole page of questions, and not having any time to review the others didn't bode well as far as I was concerned.

I knew other people who dealt with the pressure in other ways. A number of people drank alcohol before the test to calm themselves. One guy got stoned and carded an 1150 or something.

This was in 1985. There was a lot more emphasis on the SAT and PSAT back then. It seemed like coping with the pressure was a big part of what was being tested. I used to joke going into tests sometimes. I'd say "how do you feel about that psychology section they were talking about". Some people would go "huh?". Every once in a while you can get somebody really freaked out and they'll go "psychology section???". Psych! :)

The bottom line? You couldn't pay me enough to go back and take a SAT test. This Colin guy is sick... in an entertaining way.

Re:Offtopic advice

[Prof.Phreak]

My advice is not to take the SAT at all.

I never took it, and went though college, grad school, and now working on the PhD...

Standardized exams are stupid.

Re:The need for a well rounded education

[thynk]

The GI bill ruined any chance we had at getting an honest-to-god "University" on our blessid soil.

Sorry, guess I'm a little lost here, but what does the GI bill have to do with a quality of eduacation and the traditional "University" system. Stupid GI's lowering the bar or did the government make some deal with the colleges to let GI's pass the system?

I'll agree that schools have changed, and perhaps our recient graduates are missing some of the finer things in an education, but I do fail to see where that is linked to the GI Bill. Really not trying to troll here, but rather asking for something to back up your statement.

Oh look, it's light outside, I think that means I can go home from work :)

Re:SATs are a filtering device

[Alsee]

I never even took the SATs... because I never took it I'm in a community college.

If you wanted "better" than community college then you should have taken the SAT. You chose not to take the SAT. The "rich" didn't filter you out. YOU FILTERED YOURSELF OUT.

If you went to community college because you were poor then the SAT had nothing to do with it, did it?

If you went to community college because you didn't like school and didn't want to go to a better college then the SAT had noting to do with it, did it?

if you are poor you arent even thinking about the SAT

The only reason to link "poor" and "not thinking about the SAT" is if you want an excuse to remain "oppressed".

If you want to get out of a crap school and into a good school then the SAT is exactly what you should think about. If that's not what you wanted then don't blame the SAT.

SATs... which they could have used their money to train themselves for.

No matter how poor you are you can always study "Beat the SAT" books on your own at the library for free.

The SAT is tries to predict college performance. A poor person who goes out of his way to study SAT guides at the library, who cares about the SAT and works hard on it is an excellent candidate to do well in college.

If you are poor then caring about the SAT is opportunity. A good SAT score for a "poor" highschool stands out to college admission offices. Caring about the SAT gives you a shot at at least a partial scholarship.

-

Re:Standardized tests

[theLOUDroom]

This doesn't mean that i'm "smarter" than most others (my spelling is horrible and degrading rapidly), but I must point out that it is always people who test average or below (or, in general, are unsatisfied with the results of thier own tests) who make these statements, or say that it only tests "test taking" ability, or "book smarts".

Nope, not true. I scored a 1450. I think I'm in the top (some low number) percent of the population as far as intelligence and knowledge goes. I do not believe that the general SAT is valid test of anything other than SAT-taking ability.

I think I'm pretty qualified to say that too, given that I'm 2 weeks after from my degree.

I don't think the test is properly designed. I think I've taken much better tests that guaged general ablities, especially math.

The SAT only tests really basic math skills. I don't think this is a valid measure of someone's abilities.

Put simply, I don't think the spread between the easy and the hard questions is wide enough. I took the test as a junior, and I still hadn't been in any of the courses it is designed to test in two years. Yeah, I did fine, but how are those who are truly ahead of the curve supposed to show their abilities?

This isn't a problem limited to just the SATs either. In NYS we have state-wide Regents test for various subjects. I got a perfect score on all three tests. (I'm not saying this to brag, but I need to prove a point.) I used to think this was cool. Know what I realize now? That those tests were a waste. I should have been taking harder tests and harder courses.
Looking back now, I bet I could've taken my first two collesge math courses in high school and done allright. I'm not counting the AP Calc I did take in HS, either.

There is something wrong with putting everyone in the same class, or having them take the same test. People have different levels of abilities at different things. They should be taking a test which recognizes that. We should have been taking a different test. The number or questions that seperates a 1500 from a 1600 is just not statisically significant. When you start talking about this guy missing 2 questions out of several hundred and that guy missing 1, it's idiotic to separate those two people's scores by 1/14th of the total availible score range. Then admissions people go ahead and treat the 1600 as if it was a much better score than the 1500, even though scores that far off the norm aren't well enough determined for them to have that information. (And you can't call this bitterness either, I got into every school I applied to, and I'm about to graduate from a top school in my field.)

The questions I had to answer on the SAT just didn't really relate to anything I did in college. Yeah, they tested some basic skills that I needed in college, but they we not testing my potential. They weren't even testing if I had the skillset necessary to succeed.

If I had gone to college with only the math skills tested by the SAT I, I would have been fucked. No doubt about it. If it had really taken those extra years to learn those basic skills, and been that far behind, there's no way I could have kept up with the pace of my college courses.


(*)Sorry as in, sorry that nature and evolution are cruel. I, however, am not cruel, so don't get too upset by this post. =)

That's a pretty messed up thing to say. "Evolution" is not the reason most people do poorly on tests. There are plently of people out there with the same or greater potential than you, who never get a chance to fullfill it, through no fault of their own. Maybe their school was shitty. Maybe their homelife was shitty. Maybe they were just flat out homeless.

I friend of mine dropped out of school in 10th grade. He was living on his own, supporting himself completely at age 16. He scored a 1400 on his SAT. He's a smart guy, Imagine how well he would have done given a better

Which schools?

[ThesQuid]

I'd love to know what schools have sent him a prospectus on attending. Who are the bottom feeders?

Re:Which schools?

[duncf]

If I remember correctly, College Board doesn't actually send scores (or score ranges, presumably) to schools that want to send out information to lots of students. So he'll probably get the same information that everyone else is getting! I think I got information from George Mason University, Potsdam and Deep Springs as a result of my SATs, although those could have been because of another test I wrote.

TV licensing

[davew]

Ok, I hear you, but consider for a second - the alternative to a TV license is commercial funding. We have an abundance of commercial channels on digital transmission now. Is it really desirable that every media stream should be commercially funded? Is there not still a place channels whose content does not depend on attracting mainstream advertisers?

Dave

Re:TV licensing

[jez9999]

I don't know, maybe there is. But I don't see it as my job, as a TV viewer, to fund a public sector broadcaster. And frankly, I think that most of what the BBC puts out is complete crap, and no better than a commercial broadcaster. There are one or two notable exceptions (EastEnders), but most commercial broadcasters have 1 or 2 hit shows that keep people watching them too.

If you look at the BBC recently, they have been getting more commercialized by the day anyway. Their self-confessed measure of success is how many people watch the programmes they put out. That makes them just as 'bad' as any commercial broadcaster.

Re:TV licensing

[arkanes]

Is there any meaningful measure of "success" for an an information medium other than how many people view it?

Re:TV licensing

[jez9999]

You're American, aren't you? :-)

For me, the whole point of the BBC's safety net licence fee was to allow it to create stuff that was *not necessarily popular*, but that provided a public service. Supposedly 'high quality' dramas (I think most of them suck), and educational programmes, as well as unbiased news. These days, the news is far from unbiased, and most of the programmes they put out are rubbish. If their only measure of success is how many people watch the programme, they don't need special funding because they could be successful as a commercial broadcaster (lots of viewers = lots of ad/subscription revenue).

Re:TV licensing

[NDPTAL85]

How can something be a "Public Service" if so few of the public watch it? We have something similar to the BBC over here in the US called "PBS". Its funded by taxpayer dollars rather than a direct TV license ransom such as in the UK. And it DOES make good stuff but so few people watch it and with all the cable channels providing what they provide why is public TV even necessary anymore?

Re:TV licensing

[davew]

Usually (in this part of the world at least), a public service means one which is necessary or useful for the community as a whole, but not popular enough to fund directly. Services like flat rate postage to rural areas, and public transport on loss-making routes, are good examples. They're not popular, but it's good for everyone if they exist, so you fund them centrally.

My thinking with a license-funded TV station (and I'm not going to defend the BBC's implementation of this) is that it's important not for the service to be popular, but for the service to exist so that when we really, really need it, it's there.

I think it's also important that there is some media stream out there which can make programming decisions based on criteria other than "how many advertisers will this get us", because what's important isn't necessarily the same as what's popular.

Dave

MCAT vs SAT vs ACT

[Dukeofshadows]

> Now granted, in order to get into a good (medical school), you still have to go through a nasty little M-CAT, something I know nothing about.

No, in order to get into any American or Caribbean medical school you need to take the MCAT. Hopkins used to take ACT scores but changed over a few years ago, and a few BS/MD programs will still do that, but most of those only admit high school students for a 6-year ride (Brown, Kansas City-Missouri, etc.; Miami-FL rolls theirs such that FL residents can apply in high school or after first year)

I'm in medical school now, having got a 32 on the MCAT. If you want an SAT equivalent of the MCAT, look at the ACT: I think that the MCAT and ACT are made by the same folks. On both tests you are tested on what you know instead of your ability to prepare for the specific test. There were people in my class who cracked 1500 on the SAT but did not get better than 30 on the ACT, and lots of folks got much higher ACT scores than SAT. Colleges are starting to figure this out, especially given that the SAT (and IMO GRE) are basically assinine exams designed to see who can think in the same way as the test-takers.

The penalties for guessing on the SAT will hamper bright students and IMO artificially deflate scores. Most of the Verbal section of the SAT is, again, a matter of test-taking: skip the hardest sections and get back to them later (use this strategy for the MCAT too) The ACT seemed to be more comprehensive and much more straight-forward, maybe that is due to my own bias and scores. Most schools take both now, if you want to answer every question then take the ACT. Note that the MCAT does not penalize you for guessing, they know that the scores will be low since the test is bell-curved nationally anyway. Averages run around 8.5 / category, 3 numerically graded categories and a writing section with a letter attached (J-T, avg = O or so), good score = 30+.

BTW, if you're getting ready to take the MCAT, remember 3 things:

1) take a prep course. I swear by Kaplan and will use them for step I, others think Princeton Review is the key.

2) leave the semester before the exam (take it in april and if need be again in august) open to a fairly light load. I took 18 hours that semester and would have done 12 in retrospect.

3) Study constantly, even over spring break. If you can do well in april it saves you a summer of grief, not to mention that everyone taking it in april has a class load to deal with.

Re:MCAT vs SAT vs ACT

[benjamindees]

On both tests you are tested on what you know instead of your ability to prepare for the specific test.

Whoa, there, cowboy. The ACT & MCAT are achievement tests, designed specifically to test knowledge. Knowledge is still, AFAIK, something you can acquire and retain almost regardless of your IQ.

The SAT and standard IQ tests, OTOH, are aptitude tests, designed to test a person's ability to solve problems and think critically. This is also something that can be learned, but only to an extent. It is not possible to memorize all of the possible questions on an SAT test, while on an ACT test it is. No matter how much preparation you go through, you cannot teach yourself to be a genius.

More info

Re:Genius?

[mrjb]

Neither does getting such a test result look bright to most people. I bet he did it on purpose :)

I wonder what score random answers would produce

[weave]

Some people should volunteer to take it using random answers. It could be fun, like making patterns out of the bubbles!

Random answers would obviously score higher than he did, since he tried to answer incorrectly, but I wonder what percentile that would fall into, giving an idea of how many people tried to do well but ended up doing worse than just picking answers at random!

informative!?

[real_smiff]

did you really expect them to produce the works of Shakespeare? Lord. :)

You can get an A with minimal work.

[nuggz]

Simple, you do the right work.

For example when you have a 5 point essay question, don't write a book. Write a paragraph, with 5 points in it. If the teacher is a biggie for structure, add an intro and summary sentence. Make sure you spell it mostly right, and write neatly.
Also don't make run on sentences.
When you do projects, make them the appropriate size for the mark value and your position. Then make sure it is done well. Target the requirements.

If the teacher/prof/TA wants a 10 page report, doing a good 10 page report will get you a higher mark then an even better 20 page report.

Re:You can get an A with minimal work.

[twitter]

Sounds great, bow down and be rewarded. It's not what you know or how you express yourself, it's doing what you are told.

Your reward for self sacrifice and obenience? More of the same, you obviously like it.

Re:You can get an A with minimal work.

[morcheeba]

I had a jerk of a college teacher that asked us to do a 20-page final report. Our group put together a pretty good report, coming in at 22 pages. We got our grades back, and we realized we got a so-so grade, but it was the lowest in the class. We went to the teacher's office and asked him what the problem was. He said "you guys had the best paper in the class, but if only it was longer...". I think he liked it and wanted to see more, but was sad when it ended, kinda like a good movie that's over. He refused to change the grade.

