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."