Re: Public Schools

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 6:40 AM 9/25/96, Jay Gairson wrote:
>First off, what does this have to do with cryptography?  or anything
>cypher for that matter?

Nothing, but Dmitri has "different" standards of what is list-relevant than
many of us do.

>So, basically your saying, since my parents cannot afford to pay for a
>private school for me, we are genetically inferior to those who can?
>Because hate tell ya, but I've ran into some major idiots that go to
>private schools.  Also to consider that from the school I go to, last
>year we had two perfect sat scores (no problems missed).

A minor point: An 800 SAT or Achievement score does _not_ mean "no problems
missed." There is some threshold for the percentage of right answers, which
varies from year to year and from test to test, above which the score is
marked "800." Don't ask me why they do this. (*)

This should give you more hope and more determination to get a few 800s
when you take the exams.

(* Back in 1969 when I was taking these exams and was more neurotically
interested in such things, I surmised that the 800 top end was set up to
correspond to the IQ = 160 top end reported on some major IQ tests of the
time. While some IQ tests are open-ended, resulting in, for example, the
dubious claim that Marilyn vos Savant has an IQ of 210 or somesuch, it's
more common for tests to have an upper limit, beyond which the results are
considered essentially meaningless. So, if one notes that 800 + 800 = 1600,
which is exactly 10 times 160, and that the "percentiles" for SAT combined
scores of 1500, 1400, 1300, etc. match up with the percentiles for IQs of
150, 140, 130, etc., it's pretty clear what was done with the SAT scoring
model. Obviously, many imperfections, some implicit in the nature of tests,
some in the whole nature of "IQ" per se. This is why Mensa, which takes
(alleged) IQs of 130, also accepts SAT combined scores in that general
range (x10, of course). Of course, as Roger Gregory puts it, "Mensa is the
scum of the cream of the crop.")

--Tim May



We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."