He had other problems. The course grade was essentially 2 big tests and the final report. He had failed to tell the bookstore which book he was using, so consequently they only had books for 1/5th of the class. It would have required some work to order a book from other sources (this was pre-internet and I didn't have a credit card), but this was a fairly easy course and he kept promising the books would arrive. The day before the first test comes around (midway through the semester), and we point out that the book still isn't in. He counted students and said he'd tell his secratary to photocopy the relevant chapters, pick it up at 6pm. We all came back to campus at 6 to find she had never been told anything.

bah. I don't mean to sound like a whiner. I had lots of cool classes & teachers, but sometimes you get a whacked-out non-sensical teacher you can't reasonably please. And, in real life, you'll sometimes get customers like this.

Re:You can get an A with minimal work.

[HanzoSan]

Yes thats basically what school is about.

Re:You can get an A with minimal work.

[HanzoSan]

Its up to you to get good grades, not the teacher, you do whatever it takes to do your assignment and you move on, you do your best on every assignment and you'll always get at least over an 80.

This is how you keep your B average, if you always get over an 80 on every assignment, and if you always get over a 90 thats even better.

Re:You can get an A with minimal work.

[claygate]

Now that I've taken a nap and figured out what I was trying to say is that I have friends who scored above me AND below on the SAT. They all have better grades than I. Now in University I have the lowest score even though I was higher in a lot of standardised tests. But the SAT ends up having a HUGE sample size, taking me and my 4 close friends from highschool is exceedingly small, showing that on average what someone achieves at a given score x is what it is meant to do. It sort of worked.

And they don't even score it correctly

[A nonymous Coward]

I took the SAT in 1968 or 1969. You had to pay for tests in groups of three, there were 5 I wanted, so I threw in Math II just to get my money's worth. There were a bunch of questions I didn't answer, and one I took a wild guess at but remember very well. I asked my math teacher about it the next day, he showed me how to figure it out, and I had guessed wrong. Months later, I was called in to the counselor's office, I had gotten 800 (perfect) on Math II. I laughed and told him no way, he said way, I told him why, he asked them to double check, some time later they called me back in, said hand scoring had confirmed it.

Haven't had a lot of respect for SAT or tests in general every since. Maybe that's why I'm such a cynical bastard :-)

Re:And they don't even score it correctly

[Loki_1929]

On each test, there are usually a few questions thrown out, in which case everyone gets credit regardless of their answer. Questions tend to be thrown out when the question has either no correct answer, an ambiguously-worded question, or there's a typo that changes the meaning of the question. In addition, the results are "normalized". What this means is that in order to receive close-to-expected results, the test scores, as a whole, are shifted upwards a small amount. If I recall correctly, I believe you can get something like 2 questions wrong on the Math portion of the SAT I, and 3 questions wrong on the verbal section of the SAT I and still have a 1600 (perfect score).

Whether the normalizing process is a good thing or a bad thing has long been debated. Personally, I think it's a bad thing, as it doesn't accurately reflect the performance of the students; especially those at the top. Did Johnny get all the questions right? Or did Johnny get 5 questions wrong? There's no way to know, as his score is 1600 either way.

Re:And they don't even score it correctly

[tricorn]

You're describing the Achievement Tests, not the SAT. The Math tests in particular seemed quite inflated in score - for whatever reason, probably because few people took it unless they expected to do well, an 800 in Math I was only something like a 90th percentile (and I think Math II even worse).

You're confusing the scaled score with something real. An 800 score doesn't indicate you got every question right, just as a 200 doesn't indicate you got every question wrong. Read the article for lots of details on how scoring is done (one interesting point he illustrates: not answering any questions at all would have gotten him a 430 or so, not a 400). Depending on which test (and what year, of course), they stated that there was no statistical difference between an 800 and (say) a 750 score. Now, if you took the test multiple times, you could probably show a difference between someone who consistently scored 790-800 and someone who consistently scored 720-760, but it wouldn't be much of a difference. Someone who consistently scored 800 would indicate they were actually off the scale. Note also that one of the things you're measuring at that level is accuracy, not necessarily how well you understand Math.

Re:And they don't even score it correctly

[slamb]

There were a bunch of questions I didn't answer, and one I took a wild guess at but remember very well. I asked my math teacher about it the next day, he showed me how to figure it out, and I had guessed wrong. Months later, I was called in to the counselor's office, I had gotten 800 (perfect) on Math II.

You could have both missed that question and gotten an 800. There's a difference between a perfect raw score and a perfect standardized score, as mentioned in the article. You can actually miss up to three questions, IIRC, and still get an 800 on that section.

You're not a tradesman are you?

[nuggz]

I think skilled trades are excellent careers, just not for me.

The jobs aren't always steady.
It is physical work, crawling around and stuff takes a toll. Wiring a house isn't just 15 mins and a $3k bill, there is a lot too it.

I don't think education is "the key to success". But I'd still rather have my desk job with the stress and student loans and all.

Re:You're not a tradesman are you?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

There is a lot to be said for different strokes for different folks.

Let me ammend that. I'll know I've done my job if my kid grows up to be happy with what they do in life.

Thanks, it's nice to remember that some folks ARE happy with a desk job.

Re:You're not a tradesman are you?

[nuggz]

I'll know I've done my job if my kid grows up to be happy with what they do in life.

The only right answer is the job you enjoy.

Closed Universe

[Lord Grey]

I thought this was one of the better comments in the article:

It is possible that people with the same subjective influences and implicit assumptions do well in college, because college faculty belong to the same dominant species of irrationality. So, the value of the verbal section of the SAT as a predictor of performance in college might be quite high. However, the side-effect of optimizing a test to better predict success in college is that truly objective minds might be punished for not keeping up with the latest delusions.

I've always felt that the U.S. education system "taught to itself," meaning that much of what you learned in school was directly relevant to school, but nowhere else. It's like the schools inhabit their own closed universe.

My 13 year-old son spends an inordinate amount of time in school studying and practicing for a thing called a TAKS test here in Texas. You have to pass it or you don't graduate to the next grade (that's the intention, anyway). What skill, exactly, is he learning? As far as I can tell, the skill is "how to take the TAKS test" -- something very useful in the post-school world, I'm sure.

Very frustrating, at times.

Re:Closed Universe

[Greyfox]

Your kid's school teaches him how to play the game. Your job should be teaching him how to think, so that he can see that it is a game.

Re:Closed Universe

[KefkaFloyd]

"My 13 year-old son spends an inordinate amount of time in school studying and practicing for a thing called a TAKS test here in Texas. You have to pass it or you don't graduate to the next grade (that's the intention, anyway). What skill, exactly, is he learning? As far as I can tell, the skill is "how to take the TAKS test" -- something very useful in the post-school world, I'm sure."

Here in Massachusetts, we have a very similar thing called the MCAS (rearrange the letters and get SCAM!), and as of this year it is a binding requirement for graduating high school in this state. These exams are pointless, having taken it myself a few years back and acing the math section and doing very well on the English, Science, and History sections. These exams are indicators of economic status, nothing more, nothing less (though I don;t have a very privileged background, I'm not dirt poor either).

The exams are for "accountability," but accountability for what, exactly? The idea is that they are going to use these scores to show where to throw money in the school system. It sounds like it would work, but money can't solve every problem.

New York started this with the Regents (I think, someone care to correct me?), and it's been a terrible trend ever since. "High Stakes exams" are a travesty and they reflect nothing you experience in the real world or in college/university.

Re:Closed Universe

[gjbivin]

Here in Arizona, they recently instituted a similar test called AIMS. There was a big hue and cry and they finally "dumbed it down" because some students might not pass it. So now the schools aren't just "teaching to the test", they're teaching to a "dumbed down" test...

Re:Closed Universe

[MarcQuadra]

I'm upset because I went through twelve years of school and never learned:

1. Office/Workplace Etiquette.
2. Customer Service Skills.
3. How Banking Works.
4. How to build Good Credit.
5. How to PAY A BILL.
6. Landlord/tenant rights.
7. How a car works (basic theory).
8. How to budget monthly.
9. How Insurance works/how to use insurance.
10.So much more.

Re:Closed Universe

[Piquan]

My 13 year-old son spends an inordinate amount of time in school studying and practicing for a thing called a TAKS test here in Texas.

When I was in Texas, they didn't have TAKS yet, but did have TAAS. I don't think the TAAS affected the students in any way, but it was the big thing to determine the schools' funding. You can imagine the pressure on the administration and faculty to improve TAAS scores, so most teachers really strongly taught to the TAAS.

Now, the better teachers didn't. They would be sure to cover the areas the TAAS tests, sure-- which was the intention of the TAAS to begin with. I'm glad I had a lot of the better teachers!m

I've always wanted to see a study of whether states with programs like TAAS, AIMS, MCAS, etc. produce students who do any better in college than those states that don't.

Re:Closed Universe

[tedrlord]

I went to one of those "special" schools for high school. I took the short bus and everything. I couldn't go to normal high school for a couple of reasons, some psychological, and some due to the fact that I learned the main book my English class was reading that year was about an anthropomorphic mouse and just refused to show up.

Both parts of the special school seemed to have a focus on living skills that you don't see other places. It was actually quite helpful, because it included a lot of stuff adults don't really think to teach teenagers, many of which were on your list.

The other nice thing was that the teachers were generally the unusual ones. The main teacher would talk about his trips to the Island of Komodo (those dragons smell horrible, apparently) or the Dread Zeppelin concert he went to the previous Friday. The science teacher and I would discuss Bruce Lee's philosophy of martial arts or a recent Marilyn Monroe layout in Playboy. (It was a reprint, I'm not that old) They even let me do book reports on Dostoevsky and George Orwell while the rest of the class worked on normal stuff.

Now that I think about it, I kind of wish I hadn't tested out at the end of the year. Though if I hadn't I may have been forced to go back to normal high school. Yuck.

Re:Closed Universe

[soleblaze]

I remember having to take the TAAS with the people who retook it since I was a transfer student from another state. It was interesting since they all gave us treats like orange juice and cereal packets and rice crispie treats and stuff..

Moral: Do bad on your tests, you get snacks :D

Re:Closed Universe

[btellier]

I don't think the TAAS affected the students in any way, but it was the big thing to determine the schools' funding.

Wait a minute.. how does that make any sense? So if your school produces lousy students you get less funding to pay your teachers and supply teaching supplies? Now the teachers who're the best qualified are less likely to work for the crappy school. Granted some teachers will work for virtually nothing (actually most, since teachers are notoriously underpaid), but every teacher wants to give at least the STUDENTS the best chances for success, which is partially determined by the materials on-hand used to teach them. Clearly this test/funding system is redundant, and the schools who were traditionally well-funded (in more affluent districts) are going to recieve funds that reflect the benefits of being well-funded. The whole damn point of more funds is that funds == success!

I swear to christ, the next time some racist motherfucker tries to use an argument that "clearly minorities don't possess the brainpower to succeed, just look at their low test scores" is going to get an argument based on the ridiculous system you outlined. Minorities didn't even have HYPOTHETICAL access to the best schools just a few decades ago, and now we're trying to ensure that the schools in their neighborhoods never get the funds to improve. Sigh..

Re:Closed Universe

[sciencewhiz]

I learned #3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9 in school, mainly because my mother and father know what is important

Re:Closed Universe

[MarcQuadra]

I DID learn them as I needed them later on, and it IS a parnet's job to teach such things, but most parents these days can't handle most of that themselves, I think it's time to reinstitute 'home economics' in high schools and teach all that stuff. I want teachers showing kids how to check their cars' oil levels and how to build good credit so they can buy homes later in life.

Re:Closed Universe

[ces]

One of the big problems with many of these tests is many of them offer no or limited opportunity for a retake. If you are having an off day, allergies, or just didn't get enough sleep you don't pass to the next grade or graduate high-school.

This kind of nonsense and "teaching to the test" will probably lead me to put my kids in private schools.

Re:Closed Universe

[ces]

Before anyone says that "parents should be teaching these things" realize that many adults have problems with these tasks. I'm still figuring out #1 (advanced study, office politics), have blown #4 a couple of times, and mostly fake #8. I did get some exposure to #3, #5, #6 and #9 in high school mostly in senior social studies or the business law elective I took. Our senior social studies teacher also had us fill out the 1040EZ, 1040A, and 1040 (with attachments) IRS forms. Probably one of the most useful things I learned in high school.

Most of these topics provide a jumping off point to teaching the usual required subjects:

1. Office/Workplace Etiquette. Psycology, ethics, diversity.
   
2. Customer Service Skills. Psycology, business.
   
3. How Banking Works. Economics, business, basic math, history.
   
4. How to build Good Credit. Economics, business.
   
5. How to PAY A BILL. Economics, business, basic math.
   
6. Landlord/tenant rights. Business, law, civics.
   
7. How a car works (basic theory). Mechanics/shop, science, engineering.
   
8. How to budget monthly. Economics, business, basic math.
   
9. How Insurance works/how to use insurance. Economics, business.
   

Most of these also provide an opportunity for things like a research paper or project.

