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snaggle

you can ring my bell (curve)

by snaggle at 12:09 AM on April 11, 2001

I'd like to take a second to thank mg for his wonderful welcome back message yesterday. I hope I'll be able to live up to his expectations. I usually fail to be humorous in my daily life, but I always come up with something gut-bustingly funny a long time after the fact. Here, however, free from my temporal bounds, I may be able to shine forth with brilliant pithy commentary. And, really, no matter what mg says, some of us like pithy commentary. Anyway, on to some pithiness. This one's brought to you courtesy of an Art History exam I had to take today.

One thing I will never understand is this whole "grading on a curve" bit. You know what I'm talking about... the whole phenomenon that the grade that most people will score on a test is what will become middle C. Statisticians call this phenomenon a "bell curve," probably due to the fact that if you chart the scores, they'll form a bell. You've all seen the curve, too. This is based on the principle that most people are average, and that there are as few people scoring in the F range as there are scoring in the A range. Professors have told me that, interestingly enough, in large lecture classes the scores do just happen to fall into such a curve.

A book came out a couple years ago by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray entitled, creatively enough, The Bell Curve : Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. I have yet to read it, but what caused such a stir was that people gathered that what the authors were trying to insinuate is that African- and Latino-Americans will always be at the bottom of the social ladder because they are inherently less intelligent. Now, that's not quite what the authors were getting at but that's not really what I want to talk about.

What I want to know is this: a bell curve model tells us that as many people will score in the A range as will score in the F range.

Huh?

Maybe I'm just prejudiced, since I'm a little radical in my political views and very idealistic in my ways. Maybe I've just seen the wrong segments of society. Maybe I'm just too intellectual and elitist. Or maybe I'm just flat-out wrong. Anyway, here's what strikes me as odd about that:

That doesn't account for nearly enough stupid people.

Here's what I mean: look around you. Chances are, you'll see a bunch of morons. I mean, you have your Fred Phelpses, your "Dr." Lauras, your Dan Quales, and your George W. Bushes.

Maybe I just don't have enough faith in the American public — or the public in general, for that matter. I, for one, don't think democracy is the best form of government. History is replete with examples of the populace not being educated enough to govern themselves. Just take a look at our president. (Granted, he did lose the popular vote - but there were still plenty who did vote for him.) But that's another gripe for another stream of pithy commentary.

Besides, we've already managed to kill Socrates; who's next?

comments (2)

I happen to like Dr. Laura. She may be close-minded and homophobic, but she sure knows how to put her callers in their place. She yells at every single one of them.

And yet, they are always so dense as to believe that she will agree with them, no matter how foolishly they are living their pathetic little lives. If her callers are stupid enough to call in, they deserve the generally bad advice that they get. Same as with all the people who send in their advice here. But, people should still send in for advice here, 'cause at least I'm funny.

by mg at April 11, 2001 2:17 AM


Snaggle makes the best damn tofu/couscous cake I've ever tasted.

Oh, and don't Asians account for the top part of the bell curve? There are billions of us on this planet, you know.

by Shar "resistably cute" Mac at April 12, 2001 12:33 PM