From: radams@BNR.CA (Rodney Adams)
Subject: Re: RESULTS FOR TAI STANDARD INTELLIGENCE TEST
Reply-To: "Rodney Adams" <RADAMS@BNR.CA>
Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd.
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 1992 20:42:45 GMT

In article <1992Nov5.031100.27122@ncsu.edu>, scott@bogus.network.address
(Scott Tai) writes:
|>ecsd@tfs.com (Eric C. S. Dynamic) writes:
|>: Here's your homework exercise, Scott - write for us, an 
|>: essay as to why standardized tests *can* be useful - you're 
|>: free to preface it with a disclaimer, no problem.
|>
|>..
|>
|>The Tai Standard Test of Intelligence
|>-------------------------------------
|>
|>With the help of Dr. N.O. Tai, I've compiled readability
|>statistics for the last 216 posts on rec.org.mensa.  All
|>posts for each user were saved in a separate file.  A
|>shell script was used to strip all header information,
|>and any line beginning with | or > was assumed to be an
|>excerpt from a preceding article.  Then, each file was
|>hand-edited to remove any remaining excerpts and all 
|>signature information.  The number of words and posts
|>for each individual were then counted.
[...]

I must admit that my first impression of this compilation echoed Steve
Franklin's and Ken Gacioch's reactions, namely, "Damn, somebody spent a
lot of time at this!"

|>Conclusion
|>----------
|>
|>radams appears to be the most intelligent poster to
|>rec.org.mensa, followed by ehp and eager.

Here, my reaction was more like, "Well, f*ck me!", but I would never
drop my sense of decorum to the point where I would openly respond
in such a manner.

On the down side, this might mean that my posts will now be critically
scrutinized by those wishing to find some fault with my writing.  As
if I didn't have enough pressure as it is....  Gee, thanks, Scott!

|>The posts are the only tangible information one has
|>about rec.org.mensa posters, and these conclusions 
|>are based solely on this information.  Cases like
|>this are when standardized tests are useful...

I guess the only real question is, "Does this qualify me for Prometheus
or Mega?"

By the way, if anyone is going to take this "test" seriously (as Franklin
suggests it was intended), I would offer the following observations:

1. If the statistics can be considered in any way to measure intelligence,
such a measure would relate only to verbal intelligence.

2. The statistics, like those for the top posters, were gathered for only
216 posts -- about a week or two.  I, among others, post with erratic
frequency, so a substantial amount of luck was involved in my having four
posts included at the time the statistics were collected.

3. I personally aim for clarity rather than eloquence, and to this end
my word choice and grammatical constructions are limited to what I believe
the great majority of rec.org.mensa readers will understand.  Had the
criteria for the statistics been known beforehand, I do not doubt that
the letters/word, words/sentence, and complex:simple metrics would have
been significantly higher for those who cared to take the "test" seriously.

4. The amount of time that each individual has available to post articles
would vary considerably.  At most, something might be said about the
level of quality acceptable to each poster, but this says little about
intelligence.

5. This newsgroup has worldwide readership, not all of which speaks 
English as their primary language; hence, the collected statistics would
be biased against those individuals.

6. The readability measures, if I may take the name at face value, would
measure the clarity of sentences.  Such a measure would seem to decrease
if the grammatical structure or word choice were too complex.  For
example, how "readable" is Shakespeare to most high school students?

Could you e-mail me about how the readability scores were computed?  
I am curious as to how the syntactic irregularities of renowned literary 
geniuses would fare by such measures.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Rodney G. Adams
The opinions expressed above are not necessarily those of my employer.
As if you didn't already know that....
"The hell with criticism.  Praise is good enough for me."
                                                   - Tallulah Bankhead