Other useful things that can lead to teaching traditional subjects as well:

1. How to fill out a tax return.
   
2. Retirement planning.
   
3. How to invest/how the stock market works.
   
4. How to write a resume/apply for a job.
   
5. How health/dental insurance works.
   
6. How to select a doctor/dentist.
   
7. How to get the most out of your doctor/dentist.
   
8. Basic medical knowledge everyone should know.
   
9. How to rent an an apartment.
   

Re:Closed Universe

[Mr. Piddle]

I'm upset because I went through twelve years of school and never learned...

This is why extended warranty companies, credit counselors, and car title loan stores are actually a successful segment of our economy. They prey the inability of the public to manage their own lives.

The gross amount of people with bad credit is a testament to how the education system fails to prepare people for the "real world".

Re:Closed Universe

[RodgerDodger]

You need to go to a better school, or maybe a better school system. Examples from your list that are covered in Australian schools:

1. Office/Workplace Etiquette.
2. Customer Service Skills.

Work experience; placement of students in typical work environments at several points throughout their school life. The work environments must vary, and typically put the person in some menial role (often customer facing, like the receptionist's desk).

3. How Banking Works.
4. How to build Good Credit.
5. How to PAY A BILL.
8. How to budget monthly.
9. How Insurance works/how to use insurance.

Yep. Most states actually have a financial studies unit as a separate (but mandatory) course. The other couple fold into the social studies course.

7. How a car works (basic theory).
Yeah, auto shop is available. Optional, but still available. Also, driver's ed course (at school, not the private ones) include basic automotive maintainence (enough to change a tyre or battery, at least).

6. Landlord/tenant rights.

Well, not covered at school, but you can get detailed brochures on this at the post office...

Re:Closed Universe

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

I'm upset because I went through twelve years of school and never learned:
list of real-world skills and lessons

Did you learn how to learn? The rest comes easy. If you learned that the only path to knowledge comes from your classroom teachers, then you're screwed and you should be upset.
If, on the other hand, you learned that you are capable of seeking and attaining knowledge, then your schooling was not a waste.
There is no way to teach you all of life's lessons in 12 years. Decent schooling can equip you to learn them, the rest is up to you.

Now I'm off to think up a new sig along the lines of "you can't learn life's lessons from google, at least not with site=slashdot.org"

--

Re:Closed Universe

[kevmit]

Too True! Every item you listed should be mandatory curriculum in High School. I look back, from the perspective of a technical trainer, on how and what was ostensibly "covered" in HS and wonder, "WTF were they actually trying to teach us...if anything?!"
Granted, I attended four different high schools (father was in the AF security service) which doesn't make for a very contiguous learning experience but, seriously, the instructors I encountered didn't seem to have a clue about the most basic tenets of effective training delivery.
Where was Slashdot and THIS website, HowStuffWorks - Learn how Everything Works!, when I was in highschool and needed them, dammit!
Oh...Right! Websites hadn't been invented yet. Oh well, I'd have settled for a BBS.

Re:It's amazing, really

[Bastian]

Lots and lots of people are in the top 2% of humanity.

Judging from a quick mental run-through of the SAT scores and IQs of people I know, I'd say about 1/3 of everybody fits in the 98th percentile.

And about 2/3 of everybody has at least one shoebox full of blue ribbons.

We're one spart pack of motherfuckers, I tell ya.

Re:The reason

[Bastian]

The truth is, SAT scores fall on a range of 400-1600 because they are calculated by rolling 4d4.

Re:It's been proven.

[Bastian]

I just read an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that discusses the fact that the correlation between SAT scores and college GPA is about 10%.

Re:Standardized tests

[driverEight]

but I must point out that it is always people who test average or below (or, in general, are unsatisfied with the results of thier own tests) who make these statements, or say that it only tests "test taking" ability, or "book smarts".

Well, I got a 1440 before the recentering (and fell asleep during the test!) and I belive the tests are fundamentally flawed and end up being much more a test of test taking ability than of anything remotely usefull.

It is a travesty that SAT scores are used for anything more than entertainment purposes, especially within 1 standard deviation of the mean, which is where people tend to place the most emphasis on scores.

EASTENDERS!?

[nagora]

Are you totally mad? Eastenders is bilge.

Re:EASTENDERS!?

[chrisos]

Agreed!

One of the many advantages of separating from my ex-wife, was never having to see Eastenders (or Coronation Street, or Brookside) ever again.

And thanks to my TiVo, I haven't seen a glimps of any of that tosh in many months. Long live TiVo!

Zen

[johnwbyrd]

When we were about to graduate from high school, you and I and every other Slashdot member were brainwashed into thinking that our SAT scores were to determine our lifelong social status.

It doesn't. People in the Real World will never ask you your SAT scores. No one actually cares what your SAT scores were.

This guy has achieved some sort of karmic grace. He has reduced the SAT to the elitist joke that it truly is. He has beaten the SAT.

(1470 combined, in 1987)

Re:Zen

[Snowhare]

The sad thing is that you do get asked. I was doing some volunteer work at a church food kitchen about 4 years ago and an individual who shall remain nameless started badgering me about what my SAT (taken way back in 1984) score was. I have no idea what brought on his evident need to know what my SAT scores had been more than a decade earlier.

Re:I should have the lowest

[frenchgates]

This smells like urban folklore. For one thing, given the one-dot-per-line restriction, how do you make "pacman-type characters?" I don't remember any long thin wiggly lines in pacman.

Same thing in Arizona

[Sycraft-fu]

They introduced a new test, I don't remember what it was called since I graduated before this happened. It was intended to be a comprehensive graduation type thing. Well my mom, who is a junior high teacher, was telling me about the disaster of the test run of this. Basically nobody was passing, this test was just rediciously hard. It did get toned down finally and might have been eliminated, but the fact that they even introduced it was so amazingly stupid I couldn't even believe it.

The problem comes from bone-heads on the boards that make the decisions, the kind of people who certianly couldn't pass these tests themselves. One person, who pushed for these, actually said that the goal of Arizona education was to have all the students achieving in the 80th percentile. Ya, ok, I'd like to see THAT genius pass the math part, given her keen non-understanding of percentile scores.

The worst thing is you get parents that back this crap up. They seem to think that all kids can be above average if you just make the test hard enough. Errrr, right. My proposal was that anyone who supported the test shuld be required to take it. If they failed, they should have their diploma yanked. :)

Rock on Y

[buddha42]

Interesting to see that Male's edged out females in the Verbal, and rocked dem bitches in Math.

Prompting male's everywhere to chant...
I am so smart! I am so smart! S - M - R - T, I mean S - M - A - R - T!

Re:Rock on Y

[Majik Sznak]

Heh. Interesting to see that even males don't know what to do with an apostrophe. :)

A previous post talked about making sure your spelling was "mostly right." Do these standardized exams take spelling and grammar into account? Have they ever?

I'm wondering exactly when spelling and grammar became so... optional. The apostrophe abuse situation has become more severe in the past two years. I'm seeing signs and advertisements which randomly pluralize words with an apostrophe in front of the 's'.

Why he "missed" two math problems...

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

I found a CEEB quote describing their policy:

"If the resulting score is a fraction,
it is rounded to the nearest whole number
-- 1/2 or more is rounded up;
less than 1/2 is rounded down."

Although implied by the sentence structure, the case
of a fraction equal to 1/2 is not actually part of the
definition of "nearest whole number"!

Later he goes on to say he accidentally got two math problems right. This is probably because he thinks the phrase "1/2 or more" only implies that it contains the value 1/2. :)

Re:Why he "missed" two math problems...

[2bot_or_not_2bot]

"nearest whole number" means the whole number that is nearest to a specified number. For
1/2 there is no nearest whole number.

The CEEB policy indicates without any ambiguity what to do in the case of "1/2". However, the phrasing of the quote of CEEB policy seems to imply that "1/2 or more..." is actually part of the DEFINITION of "nearest whole number", when in fact the phrase "nearest whole number" used by the math world does not specify what to do in the case of 1/2.

SAT : MOTIVATION :: MCAS : KNOWLEDGE

[xintegerx]

SAT tests how much work you put into the SAT which shows how much work you would put in once you ARE in college. The MCAS tests KNOWLEDGE you're supposed to have learned in your previous 10 years of life. Only knowledge will get you a high grade here.

Yes. The SAT does test "How good you will do in college". BUT INDIRECTLY. The SAT's actually put the question "how much work is this person going to put towards this test just to pass it?" YOu see, someone who puts a lot of time just for the SAT is very likely to put a lot of effort into college work.

Colleges know this and don't care whether your 1400 was achieved through knowledge OR support (money, family, tutors, etc.) OR cheating/deduction--they know that either way if you did great on the SAT you would do great here by testing MOTIVATION.

That's why SAT scores mean jack shit in terms of knowledge. I mean, there's businesses revolving around teaching techniques to improve your SAT score.

So, the MCAS shows how much you know and if you have the patience to do the whole test out (since you have unlimited time)--both are good traits! The SAT shows nothing specifically--you don't know whether that 1200 was with techniques or by brute force KNOWLEDGE. Plus SAT's are definitely not knowledge exams since they throw in answers that are easily removed and confuse no one.

So it does make sense. Plus, a friend has done high SAT's and pefect math mcas, too.

IQ measures deductive reasoning.

[jeepliberty]

Back in the 70s, at the request of my girl friend, I took one of those store-bought self-administered IQ tests.

I breezed through it in less than the allotted time thinking how easy it was. To my surprise I actually got two questions wrong! That equated to an IQ of 158 (max was 160).

I'm smart enough to know that I am not a genious, so my curious mind went to work.

My conclusion was that my job actually trained me for the test. At the time I was writing assembly language code for realtime control system. The use of or, nor, and, nand, xor on the lowest computer language had honed my skills at the deductive reasoning process. I had studied the test!

Years later, after my career took me away from hacker coding, I came across an IQ test at BN. I bought it, took it, and scored a reasonable score.

Conclusion: If you want to scrore big on the IQ test, try assembly level programming for 18 months.

Re:IQ measures deductive reasoning.

[benjamindees]

You may not be a "genious" at spelling, but you've hit the nail on the head re: deductive reasoning. I'm shocked that logic and deduction are so readily ignored in schools in America. I've had college professors who taught logic and didn't seem to know the first thing about it.

I think the idea

[Sycraft-fu]

Is to cater more to what university admissions want. Thing is, math is an objective kind of thing. For the kinds of math you do on the SAT (basic arithmitic, algebra and gemometery) there is a single righ answer to every question that can be worked out through calculation. This is something you can score totally objectively.

Writing and reading skills just aren't that way. The SAT tries, but as Colin notes, it falls short. You can't really test English skills through a multiple choice test, and universities know it.

For example:

I did acceptably well on my SAT I, roughly 700 on each setion (I don't remember the precise score). Well I decided to go to a state school and this being Arizona, it didn't matter since they basically have to let you in if you graduate from a state high school. Now, U of A may have to let you in because you graduated a state school, but they have their own criteria for what classess you get in to. They do take SATs into consideration, but they do their own testing as well.

For math, they are willing to accept a high SAT score along as evedience that you have sufficient skill to take first semester freshman calculus. Past that you have to take their test since the SAT is precalc only. If you score is lower than the math you want in to, you may also opt to take their test. I didn't take the test because there was no need, I knew no calc so I wouldn't test out of first semester and they were willing to let me in with no additonal work.

English was a different story. Didn't matter how well you scored on your SATs, they still wanted you to go and write an essay. They gave out a retarded peice about America entertaining ourselves to death or the like and we were told to read it, and then respond to the question. The essay was then scored by two professors and that was what dictated your English placement primarly.

There was one level of English only available to those that had passed the AP test, but the other three levels were open to anyone. English 100 was remedial English, English 101 was normal first semester freshman English and English 103h was honours English. No matter how good your SAT score, a poor essay performance could doom you to 100, they were not willing to accept the SAT as proof of anything.

I figured I was fucked since I found the essay so completely stupid I ingored the question and instead criticized it in relation to Mazlow's heirechy of needs (I argued that we as a nation were able to fulfill our more base needs and so could expend a lot of energy on entertaining ourselves). Turned out, that kind of analysis is the sort of thing English professors think is really cool, so I got a perfect score on the essay and placed in honours English. A friend of mine, and a far better writer than me (he can spell correctly) who also scored higher on the verbal SAT got religated to English 100 because they didn't like his essay.

So I am guessing that ETS is trying to revise the English part of the SAT to make universities happier with it. Personally I think this is fine since I'd trust ETS's graders to be more fair than a bunch of professors. Standardised tests are dumb anyways, but they are here to stay. If we are going to have them, they might as well be made as useful as possable.

Couldn't he have just signed his name?

[alumshubby]

Back in the day, the scuttlebutt was that ETS gave you 200 points each on the math and verbal to start with, so if you just put down your demographic information and didn't actually answer any questions, you automatically got a combined score of 400.

