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Nautikos - thank you - French was my first language, I did not speak
English when I entered school but I have lost most of my French over the years.
Truth be known, one of the main reasons that I have hung around Blogit for so long was to gain a better command of the English language.
posted by
gomedome
on January 27, 2007 at 9:37 PM
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Gome,
excellent post, and since arGee has already dealt with the issue I was going to raise, all that's left for me is to express my surprise that one of the most articulate writers in this forum was
not brought up speaking English, something you mentioned in passing...
posted by
Nautikos
on January 27, 2007 at 8:30 PM
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arGee - I have a younger brother like that, they let him graduate from high
school at 15 years of age.
He was two years younger and he passed me like a bullet in primary school grades. We graduated together. That deserved more than a few beatings which I liberally sprinkled over the ensuing years. Funny thing is, when he entered kindergarten we thought he was retarded. No self preservation skills whatsoever. We didn't realize it was just because he was bored.
posted by
gomedome
on January 26, 2007 at 7:36 PM
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cpklapper - I'm beginning to realize that I should revise this post
I mentioned this in an earlier comment: "Of course the 20%, 75% and 5% numbers I used are simply illustrative approximations."
"illustrative approximations" being doublespeak for dumb guessing. Human intelligence testing serves limited positive purposes but undeniably has some merit. Making dumb guesses about how collective human intellect divides itself serves extremely limited purposes. The only use for it that I can think of and where these types of wild stab guesses belong... is in cursing diatribes.....they can't be beat for that purpose.
posted by
gomedome
on January 26, 2007 at 7:27 PM
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Ever notice how these sort of statistics always seem to come out...
in percentages evenly divided by 5?
posted by
cpklapper
on January 26, 2007 at 7:14 PM
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Don't you just love a know-it-all wise-ass, Gome?
Incidentally, my son seemed a bit too smart for his britches as a youngster, so we had several IQ tests run. Basically, he ran away with them, because the normal IQ test is designed to give some meaningful measure around the middle with a bit of a skew to the right. Finally, we used a test that was specifically designed to differentiate between very high IQ levels. The little guy scored about 165 on this test!
I've been running to keep up ever since.
posted by
arGee
on January 26, 2007 at 4:03 PM
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That aside, there sure are a lot of morons out there!!
posted by
Antonionioni
on January 26, 2007 at 12:48 PM
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arGee - I know, I know - I'm guilty of using common vernacular again
For brevity I didn't bother getting into the details but probably should have mentioned the relationship between the obscure "75% factor" and IQ. The point being that most human beings fall into the range of human intellect above that of a moron and and below that of a genius which is referred to erroneously as "average" intelligence. Despite how many people we meet in our lives that claim to have high IQ's, the number of those with IQ's above 120 is a lot smaller than people think it is. Of course the 20%, 75% and 5% numbers I used are simply illustrative approximations.
posted by
gomedome
on January 26, 2007 at 12:26 PM
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Sorry, Gome, but I've got to do this!
Human intelligence is measured on a bell-shaped curve that has its apex at exactly 100 (IQ). That means that on this curve 50% are above 100, and 50% are below. In most studies, 120 includes at least two and maybe three standard deviations. Same for 80.
The point is that you simply cannot have 5% above average and 20% below average. That's just not how the scale works. You may mean that 5% lie above, say 120 or 135. This could be true; and 75% lie between, say 90 and 120 (135 or whatever), leaving the remaining 20% down there somewhere.
But, by definition, 50% lie above average and 50% lie below. Sorry...
posted by
arGee
on January 26, 2007 at 11:59 AM
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