Seems to me that his results suggest this is still the case.

Re:Couldn't he have just signed his name?

[brett42]

The lowest possible score is 200 on each section, but if you leave everything blank, you could actually get higher than 200. Something about the equating alogorithms they use or something. You could probably get 200/200 just by missing 3 or 4 problems, then leaving the rest blank, but this guy seemed to have the goal of getting them all wrong, getting the lowest raw score ever.

Re:SATs are a filtering device

[Chump1422]

SATs are useless, people should be judged by their grades, their merit, not some score on a test which could be a fluke, or which they could have used their money to train themselves for.

Grades are a fucking joke. There are a ton of people that can get great grades in HS just by working hard that then show up in college and can't handle the increased difficulty of the material and amount of work. These people do poorly on the SATs because they aren't allowed to spend 3x as long as everyone else working on the material.

Also, grades are incredibly unstandardized. Someone and Bedford-Stuyvesant or Philips Academy might be only average in their HS class and have a B average, but will do at least that well at a good school. The valedictorian from Hickville, Wyoming might be a drooling moron who's just better than his peers. SATs help correct for that.

Alot of people train hard for the SATs, get into Harvard or Yale, and drop out, mainly because they dont know how to work hard, they just know how to pass tests.

Harvard and Yale have incredibly high graduation rates. 97%+ when I was looking at colleges. Do you even know what you're talking about or do you just make shit up as you go along? Also, if someone is able to work hard for the SATs, why can't they work hard in college?

You seem bitter about your disadvantaged upbringing. Both my parents work for the government. Not fabulous pay. I got a great SAT and LSAT score without a tutor. Suck it up and do the work necessary to give yourself the opportunities you want.

Overinflated view of his own education

[kongjie]

mocked my Ivy League education

I guess UPenn students desperately grasp at that ivy league moniker.

This fellow feels he is the first person in SAT history to score so low, but I suspect he is merely the first person to do so intentionally and then try to make something clever of it on the internet.

Someone attempting to get the right answers and still failing so miserably would be much more noteworthy.

Re:Just a comment

[gamlidek]

heh, I have a master's degree and find this sort of thing appealing. Pointing out to The Man that his System is broken is satisfying, especially after going through several years of abuse, er... college. His credentials make it more relevant than, say, a 17-year old trying to do the same thing.

I bet we all have stories about some sort of event or class assignment we had to participate in that just made no sense, mainly because some teacher had a bug up their butt. As an abstract of that nonsense, the SAT is a generalized test that really has no meaning and is a pointless exercise in the art of managing unneeded stress as a hopeful higher education acceptee. It only gauges your abilities to answer questions in a timed test environment within a 3 hour window of an individual's life. This is hardly an accurate way to assess how likely a student will perform in college. As I'm well aware of, some of the higher scoring students I've been to school with did worse than I did -- and I don't see a "with honors" next to *their* college degree name. The SAT can not determine future desire to achieve. But then, look at the college academic system in this country... the piss-poor quality of instruction can actually cause intelligence to decrease.

In my opinion, this guy is mainly pointing out that he has been disappointed with the System for some time... the SAT was an easily accessable and pertinent means for his platform.

-gam

SAT variations

[e_lehman]

I love the endless news stories that shout gleefully when the national average SAT score rises slightly and moan woefully when the national average sinks slightly.

Of course, these changes only measure variations in the difficulty of the exam.

Re:SATs are a filtering device

[The Herbaliser]

Actually, the poor are filtered out long before they ever get to the SATs. They get filtered out by the underfunding of their schools. Everyone makes a big deal about the SAT being unfair, but if they'd just spend the money to make sure everyone got a good education, it wouldn't be such a big issue.

Yale

[Drogo Knotwise]

John Kerry and Joe Lieberman went there too.

Dick Cheney is a Yale drop-out.


It seems you can't get into American politics if you haven't gotten into Yale.

Re:that's great -- how does liar and thief fit in?

[mt_nixnut]

Wow - baseless slander is now insightful. Nice work moderator dude.

Hey, that's my calculator!

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

The TI-36X is a decent scientific calculator, but whoever was responsible for choosing dark blue print (on black) for the third function labels, should die a slow and painful death. Maybe that print is readable in a bright classroom, but not in my darkened lair..

Re:Standardized tests

[Cowculator]

All the SATs test is your ability to do well on the SATs.

Actually, college admissions types say that they correspond very well to your performance as a college freshman. Beyond that first year, though, everything's up in the air...

Oh god

[be-fan]

Great. An excuse for thousands of nerds to brag about their SAT scores :)

I had a friend

[macdaddy]

that got a 4 on the ACT. I think you get that if you spell 2 of the 3 words in your name right. He went on to welding school. Shortly after trying his hand at that he was stocking shelves at Wal-Mart after hours. I had another classmate that fell asleep during the ACT. He missed one entire section, the reading section. Ha! He went on to a a state Unv and got a degree.

I had the highest ACT in my class. It wasn't even spectacular. 29. 30 on the math and science. I should have taken it again though. The testing conditions weren't very good that day. They were doing the groundwork for some new construction right outside the testing room window. They were doing something to the power too that kept it flickering on and off. Because of this the power was cut to the AC to prevent a condensor burn out; so it was hot. Finally as I pulled into the parking lot at that college I met my soon to be bro-in-law. He told me my mother had called him and asked him to meet me. He was to tell me that my Grandpa had had a heart attack and was on his way to the hospital. They said he was doing fine and that it was a minor one. Still, that puts a damper on your testing experience. I should have retaken it.

My Crazy SAT Story

[GamezCore.com]

After a night of excess myself and four friends realized we had our SAT's that morning at 8:00am (it was about 5 or 6 when we realized this). I purchased a sixpack of Josta Cola (mmm... Josta, the real oldschool geek drink) and we headed off for the testing.

I had to wake one friend up twice during the testing, and he still was staggering during breaks, his final score: 1580. Another friend landed into what I would consider the lowest score of all time with a 580 COMBINED! I managed to do OK with a 1260.

The moral of the story, do a number of odd substances, don't sleep, do not study, and get a few naps in DURING the testing and you too can score like a true Ivy Leaguer. =)

Re:My Crazy SAT Story

[numark]

The sad thing about this comment is that it's true. It's amazing what you can do when faced with a combination of sleep deprivation and extreme caffeination ;)

Re:My Crazy SAT Story

[stud9920]

After a night of excess myself and four friends realized we had our SAT's that morning at 8:00am

I guess you and your friend's scored poorly on the verbal test's.

3 in Reading Comprehension

[Greyfox]

Unless you took your SAT after 1994.

Re:Standardized tests

[mariox19]

Wiser words are seldom spoken.

Urban legends

[rcs1000]

I studied Philosophy at Cambridge University, and the last exam you took every year was called "Essay". You were expected to pontificate for three hours on one of a number of topics. So, the question paper would be:

1) Justice
2) Truth ...
20) Happiness

Generally it was a great opportunity to blather on. Anyway, when I arrived there was this great fuss. Apparently, in the previous year one of the questions had been simply "Courage", to which one student had written "This is." The story - true or not - is that he was given perfect marks for the essay, and got to doodle for the remaining two hours and 59 minutes...

Re:Urban legends

[duncf]

I remember hearing of a similar philosophy-type exam with the question being "Why?"

One student wrote "Why not?" and received an A. Another wrote "Because." and failed.

Mensa

[ackthpt]

For example, an SAT combined score of 1250 (1974-1994 SAT editions) correlates with a Stanford-Binet IQ of 132, the top 2% of humanity, and thus qualifies a person for Mensa.

I find having a snailmail address qualifies a person for Mensa.

Re:Mensa

[dorsey]

I find having a snailmail address qualifies a person for Mensa.

Are you saying Mensa discriminates against the homeless?

Extreme Intelligence is Overrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I had an IQ test (in the twightlight of my HS years), I believe I fell within the top .1% of the population. (I can really be an ass and say that the score was probably a tad lower then what my real IQ was at the time - since I went for speed in taking the test.)

So, I'm a smart person. Yah! A very super-duper intelligent person. Am I doing better in life because of it? Nope.

Intelligence does influence how successful you'll be in life, but it is not the only factor. Social skills (which I'm lacking), confidence (lacking again), and an extroverted nature also plays a huge factor in your success in life.

I'm currently sitting back at a crappy job, watching the world go by at the age of 24, while I try to figure what the hell I want. My former classmates, some with more drive then me, are probably pulling down 5x what I make in a year.

Intelligence is overrated...

Re:Extreme Intelligence is Overrated

[origin2k]

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

--Socrates

Re:Extreme Intelligence is Overrated

[Slime-dogg]

I scored extremely high on the ACT, but sucked on the SAT. I think that my tendancy to fall asleep in the middle of the SAT brought me down a little. They have really long reading sections as well, which doesn't help me out, because I visualize everything. When I visualize what I'm reading, I tend to see it all, climb into the scene, and then play around with it. All of this contributes to me being a slow and methodical reader.

Anyway, my grades in high school were above average, but shitty compared to what my parents wanted. I was generally considered as the "Ultra intelligent slacker kid" in high school, because I saw very little use in home work. I read in my room instead. Social skills came late, I didn't have friends until later in high school, when I decided to sand the humongous chip off my shoulder. When humility is introduced to an individual, amazing things are done for the social skills.

Then I went into the advanced placement program, which gave me some mental stretching room while relaxing on the home work requirements. When people ask me what kind of grades I had, and what sort of student I was, I tell them "I'm the student that the teachers all heard about, hated the fact that I was on their roster, but then appreciated the raise in average test scores."

Now, I do programming, but I'm looking into going into clergy. Theology is the only thing left for someone like me... Hey, it was either that or bartending. Maybe I can do both. Programming is rote and boring. Research holds no attractiveness to me. Now, God does, and so do women.

Re:Extreme Intelligence is Overrated

[Exiler]

Research and program a robotic bartender... that makes holy marys! Wow, I scare myself...

Re:Extreme Intelligence is Overrated

[Andrew Kane]

How do you define 'success in life'?

Society has brainwashed us into thinking success can only be had by gaining money, power, friends, possessions, etc. This brainwashing keeps the people functioning as the cogs in the machine that is our society; isn't self perpetuation great. The real definition of success is individual, it can only be defined by a person for himself; it boils down to you doing what you think is important. If being social and having lots of friends is important to you, then do it, if not, then stop whining about not having lots of friends.

Re:Extreme Intelligence is Overrated

[HanzoSan]

Success in life, having a family, friends, a place to live, and enough money to properly raise your kids and pay your bills without stress.

But it is individual, some people dont want any of this stuff. I ust know what I want.

Re:Extreme Intelligence is Overrated

[longbottle]

BROTHER!

I, too am an intelligent person working a shitty job. My sympathies.

Re:I should have the lowest

[alba7]

> This smells like urban folklore. For one thing,
> given the one-dot-per-line restriction,
> how do you make "pacman-type characters?"

This story actually was part of "Parker Lewis Can't Lose". Kubiac (always dump and always hungry) punches "EAT NOW" into the form and scores perfect. No details on the test are known. The pattern just shows when the paper is hold against back light.

Re:Standardized tests

[fredklein]

Standardized tests measure very well the ability to solve standardized tests. The question is - can they measure anything else?

Of course they measure something else- your familiarity with the subject matter. (Duh, that's what they are designed to do!)

It's all fine and good to have "the ability to solve standardized tests", but if you don't know the subject matter, the best you can do is guess, which is usually rewarded with a poor score.

Now, if two equally 'smart' people take the same test, and one has more "ability to solve standardized tests", then they will do better thatthe person with no ability.

But a person who knows chinese (but has no 'testing-ability') can certainly get a higher score than an expert in test-taking who doesn't read chinese.

Re:Standardized tests

[aiabx]

A few months ago, I was sitting around the office (a major corporation's software lab) and tried to decide if we were better off as programmers or plumbers. What we decided was that while we worked long hours at an occasionally tedious job, we had the advantages of frequent intellectual challenges, comfortable and clean working conditions, coworkers capable of a fairly high standard of conversation, and a certain level of respect in society (useful or not, you decide). Plumbers on the other hand, work ankle-deep in shit, work at 3 AM if that's when someone's pipes have burst, and get to converse with random cranky people whose toilets have overflowed. And whether it is fair or not, plumbers don't get a lot of admiration and respect from people.
-aiabx

Hmm...

[Greyfox]

If enough people took the test with the goal of making a negative score, the resulting nose dive of the average should throw the entire academic community into a state of shock from which it might not emerge.

Graphing Calculator

[scishop]

His dinky TI-36X Solar just doesn't cut it for those geometric reasoning questions.

He should have used a graphing calculator.

Re:Graphing Calculator

[belg4mit]

Most graphing calculators are programmable
and therefore not allowed.

Re:Graphing Calculator

[rpillala]

I proctored a session of the SAT a couple of weeks ago. In the manual it excludes calculators with QWERTY input devices but doesn't exclude graphing calculators per se. It also mentions specifically that students are not required to clear the memory of their calculator before they begin testing.

From looking at the test, I'm not sure that any programs would help. I think the College Board is more worried about portable dictionaries on verbal sections, and therefore makes us go around to check that kids aren't using their calculators on verbal sections.

Ravi

Re:I should have the lowest

[ehiris]

It seems like you need to drink more often. Kill the slow and lazy brain cells.... :)

Re:Standardized tests

[Maudib]

Wow, thank you for once again demonstrating that I am a statistical anomaly.

1520Sat, 2.2gpa freshmen year.

Kinda makes you wish they would have a psychological competency section for the exam huh?

Please don't go take the test, he's a dick.

[twitter]

I wish this nutcase had found a better way to probe the various flaws of standardized testing than to pull this sit in stunt. The questions he asks are valid but can be asked without the stunt. We all remember taking the test and can proctor one if we wish to have that out of body experience. He might even interest a shrink who could do some statistically valid and objective testing of voluteer subjects state of mind. All of this could be done without disturbing legitimate test takers.

From his description of his sit in, he was a huge anoyance. The simple presence of someone twice your age is enough to disturb some people, but one who's obviously distressed? Judge what he looked like from his own writing:

I almost laughed out loud at various times during the test

I definitely passed through some kind of mental barrier as a result of this experience. ... I have been conditioned to try very hard to determine correct answers.

So ... when I worked very hard to determine the correct answer for each question, and then proceeded to pick ...the most RIDICULOUS answer, I had a very strong emotional reaction. For a while I worried that this new peculiar feeling of freedom was in fact insanity; I was finally making the transition to madness.

But after a few minutes of settling in to the routine of NOT filling in the correct answers, and beginning to crave this new sense of accomplishment, [the passage you quote]... I was confronting silliness. The difference in perspective seemed so extreme that there were moments when I shook with desperately suppressed
laughter. I did not laugh aloud or smile conspicuously, but the instinct to laugh was as powerful and as involuntary as a case of hiccups.

...humor draws its strength from fear, and the kind of anxiety surrounding the SAT is so familiar, and yet so meaniningless, that one can only laugh or become depressed.

From the very beginning of the test to the very end I felt euphoric. I was having complex emotions I couldn't describe. This experience was far more rewarding than I had imagined.

I can only imagine sitting next to this self admitted lunatic in that test. Looking over at some old fart who is convulsing with efforts to control manical laughter and depression. I'd be concerned that he's about to come unglued and hurt people. The distraction would be extreem. I might just walk out and try again another day.

[OT] Re:TV licensing

[Pentagram]

the alternative to a TV license is commercial funding

There are other alternatives. My preference would be to have it paid for out of the general taxation system. That would mean it wouldn't hit low-paid households so hard (particularly some students with 1 person/household) and you'd also avoid the cost of all the paperwork of TV licenses, the cost of checking people without licenses, and the cost of prosecuting those without.

Re:[OT] Re:TV licensing

[jez9999]

Not a great idea though, and only marginally better than the current TV licence. I reckon the BBC should be entirely funded by subscription and advertising. I simply don't see a place for a public sector broadcaster in this day and age. Perhaps a small amount of funding from taxation would be acceptable, but *not* a large amount, as that would still be funding an unnecessary institution with taxpayers' money, and would only make the BBC accountable to the government (even WORSE than the current system!)

interesting

[GiMP]

I knew someone who took the test in 98 and received a combined score of 500, but they tried to do well. They weren't embarrassed about it and I tried to sound supportive, but that wasn't the most sucessful score I've heard of ;)

I also knew a couple people who scored 1600.

Blah, not so challenging

[jasonzzz]

Come on! how hard is it to find the right
answer and then shooting for the wrong answer?
He has enough training and knowledge to master
that, so it wouldn't have been difficult to
score that 1600 (and the analogous fat 0) -
and even easier with the recentering crap
the college board is doing now a days.

The challenge would have been to shoot for
a very specific score. Try that!

Re:Random numbers?

[jasonzzz]

I think this strategy is outlined in
the basic test taking skill portion of
the SAT.

That is exactly why they take points off
when an incorrect answer is selected for
multiple choice questions.

Re:It's been proven.

[mrpuffypants]

not, however, that that math was done by somebody who followed this guy's method as well in high school...

How to score badly on an English exam.

[Dthoma]

• Don't do any revision. At all.
• On the evening before the test, decide to write a public domain replacement for GNU.
• Stay up until 2AM bashing out code.
• Post on Slashdot for half an hour.
• Pass out for four hours, get up, get dressed and go to school.
• Skim your dog-eared copy of Macbeth five minutes beforehand.
• Walk into the exam and start thinking.
• Do nothing for five minutes.
• Have a massive, sleep deprivation induced epiphany.
• Write a massive tract of literary analysis non stop for an hour.
• Pass.

I'm just not cut out for failing exams.

not 50 bucks

[gnurb]

While I'm no fan of the collegeboard monopoly;

the fees for the SAT I: Reasoning test are $26, not $50.

Re:kennedy had a 119 IQ

[SN74S181]

You're just acting out as the other extreme of the same tendency a few years ago to describe Clinton as a cum-blaster who'd plant his wick anywhere he could.

Your description of Bush and that description of Clinton are way overblown. (hmmm, pun sort of intended since I didn't backspace...)

Similar experience with the GRE

[edremy]

I didn't worry too much about the GRE the first time around. Didn't study at all, went to an REM concert the night before with my girlfriend, stayed up very late.

Took both the general and the chemistry one the next day. Utterly aced the general[1] and got a 83rd percentile on the chemistry.

One of the schools I was considering (U Mich) excused you from comprehensive exams if you got 85th percentile or higher, so I studied hard, got lots of rest and took the exam again.

81st percentile. I think i should have tried another concert but more drinking...

[1] I have a talent for MC tests. I wish I was that smart in real life.

Re:Standardized tests

[Loki_1929]

"standardized tests measure *something* well, but we're not sure what."

With regards to the SAT I, it's a test of logical ability. It's not a test of your vocabulary, as they assume you already know the meaning of all words presented. And it's not a test of math, because you could do almost all the math problems with an 8th grade education. There's a reason it's listed as the SAT I Logic Test; that's what it is. Does your logic ability correspond to IQ? There's probably some loose correlation, but the idea behind the SAT I is to give colleges an idea of your potential ability at the collegiate level. You need both the knowledge of the math and vocabulary presented in the SAT I, and the logical ability to distinguish the actual question to succeed at it.

If you don't like the test, design a better one.

Re:It's amazing, really

[jhoffoss]

Yes, well, keep in mind the US alone has ~290 million people out of ~6.33 billion. Remember too, that the US is among the richest nations in the world, and our education system is one of the best. (note: it is still not "good," there are gaping holes and huge problems in our schools. But it's better than what many nations have currently.) Considering that, it may make sense that the US has a high amount of population with high IQs. Of course, most IQ assessment examinations have no relevance if the testee has never been through school or learned to read or write.

Re:Standardized tests

[zorander]

Yes. The SAT Scaling is really quite inconsistent at the top end. I'm good at math, so chances are I will get zero, one, or two wrong on a given math section regardless of the difficulty of the test. The ones I get wrong will generally not be conceptual errors, but stupid mistakes. Therefore my math score is meaningless if the first few wrongs affect it (why you should be able to get one or two wrong without losing the 800--likely it's not a fluke that you happened to get the rest right). Getting two wrong the first time I took the test got me a 730, a friend who took the test at a later date received a 760 after getting three wrong. (All MC questions with the .25 penalty in both cases). Neither of us is neccesarily better at math--we just both understood all the material and made a few stupid mistakes.

Our scores SHOULD NOT have differentiated by thirty points because the people near the middle of the bell curve found the exam to be harder the second time. I found both tests to be equally difficult (though the second test is a bad example for me since I answered all questions correctly on the math, so I used a freind's score to make my point).

Statistically the second test was HARDER, yet my raw score was better for no apparent reason. More evidence that those mistakes on test #1 were not accurately represented in my score.

I'm not personally affected (I ended up with an 800 on the math anyways) but they should really work harder to scale at the top rather than creating arbitrary differentiations between equal students.

I don't like curves because in order for someone near the top to benefit, it has to be an unusually hard test--the easiness of the test hurts you if you're an outlier on the positive end of the curve, whereas people closer to the center get accurate and fair scaling fairly uniformly, since the top few will get about the same number wrong regardless of the difficulty of the test.

Brian

Re:Just a comment

[JSmooth]

Yes. But he then continues to offer no solution. Why is that most people feel just complaining about an issue is enough?

I am a network security consultant and could throw out bunches of letters to impress people with how qualified I am. My peers and I know the truth about these certifications. They are meaningless. They proved that I sat down and passed yet some tests.

I spend a large amount of time teaching these days. I don't teach to the tests but I encourage all my students to take them. Are they fair, revelant or meaningful? Of course not but until we stop complaining and come up with a better system to seperate those who qualified and educated from those who are not.

Measure of Wealth

[parkov]

As someone who's tutored plenty of students in SAT's, I can say this: The SAT's may gauge intelligence, problem-solving ability, and test-taking skills, but just as much, if not moreso, it tests that student's resources. I've had students who are extremely bright, but due to their poverty, just don't have the resources to compete with students who have the resources of, say, a George W. Bush. Their public schooling is atrocious, they don't have the money for lots of tutoring and several retests, they don't have access to information like free tutoring, free practice tests, and resources online. The fact that so many people will take the SAT's as a cut and dry measure of one's smarts is disturbing to say the least. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the education is dependent on the child's wealth as well.

Re:Measure of Wealth

[belg4mit]

I don't think pleading poverty is a justifiable excuse for poor performance on the SAT. You can
get waivers, free paper practice tests etc. If
you need to "study" and "practice" beyond one
run through, you really haven't learned anything
and aren't prepared to do anything other than
peform rote learning.

Re:Measure of Wealth

[tedrlord]

If you need to "study" and "practice" beyond one run through, you really haven't learned anything and aren't prepared to do anything other than peform rote learning.

Which is what most students studying for the test are doing. A lot of people that did well on the SAT achieved that goal by spending a long time studying SAT guides and getting SAT tutoring. For them, at least, the test proved mostly that they had learned how to take the SAT.

Re:Measure of Wealth

[heff]

I knew lots of rich kids that were dumb as bricks and subsequently failed the SAT.

At the same time, I knew lots of "poor" kids who's score nearly killed everyone.

Then they applied for financial aid, got it, and are now succeeding in college.

Re:Measure of Wealth

[spike2131]

I used to tutor the SATs, and the company I worked for charged $54 an hour for my services. At those rates, our clientelle wasn't exactly in poverty.

But I did my job well and it wasn't unusuall to bring a kids score up by close to 200 points.

Poverty may not "justify" poor performance, but higher scores can certainly be had if the parents care to shell out the money.

Unintentional hilarity

[mofolotopo]

Plymouth University just did a study on this. Put monkeys in a room with typewriters and they simply make a mess [foxnews.com].

Yeah, that's how Fox News seems to me too.

Re:Standardized tests

[yulek]

I deliberately wear sandels and wrinkled shirts to work to try to balance out my preppy past.

sounds to me like you're still quite the conformist...

Re:Standardized tests

[tricorn]

You're right that the SAT doesn't have very good discrimination at the high or low ends. It isn't really designed to do that. Nevertheless, someone who scores well (say, 1200 or better) is, in my experience, quite different from someone who does poorly (800 or less). There are exceptions, of course. Some people take tests poorly, and their score would not be indicative of their actual ability.

At the same time, a good score doesn't mean you'll be a success. The test doesn't measure motivation and attitude, and doesn't measure a lot of aptitudes that can lead to success. A low score doesn't mean someone is worthless. It's a correlation with certain types of intelligences, but it doesn't say anything about what it isn't measuring.

It is, however, measuring much more than ability to take tests.

Re:Standardized tests

[weston]

They might mean that my math degree wasn't worth a whole lot. I took the GMAT last year, scored in the 98%th percentile on the verbal section (think I missed a question), but the bottom third on the math section (probably missed almost a fourth of the questions, including six or seven I didn't get to).

Same problem on GRE (though not quite as bad). Any tips on doing well? I used to completely ice standardized tests on paper -- but the math section has really been a problem since the advent of computerized tests ...

ESL?

[autopr0n]

I doubt that's true. For one thing, a new immigrant's English ability should improve drastically while they're in collage. For another thing, I doubt there is a very high correlation between spelling and intelligence/problem solving. The only reason I can spell well today is that I have a separate version of each hard-to-spell word in my head and think of that when I write, for example 'article' is pronounced 'ar-ti-claey' in my head, intuition is pronounced 'in-to-it-teeon', etc.

That and I use a spellchecker with everything.

Re:ESL?

[cosyne]

Those aren't really all-else-being-equal cases. New immigrants probably have to take a TOEFL anyways. That should be used to judge their projected ability to communicate in English, not the SAT which is given to native speakers. Part of life is information recall (similar to spelling), not just problem solving. If someone really is better at problem solving but has bad spelling, they'll probably kick ass on the multiple choice sections anyways. And I think you're discounting the grammar and coherent argument portions. I read stuff all the time which just doesn't make sense. Sometimes I'm willing to sit down and try to deduce what the author meant, sometimes I'm not, and sometimes it's a lost cause. Word's grammar checker still isn't good enough to fix everything (and I'll bet you your pint of choice that it never will be ;-)

Re:ESL?

[ces]

While I'm not the best speller in the world I am absolutely appalled by the crappy spelling I see from other people. I suppose part of it is an age thing, since I graduated high school in 1986 I was forced to learn to spell the hard way. The thing that probably helped the most with my spelling was the typing class I took in high school (on IBM Selectrics!) any mispellings were considered typos and lowered our net words per minute.

The really sad part is, most of the time there is no excuse. Much of the horrible spelling I see is in documents prepared on a computer. You'd think people would bother to at least use the damn spell checker.

For what its worth spelling, punctuation, and grammar do count in the real world. Any resume, proposal, or business plan with spelling or grammatical errors will end up in the round file.

Wasn't normalized in '69

[flimflam]

I think it was only in '94 or so. Otherwise I would have had a 1600.

Tetris guy

[UTPinky]

Found it interesting... this is the same guy that invented the Tetris AI system that was on here a few monthes ago

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/28/181122 6&mode=threaded&tid=127

what an accomplishment... getting 2 projects posted on /. within a few monthes of each other :)

Re:SATs are a filtering device

[HanzoSan]

I didnt take the SATs because even if I took it, I wouldnt get a high enough score to go to Harvard, so why does it matter? Also my academic record was not spotless.

The only reason to link "poor" and "not thinking about the SAT" is if you want an excuse to remain "oppressed".


Its not just because I was poor, its because I had bad teachers and parents who never explained to me that I needed to take the SATs. I simply wasnt mature enough at the time.

If you want to get out of a crap school and into a good school then the SAT is exactly what you should think about. If that's not what you wanted then don't blame the SAT.


At the time I hated school and thought it was pointless. This is the attitude everyone has when they go to a shitty school.

No matter how poor you are you can always study "Beat the SAT" books on your own at the library for free.


Once again, I was a kid and didnt know any better, I admit I was stupid, theres no need for you to rub it in.


The SAT is tries to predict college performance. A poor person who goes out of his way to study SAT guides at the library, who cares about the SAT and works hard on it is an excellent candidate to do well in college.


At most the SAT measures maturity level in a poor student, not intelligence, not potential, maturitiy level. If you mature earlier, or if you have parents who force you to take the SATs, well then you'll take it, if you hate school and want to quit, never go back etc, you arent thinking about college or the SATS.

Yes you can tell me now and I agree SATs are important, but as a kid, well I was a kid and I didnt like school

Re:SATs are a filtering device

[HanzoSan]

"Grades are a fucking joke. There are a ton of people that can get great grades in HS just by working hard that then show up in college and can't handle the increased difficulty of the material and amount of work. These people do poorly on the SATs because they aren't allowed to spend 3x as long as everyone else working on the material.
"



Grades are still a better judge of potential than the SATs. I think we should use a portfolio system but still, your grades do allow a college to know you work hard and that you arent lazy, this means they can put you in remedial classes and you'll be able to catch up and handle the workload, thats important, they want you to stay in and graduate.

Harvard and Yale have incredibly high graduation rates. 97%+ when I was looking at colleges. Do you even know what you're talking about or do you just make shit up as you go along? Also, if someone is able to work hard for the SATs, why can't they work hard in college?


The SATs are one test, Harvard and Yale also have higher than average suicide rates, and high transfer rates, so the statistics are debateable at least.

You seem bitter about your disadvantaged upbringing. Both my parents work for the government. Not fabulous pay. I got a great SAT and LSAT score without a tutor. Suck it up and do the work necessary to give yourself the opportunities you want.


You had two parents, either they told you how important the SATs were, or you are mature for a kid and figured it out on your own, not everyone figures, some figure it out after its too late, who can they blame? 50% on lack of parent support/lack of school support, and 50% on themselves for not growing up fast enough. But neither of these things have anything to do with intelligence or how hard a person works

Oh, yeah?

[benjamindees]

I got a 1500 and I think the SAT is an accurate test of intelligence.

It's just you idiots who scored less than 1500 who think otherwise ;)

Re:Oh, yeah?

[PetWolverine]

Then my 1490 must explain why I'm so ambivalent about the whole issue.

Re:Oh, yeah?

[Mike1024]

Oh yeah? Well I got 15,000 on the SAT.

I also have a 15" penis, and can drink 15 pints of beer on an average night out.

Re:I should have the lowest

[slamb]

I'd agree, the SAT is a farce. From what I've seen, the ACT is a fair degree better at being consistent, although it definately seems to favor logically minded folks over creative folks.

As it should. I mean, really, who wants a testing board measuring creativity? How can you possibly hope to do that fairly in a standardized exam? Testing logical skills is really the only way to go. If students want to show a college they have creativity, they need to show something they've created, not a test score. And I think that happens; colleges definitely consider more than standardized test scores.

sure 400 seems low

[Savatte]

but it rounds up to like 540 canadian.

back in middle school, I had a teacher who would give lots of extra credit questions on tests, but would subtract points if you got the extra credit wrong. I ended up with a -120 on a test. F for the semester too, but middle school doesnt matter.

Silly percentiles

[fm6]

The Relative Percentage is an integer between 1 and 99

Which, as any math person knows, doesn't make any sense. Intuitively, nobody is entitled to a 100 or 0, because nobody gets a better score or worse score than everybody. But a little thought about the definition of rounding tells you that it makes perfect sense to give a 100 to the top 0.5% of test takers. And of course a 0 to the bottom 0.5% -- a group that certainly includes Colin Fahey!

Re:I should have the lowest

[CAIMLAS]

It was late, and I wasn't all together clear. The ACT seems to measure "think inside the box" aptitude rather than an individual's ability to think creatively, and thus, solve problems. Just like the SAT. You can study for them both and greatly alter your test results.

I didn't take the SAT, but did the ACT. I slept through a large part of some of the tests because I was so bloody tired - I'd not slept for several days. I still managed to pull a 26 (which is on the upper middle end of things. 36 (or is it 34?) is 'perfect', and 20 seems to be the mean.

Re:It's amazing, really

[PetWolverine]

That's the news from Lake Woebegone--where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above-average.
--Garrison Keeler, Prairie Home Companion

Re:Standardized tests

[cyko500]

This is very true, and one of the major reasons that many medical school courses don't require more than a 1200 on the SAT, they take into consideration your total GPA, even more so your science related GPA, and activities done outside of school. This way they can gauge how much a student can handle at once (a reason premed students have to take more classes than almost any other major and have to take classes unrelated to medicine), not just how well the student can handle one single test that takes half the time alotted to finish and covers simple concepts. You can insert any other intensive course programs here. The bottom line is not how smart you are, it is how well you perform.

Re:Standardized tests

[PetWolverine]

You're right that the SAT doesn't have very good discrimination at the high or low ends. It isn't really designed to do that.

Well, it damned well should be, which was the point of the first couple of paragraphs of the grandparent post--either it should measure the ends well, or people who score well on it should take another test that discriminates more clearly within the high range.

Re:Standardized tests

[strobexii]

The SAT only tests really basic math skills. I don't think this is a valid measure of someone's abilities .... Yeah, they tested some basic skills that I needed in college, but they we not testing my potential. They weren't even testing if I had the skillset necessary to succeed. This is quite valid as a measure of someone's intellectual abilities. Given a basic set of skills, what can the individual accomplish using these skills? If the test included more advanced mathematical topics, such as calculus, students who lacked the opportunity of an accelerated course program would be severly handicapped. Knowledge would then be tested, rather than ability. And someone's knowledge, at this young age, is often governed by external factors, and thus not a good measure of potential. Would you rather have a student who can solve challenging problems using only basic math, or one who can't but already knows some basic calculus which will come in handy in college? An good example is the story of young Carl Gauss. As the story goes, his elementary school teacher gave the children this arithmetic assignment in an attempt to keep them busy: sum the integers from 1 to 100. While his classmates were toiling away, Gauss quickly discovered:
1 + 2 + 3 ... + 49 + 50
+ 100 + 99 + 98 ... + 52 + 51
= 101 + 101 + 101 ... + 101
= 50*101

Gauss would later go on to obtain the more advanced math skill sets, but by this point his brilliance had already been noted.

ETS has an automatic rater

[scotay]

ETS uses their "e-rater" system to score essays in the GMAT.

Re:Standardized tests

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Aside from the shit part, that pretty much sums up a Help Desk tech's life.

Re:Standardized tests

[theLOUDroom]

An good example is the story of young Carl Gauss. As the story goes, his elementary school teacher gave the children this arithmetic assignment in an attempt to keep them busy: sum the integers from 1 to 100.

But that isn't an SAT math question. That's why I say I've taken better tests of general ability.

Additionally, Gauss was MUCH younger at that time, than the age at which one takes the SATs. It is very reasonable to expect someone like him to have learned more by that age at which one takes the SATs.

Re:Standardized tests

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I strive to be a non-conformist, just like everybody else.

sat prep

[jameson71]

The SAT is completely bogus. I showed up at 8 AM after a long night of hard drinking after a football game ans STILL got an 1150...then i dropped out of college with 92 credits. Talk about dumb!

dude, it's that crazy guy!!!

[iamhassi]

it's that creepy crazy guy from Con Air and Armageddon

Kaplan/Princeton review = not worth it

[Faeton]

Kaplan/Princeton review gives you NOTHING that you can't get yourself, other than motivation of "you just blew $$$ on it so you better get the most out of the course".

I got the same mark as you on the MCAT without doing the Kaplan thing. My friend teaches Princton review (and got higher than me) never did it either.

It's all about motivation, on *how* much you want it. The books themselves are fine (I personally like PR's), but the courses.. well, they don't hurt except for the pocketbook.

Re:It's amazing, really

[El Panda Grande]

I thought it was where the men were men, and the women are too. whoops. thats MIT.

Re:It's amazing, really

[alienw]

Actually, I've seen some studies that have shown that the US education system is worse than that of almost every European country, and even some third-world countries like Nigeria. It is pretty decent relative to the third world, but is at the bottom of the barrel among civilized countries. As someone who has attended school both in the US and in Ukraine, I can certainly attest that this is pretty consistent with my experience.

Also, if you think IQ tests measure intelligence, you're in for a surprise. They might measure something related to intelligence, but that is confounded with so many variables that you can't interpret the results with any degree of confidence.

Besides, IQ is (supposed to be) abstract, innate and not truly related to the amount of education the person had. However, the tests usually measure whether or not you think the same irrational way as the test maker, not how well you think. Standardized testing, including IQ testing, is a mostly American trend, so I wouldn't be comparing US results to those of otehr countries.

Get your facts straight

[Xabraxas]

I'm not going to argue that Saddam is an evil person but you need to get your head out of the sand and read some current events/history. Saddam did not gas the Kurds. Iran did. The United States sold chemical weapons to Iraq to fight Iran. Iraq used these weapons against Iran and in retaliation Iran used chemical weapons against Iraq, unfortunately the Kurds were gassed instead. Read the medical reports. The two countries used different chemical agents. Secondly the president and his buddies are making out on this war. Cheney is getting paid a million dollars a year as FORMER CEO of Halliburton. Now he is using his position in public office for monetary gain which is illegal. Lastly the christian right wing in this counrty is getting even crazier these days. There is supposed to be a seperation of church and state. Bush mentions God more than he mispronounces the work nuclear, and that's damn near impossible. This has become a religious war whether you like it or not. Right-wingers are no better in this country than muslim extremists are in other countries. Just as they wish to kill all Americans, your average conservative townie doesn't distinguish between the Sikh guy (not even the same religion) walking down the street and the extemist with an AK47. On a side note, the guy defending reaganomics is so off the mark. I thought we've know how bad his decisions were 10 years ago. It's written as a an example of bad judgement in economics text books. Following those footsteps is little Bush. How can we have a Social Security crisis when the top 1% of the country is going to save 3 times the amount of the deficit to this important program? How have the top 1% of people been suffering as one poster said? CEO's make disproportionately large amounts of money, sometimes even more than 100 million dollars a year. These people are not suffering. Vist an AIDS patient and then maybe you'll know what suffering is. No one is suffering because they couldn't afford another yacht this year.

Re:Get your facts straight

[0x00000dcc]

Right-wingers are no better in this country than muslim extremists are in other countries. Just as they wish to kill all Americans, your average conservative townie doesn't distinguish between the Sikh guy (not even the same religion) walking down the street and the extemist with an AK47.

This essentially is the problem though isn't it? When people are so blinded by their faith/convictions/political leanings that they have been brough up on that they cannot see the other side for what it really is. For you to stereotype "the average conservative" is so ridiculuously prejudicial it frightens me. Try listening to the other side to see what they say, don't just write them off as a single group.

Vist an AIDS patient and then maybe you'll know what suffering is.

Ok, what are you trying to do here, hmm? Where did that come from? Maybe I'm not as compassionate are you'd like me to be because I haven't been to do such a thing, though I'm sure I will at some point. I know one person who does care - apparently the current president, because he asked congress for $15 billion in Affrican aids refief during the last state of the union address.

Oh WAIT - he's a republican! That means he's just pandering ...

Re:It's amazing, really

[istartedi]

This reminds me of the time I was at some social gathering, and the topic of IQ came up. We all volunteered our IQs. Mine was 130 at the time based on a test I took in 7th grade. It later shot up to 150 based on a test with a psychologist, taken for the purpose of determining why I was having difficulty in college. If it makes any difference, my SAT was 1320 and I took it in 1985, before they dumbed it down.

Anyhow, the girl volunteered that her IQ was 105. That was the lowest that anybody fessed up to that evening. I thought since 100 was supposed to be average, either the IQ tests are bogus, or there are a lot of institutes for the retarded hidden away in the woods. I mean, this girl was dumb. The thought of more than 50% of the world being dumber than her was terrifying to me. Of course now I realize that intelligence isn't everything.

The girl was not bad looking. I wouldn't be surprised if she did just fine. I dropped out of college for two years shortly after that last test. I still consider myself to be "in recovery".

Re:The reason

[yourmom16]

I think you mean 400d4

Re:Standardized tests

[Xabraxas]

I have a very high IQ and have done very well on standardized tests and I think they are complete bunk. I've known many very intelligent people who did awful on standardized tests just as I have known very average students that have aced the SAT's. People just like to use those numbers to "prove" they are smart. All they really prove is that you can take a test.

BTW you attribute your sig to Jefferson but Ben Franklin was actually the one who said it.

you can't speed through a 'real' IQ test

[black_widow]

...because the psychometrist who is in room with you (one on one) governs the speed of the test. IIRC, mine took about 4 hours. I guess you weren't manipulating very many 3d objects and that sort of thing.

Re:The need for a well rounded education

[acceleriter]

The G.I. Bill started the job of opening up college for the hoi polloi--folks that served in the military as enlisted men. (After that, the Higher Education Act of 1965 ushered in federal financial aid, which has made college even more accessible to ordinary folks.)

The O.P. is apparently bemoaning the fact that the gates to the campus have been opened to the non-Brahmin among us.

Re:No SATs

[4521red]

Greedy opportunists?

Re:Just a comment

[JSmooth]

Thank you!

May allah keep and bless you all!

Re:SAT is meaningless (European point of view)

[Paleomacus]

Well...the answer to all of your questions is this: The American educational system is complete crap. We don't test knowledge or ability, we test how well you can do on a test. That makes _perfect_ sense if you're going to take exams for a living. I've noticed this mentality from all but one of my professors in college. They all claim to be testing knowledge or what we've learned. i.e. my spanish language exams are mostly multiple choice -- and you only have to know 3 words in a sentance to come up with the correct answer.

funny stuff...

[BoneFlower]

I got a 1340... Planning on taking it again, now that I'm more current on math should do well(only got 590 on math.. if I can match the 750 verbal on the retest, and do better on math... insane score coming)...

ASVAB is a fun if easy test... Scored in the 95th percentile my first time, then when I changed services and they couldn't find my scores, got in the 97th. Would have done better, but you can only fill bubbles/press keys so fast...

Re:The need for a well rounded education

[BoneFlower]

OP is a stupid troll who makes me wish I had mod points to send him into oblivion.

Re:Standardized tests

[strobexii]

Correct, that isn't an SAT math question, but that wasn't the point either. It was simply that advanced math concepts aren't necessarily required to test for advanced math ability.

Is the SAT a perfect implementation of this? Unfortunately not, but it adhere to this general idea.

Again regarding Gauss, that's a safe assumption that he had learned more. In fact, the teacher began tutoring him privately and buying him the best textbooks available at the time. But for this very reason, more advanced math can't be used. While many students are given the opportunity to excel, others are held back by circumstance. This could only widen the gulf between the scores of privledged and underprivledged students even further.

After Clinton - "Nation's long national nightmare

[JimmytheGeek]

of peace and prosperity over!" - the Onion

Seriously - apart from a sick and maximally politicized permanent inquisition, what did Clinton do wrong? Intervened to prevent genocide a couple of times, one of which he chickened out of. Balanced the budget, kept the lunatics in the House from doing the damage to the country that W is doing. Pretty successful presidency, particularly given the unprecedented character of the opposition.

Re:It's amazing, really

[Jaysyn]

I took mine 6 months into Kindergarden, hardly a product of the US's school system by then....

Jaysyn

yes indeed

[vistic]

1400 (700m/700v) and I got sick of college (physics major). Now I waste time doing creditcard customer service during the day and then at night I go out with friends. I couldn't be happier.

Re:Standardized tests

[theLOUDroom]

But for this very reason, more advanced math can't be used. While many students are given the opportunity to excel, others are held back by circumstance. This could only widen the gulf between the scores of privledged and underprivledged students even further.

Tests like the SATs are supposed to test both you raw abilities, and your level of achievement. This what they should be designed for. You're saying, "Oh, well that discriminates against those who haven't had opportunities." Of course it does. Those people aren't as well educated. The just haven't had the same opportunities to grow. This isn't a flaw in the test, it's a flaw in our educational system.

Test scores shouldn't be adjusted to "lie" about your performance if you're from a disadvantaged group. The opportunities availible to the group should be adjusted based on the test score.

A test should be a meaningful measure of your abilities. Obviously your performance is going to be affected by the opportunities you've had to prepare of the test.

It was simply that advanced math concepts aren't necessarily required to test for advanced math ability.

I can partially agree with this, but I wouldn't be so sure about it. Either way, I definately don't think the SAT tests for it. I can respect that we of looking at things but I just don't agree.

I think what really needs to be done, is to give up on the whole "one test for everybody" idea. I think the spread of abilities of those who take the test is just to wide to get meaningful results anywhere but the middle.

If I were "King of the World" kids would take periodic subject placement tests. Kids like Gauss could would then be able to move at their pace through the school system. If a kid can handle calculus in 8th grade, he should be able to take it.

As far as the SATs, there would be multiple levels of test for each subject. If your previous test scores indicate that you'll probably get a 500 score on a certain subject, you'd take one test. If you're more likely to get a 700 you would take a different test. Anyone could take whatever test they wanted, but they would be warned that scoring very highly on a lower level test is not necessarily a good as scoring average on a higher level test.

People should be allowed to work up to their potential (and then tested at that level), and that fact that others are underprivileged should not interfere with this.

When I showed up at college, I didn't need the potential to learn X. I needed to already know X so I could take Y. The test shouldn't be a roundabout test of whether I could potentially function at the level required by the program I'm about to enter. It should test whether I can actually function at that level.

Re:SATs are a filtering device

[Alsee]

no need for you to rub it in.

Sorry.
I anticipated counter arguments so I used multiple supporting points. It wound up being overkill.

I didnt take the SATs because even if I took it, I wouldnt get a high enough score to go to Harvard, so why does it matter?

There are numerous options between community college and Harvard.

At most the SAT measures maturity level in a poor student, not intelligence, not potential, maturitiy level.

The SAT was never intended to be an intelligence test. It attempts to predict college performance. You point out that SAT scores (or if you even take the SAT at all) is influenced by things like maturity level, parental influence, and whether you like or hate school. When you realize that the SAT isn't an IQ test it becomes clear that all of those influences actually tend to increase the accuracy of the test. A more mature student who likes school and has involved parents will probably do better in college.

I agree it sucks to be poor and to get stiffled in a lousy school, but that has nothing to do with the SAT. Perhaps I miss-read you, but it sounded like you were saying the SAT was a tool of the rich to filter out and oppress the poor.

-

Re:It's been proven.

[leob]

the correlation between SAT scores and college GPA is about 10%.

As far as it is positive, there is nothing to whine about.

Awwww man

[NDPTAL85]

Don't give up sex! Thats not "smart" dood. You need some b00tay every once in a while.

Re:Awwww man

[Slime-dogg]

Lutherans can have sex.

Re:After Clinton - "Nation's long national nightma

[ErikZ]

What did he do wrong? Well, mostly he didn't do much of anything. After having all the right answers when campaigning, he went on to the White House and... campaigned some more.

The liberals that I know are the most disappointed in him. "Waste of potential" is the phrase that comes up.

Re:The need for a well rounded education

[Mr. Piddle]

How about a school [sjca.edu] where all students...

You probably get students who couldn't even design a swingset, yet have egos the size of Jupiter.

Closed Universe in Providence, RI

[MarcQuadra]

It's sad, but in Providence, RI public (and some private) schools they only cover the basic courses. When I starrted college I was the only student who didn't take a programming class in high school (because they didn't OFFER one). Here you can take Math, English, Science, History/civics, and an art class, but not Shop, Drama, Home Ec., Psychology, Social Studies, Economics, Ethics, or Computer Programming.

Sadly, the next generation of Rhode Island students is well on the path to economic ruin. I'm sure our state will be proud to flip a burger for you in the next decade.

Re:SATs are a filtering device

[HanzoSan]

Yeah but someone who is immature at 16-17 might be mature at 19-20, I mean the person is still developing, their brain isnt finished growing, some people dont mature until 23-24, so its normal to see people act immature as kids, its actually abnormal to act like an adult at 16, yes some kids mature sooner but it doesnt mean they are smarter.

I hate the fact that people treat these kids smarter just because they figure the system out or have someone explain it to them at a young age, they are more mature, and they deserve credit for being mature maybe through scholarships and stuff, but maturity doesnt mean they will be smart enough to handle Harvard.

I was smart growing up, just immature, see my point?

I do think SAT is a tool to filter out the poor, alot of rich kids who are even more immature than I was, got into schools like Harvard and Yale, think George W Bush.

I dont think its fair that certain people have advantages on the SATs, and that I because I was born poor and didnt become a man at 13 years old, that I'm not even given a chance to get into Harvard.

Honestly I'd prefer an IQ test, along with a review of each students portfolio of work, to judge them on the quality of work they produce and how intelligent they are, instead of how well they were taught or how quickly they learned to value education.

Thats just my opinion.

Re:It's amazing, really

[jhoffoss]

Right, I should've been clearer in specifying the US' education system compared to third-world countries. I know nothing about Europe's, (or Asia's) and it wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn they're better than the US. But AFAIK tests like the ACT/SAT aren't used in those countries. Correct me if I'm wrong. And for the record, I agree that IQ tests don't necessarily mean anything. The same way a standardized test means nothing for some people, such as bad test takers. My old roomate would break out in cold sweats, start crying, panic attacks, etc. for any sort of test, no matter how much she studied. The only way should could be tested fairly is to be put in a separate room, alone. So I guess that's not testing "fairly," but that's the only way her test would reflect what she actually knew. Her first semester at college she spent three days throwing up before finals even started.

Failure

[GoingNow]

I can't believe I accidentally answered two MATH problems correctly! I was preparing myself for the disappointment of getting a few VERBAL questions wrong, er, I mean correct, but MATH?!...How? Sabotage! ;-)

So he tried to be a failure and failed at that. How pathetic!

I'm going now.

Bzzzzzt! Wrong...

[benjamindees]

Tests like the SATs are supposed to test both you raw abilities, and your level of achievement. This what they should be designed for.

description of US college entrance exams.

Re:SATs are a filtering device

[Alsee]

some kids mature sooner but it doesnt mean they are smarter.
I hate the fact that people treat these kids smarter
doesnt mean they will be smart enough to handle Harvard.
I'd prefer an IQ test
how intelligent they are

Smarter, smarter, smart, IQ, intelligent. The SAT isn't tring to test "smarts". It is attempting to predict how people will do in college. To the extent that it tests maturity, that is a valid means of trying to predict college performance. Of course it's possible to "get mature" two days after the test, but there's no way any test can catch that. If you weren't mature when you took the test you probably won't be on the first day of college.

The SAT isn't perfect and I doubt any decent college determines entrance solely on SAT scores, but it is a usefull tool. It does a decent job of trying to predict something that is extremely hard to predict.

I do think SAT is a tool to filter out the poor

It can just as much be a tool for a poor kid in a lousy highschool to climb up. It is unfortunate that kids from poor and lousy schools are less likely to do well in college, but it is a fact of life. The SAT isn't there to enforce that situation, it is there to FIX that situation. The worse the school the easier it is for a kid to make an effort and stand out from his classmates with even a half-way decent SAT score. The fact that the kid made the effort makes him a good candidate for college despite the lousy highschool he came from. Good colleges will pick a good kid from a lousy highschool over a great kid from a top highschool.

-

Re:After Clinton - "Nation's long national nightma

[JimmytheGeek]

I can see the point, but Congress was pretty messed up even in the first half of his first term.

The "Don't Ask, Still Persecute" policy abortion came up from an attempt to integrate gay service men and women into the military. They've been there all along, serving honorably. In the first Gulf war, the military delayed discharges until after the conflict, which totally obliterates any arguments the military had. Unit cohesion is only affected, or if affected is only important, in peacetime????But some democrats led the fight to make the policy even harsher.

He did change his economic policy, but only when advisors convinced him that the Fed would offset any stimulous spending with rate hikes. He deserves credit for a budget many standard deviations closer to sanity than any we're going to see for the next few years. He also had no hard on for raping the environment, like Shrub.

I also like that Clinton frankly opposed the Vietnam war and see no inconsistency in his avoiding service. I see a massive inconsistency with the current reign of chickenhawks, to a man draft dodgers. In the commander in chief's person, an actual deserter from the Millionaire Boy's Club that was his unit of the Texas Guard.

Ha!

[kevlar]

1) Authorized the sale of missle technology to China
2) Ignored the threat of N Korea's nuclear plans (now they have the capabilities to nuke California where as they didn't 10 years ago)
3) Accepted contributions from Chinese nationals (see 1 above)
4) Ignored opportunities to remove Bin Laden
5) Completely stalled the Israeli peace plan at the end of his second term b/c he obviously wasn't going to benefit from it
6) Lied to Congress and the American people.

What upsets me about all of these isn't that he got a blowjob from an intern. Its that it was so obvious there was espionage and treason occurring with the Chinese and that wasn't the big deal!! ... and I voted for Clinton '96.

Re:Ha!

[infonography]

1) Authorized the sale of missile technology to China

Rocket Tech, for their space program. It's about getting them to be part of a community. Make them your neighbor, build ties, plan joint ventures, make them depend on you, they will begin to think the same about you and stop pointing guns at you if their not afraid of you. Especially if they have a lot to lose if you go away.

2) Ignored the threat of N Korea's nuclear plans (now they have the capabilities to nuke California where as they didn't 10 years ago)

Ditto for N Korea, they had just started to come out of their shell and started making overtures to S Korea about peaceful reunification.

3) Accepted contributions from Chinese nationals (see 1 above)

That was Gore, and it's rather blurry.

4) Ignored opportunities to remove Bin Laden

He was just another random nutcase, plenty of them in the world. Just he had more money. Has I recall, they pinned the first attack on WTC on Sheik Omar.

5) Completely stalled the Israeli peace plan at the end of his second term b/c he obviously wasn't going to benefit from it

Not so, Most of that started when the Israel's prime minister was assassinated not by a Palestinian but an Israeli extremist Look at the progress toward peace in Israel, they almost had it, but Bush tossed it all in a bucket well before 9-11.

6) Lied to Congress and the American people.

Much like Ollie North? show me one who hasn't. In his second term he had mad dogs like Newt Gingrich who pussied out and when home. I would have voted for him in 2000 if I could. Damn I miss Bill.

Re:SATs are a filtering device

[HanzoSan]

"If you weren't mature when you took the test you probably won't be on the first day of college."

What I'm saying is you might not be mature at 14-16 which is the most important time to be preparing for the SAT. You might be mature at 18 but that doesnt make up for you being immature as a kid and not taking school seriously.

You might take school seriously at 18 but if you didnt take school seriously all along its too late to get a 1500 on the SAT.

"
It can just as much be a tool for a poor kid in a lousy highschool to climb up. It is unfortunate that kids from poor and lousy schools are less likely to do well in college,"

Its not that poor people are less likely to do well in college, you see thats a myth, someone who didnt do well in highschool might get all As in college.

"The worse the school the easier it is for a kid to make an effort and stand out from his classmates with even a half-way decent SAT score. The fact that the kid made the effort makes him a good candidate for college despite the lousy highschool he came from. Good colleges will pick a good kid from a lousy highschool over a great kid from a top highschool."

Thats not true, colleges do not take the top 10% from every school, if they did that, then even I couldnt argue against that, but theydo judge you on test scores.

Here in mass we have something called MCAS, it doesnt matter if you went to a poor school or a rich school, if you fail the MCAS test you cannot go to college, the MCAS test says you must know a certain level of English and Math.

Lucky for me I graduated before the MCAS came into existance, because thats a filtering device if I ever saw one.

I dont think the SATs really work mainly because kids from crappy schools arent as well balanced as kids from good schools. I dont know math very well, mainly because I taught myself just about everything I know and I never put much focus on math, I felt alot of it was useless.

Of course now I cant handle calculus in college, this is the direct result of myself, and due to my lack of money in being able to afford a tutor.

You see, I dont have a problem learning math today, but the lack of math skills would keep me from ever getting over 1200 or so on my SATs.

The SATs therefore doesnt calculate a persons knowledge because a person cannot get a 1500 just by knowing one subject really well, like English or Science, a person must know alittle of this, and alittle of that, and be well balanced, people arent usually naturally balanced, people must be taught to be balanced, trained, etc.

I'm not naturally good with math, I could have learned it well enough to get a 600-700 in the Math section had I gone to good schools, I can already get a 700-800 on the English section.

This means the only reason I cant get a 1500 is because I'm not balanced enough, perhaps I could get a 1000 on the reading section if it werent limited to 800, but by design the SATs assumes everyone was "taught" certain materials in a balanced fashion.

Same goes for a self taught Math genius, who may be able to get 1000 on the Math section but because its capped at 800, they cant.

I know someone who said they had the same problem as me, a genius in Math but weak English, if the SAT is to be useful it shouldnt punish people who arent well balanced in their knowledge because in college balance doesnt matter.

This is why I can do well in College, I dont have to try to be well balanced, I get to focus on what I'm good at.

It just means you have a slow mind.

[HanzoSan]

I visualize everything I read as well, the difference is I visualize it faster.

Too bad all the visualizing in the world doesnt help with math.

Now, I do programming, but I'm looking into going into clergy. Theology is the only thing left for someone like me... Hey, it was either that or bartending. Maybe I can do both. Programming is rote and boring. Research holds no attractiveness to me. Now, God does, and so do women.

You sound alot like me, Try taking a class on philosophy, you might like it, and its more useful than theology.

Re:It's amazing, really

[HanzoSan]

" our education system is one of the best. "

We have both the best and worst. In our richest schools, our private elite schools, and our ivy league schools we have the best, but our public schools are terrible.

Re:The need for a well rounded education

[intermodal]

While that is true to a certain extent, my biggest problem with the current status of colleges is not with the colleges themselves but with the schools leading up to them. I think that they are geared too much towards college preparation and too little towards actual education. I believe that tying high school graduation to age is ridiculous. I believe that elementary schools not only are too slow, but should teach foreign language. I believe that the average american high school is more focused with keeping its students on campus to get state funding for attendance than it is with getting them actually interested in learning. I believe that the result of these changes has made universities have to depend upon standardized testing rather than actual observation of skills to choose their students. I believe that academia is used too often these days as an escape from the responsibilities that come with emerging into the real world. I believe that self education holds little value on paper anymore despite it often having just as much practical value as a degree. I believe that the GI bill filled jobs that did not need college with college graduates, forcing the next holder of the position to have a degree too. I believe there are lots of colleges these days that are not worthy of the title. I believe that there are lots of people holding degrees who should never have been awarded them, as well as many who became sick of the debt and bureaucracy and chose not to go who are even in their current state of knowledge deserve it more.

That is but a fraction of what i was talking about.

Re:The need for a well rounded education

[intermodal]

I'm not totally sure, but it sure as hell isn't what we have here in the US, and I think it requires a better schooling system to lead up to it too.

Re:Standardized tests

[stanmann]

Context and greek/latin roots... the foundation of our language. That is the whole point of that section.... determining what a word you have never seen might mean.... Some people get off on that... Check out reader's digest some day.

Re:Belgians

[Hognoxious]

Then bear in mind, with the proposed warrant system, any British soldier could simply be arrested, in Britain, by Belgian police, to face similar charges.

History suggests that the Belgians would be lucky to even come second in such an encounter.

For that matter, Blair himself could be arrested that way - and the UK would be powerless to stop it legally.

Legally by whose definition?

Not that I'm a fan of Blair, but I'd really like to see them try, if they think they're hard enough.

Re:Standardized tests

[Hognoxious]

An good example is the story of young Carl Gauss. As the story goes, his elementary school teacher gave the children this arithmetic assignment in an attempt to keep them busy: sum the integers from 1 to 100.

But that isn't an SAT math question. That's why I say I've taken better tests of general ability.

You should be saying you've taken better tests of general knowledge. The difference is well discussed in the section about Mappers and Packers

Re:Standardized tests

[Hognoxious]

But a person who knows chinese (but has no 'testing-ability') can certainly get a higher score

s/no/little/

Surely a person with no testing ability would

1. Turn up on the wrong day.
2. Get lost on the way to the room.
3. Write on the wrong side of the paper. In crayon.
4. All of the above.

Re:Belgians

[Cyberdyne]

Then bear in mind, with the proposed warrant system, any British soldier could simply be arrested, in Britain, by Belgian police, to face similar charges.

History suggests that the Belgians would be lucky to even come second in such an encounter.

If it came to an actual military confrontation, yes - but that would require the British government using military force to override European law. That would require a major change of heart...

For that matter, Blair himself could be arrested that way - and the UK would be powerless to stop it legally.

Legally by whose definition?

Legally as in EU law prohibits Britain from interfering. Remaining members of the EU would be virtually impossible at that point. Although they would never try to use military force, the diplomatic and economic fallout would be ... messy.

Not that I'm a fan of Blair, but I'd really like to see them try, if they think they're hard enough.

That's the trouble: they would just turn up in the UK with a valid warrant under EU law. Britain would then be the side having to stop them - illegally, by the EU's rules - and that would take a degree of courage few politicians have. What would Britain do - invade Belgium to get them back?!

Re:It's amazing, really

[AceM2]

Not ALL of our public schools are terrible. What I went to back in the day was a great school, and still is. They taught me just as much as a private school would have, and they have plenty of both advanced and remedial classes. Anyway, I'll assume you mean the inner-city schools and such.. My point is, don't try to say all our public schools are terrible. The area I live in is not rich by any standard, but our schools are great. My *question* is.. compared to what? Certainly not 75% of the world.. Not terrible compared to Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, most of Africa, South America, and so on..

Our education system IS one of the best..

Re:Belgians

[Hognoxious]

If it came to an actual military confrontation, yes - but that would require the British government using military force to override European law.

No it doesn't. Belgian police are generally fat and cowardly; British squaddies generally aren't. So, any copper walking up to an army barracks is either much braver or much stupider than the average. The Belgian police can't even enforce the law in their own country, FFS. Does the name Dutroux ring a bell?

Remaining members of the EU would be virtually impossible at that point.

France has more infractions against EU law than any other country. If they don't obey, why should the UK, or anybody else for that matter?

Legally as in EU law prohibits Britain from interfering.

Legally theis, EU law that. Laws aren't worth the paper they're printed on unless someone has the power to enforce them, and the willingness to use it.

What would Britain do - invade Belgium to get them back?!

What would Belgium do, invade Britain to enforce their stupid law in the first place? That's the funniest thing I've heard in weeks.

Re:Belgians

[Cyberdyne]

No it doesn't. Belgian police are generally fat and cowardly; British squaddies generally aren't. So, any copper walking up to an army barracks is either much braver or much stupider than the average.

Or just waits until said soldier is on holiday elsewhere - at which point, half a dozen Belgian cops (or any other cops they can rent for the day from a proper country) versus one soldier, told he's being arrested on the basis of a valid warrant? That's a very different picture.

What would Belgium do, invade Britain to enforce their stupid law in the first place? That's the funniest thing I've heard in weeks.

Not "invade" - just put a few cops on a plane. Or, as I said above, wait to catch their target outside the UK, alone. It's much harder to resist arrest on your own in a foreign country...

In practice, I agree British soldiers should be safe from arrest - but what about me? Under French law, "offending against the dignity of the Republic" is a crime, as is insulting "anyone who serves the public" (i.e. any government employee). What about me visiting the US - and the INS passport check shows an outstanding arrest warrant for me?! (Or for any soldier, for that matter.) Presumably the INS would investigate, and ignore the offending entry eventually - but it's still a major hassle, even if I never visit Belgium or France again myself!

Re:Belgians

[Hognoxious]

Under French law, "offending against the dignity of the Republic" is a crime, as is insulting "anyone who serves the public" (i.e. any government employee).

There was a rumour that they were trying to add something like that for the EU too, but it was dismissed as tabloid propaganda. Perhaps there was some substance to it after all.

It's really shocking. You can't have a true democracy if the government is immune from criticism.

Seems like it's Liberte, egalite, fraternite: choose two.