I took the recently unveiled SAT Sample test ten questions and got 80% correct by their counting -B- but not by my counting:-- not because I didn't know the answers, but because they, 1. didn't list one answer; 2. didn't realize one answer ... so, Over-the-hill In Ameria, could be a campaign theme:-- The best educated in America get B's after they get A's ... that's "over the top" in the common vernacular (albeit -more- correctly, over, means, over, not beyond)....
WHERE THE SAT GOES WRONG:
SAT examination questions are typical intelligent questions, or example works from which questions are derived, designed to exhibit the necessary discipline skills, grammar, arithmetic (they don't have calculus, as becomes mathematics) and thinking,- but they usually fall down in putting the cross-discipline of all-that, all together: ie. precise, thinking and grammar and arithmetic:--
For example, the two I got wrong:
The first referred to, "The two best performances on the program...." Okay: their intents were good; their answer of choice was, none of the above were wrong (grammar items to check)-- so I won't mention any. -But-- what they got wrong, was the sense of the paragraph, which they mistook, and therefore the purported answer of none-wrong, was wrong, too! Here's what:--
"The two best performances," means, both are best-- not always first-and-second best, not really ... ever heard of a tie? You can't answer a question if there's still a question in the answer ... or you get it wrong very easily!
Consequently, in the end, I chose the least fitting of their answers as the wrong answer ... least-fitting is a wrong ... ever had a pair of shoes with a bump on top?- it'll wear a hole in your foot when you actually go walking, if the bump on top presses inward! (cf ceiling vs roof.) Ever look at the way the Mackinac Bridge was built, and calculate the force on the cable-bend support beyond the ground-anchor?-- If the cable isn't bolted to that support, then the force is at a pulley-angle ... you know the bridge could collapse, but probably won't because there's enough structural margin to cover the slight sin (that's mathematical sin -sine- in this case) into its base-width ... but I digress.
The net result was that, beyond their choices, their phrase "impress us with" (a phase, quality, or our own implicit preference, in the performances) didn't apply to a tie-for-first, and probably didn't apply to first-and-second-best in balance with their emphases on "significantly more" implying second was farther behind yet at the same time "likely" implying that it was a probable evaluation not the exact judgment (certainly not if significantly more) ... so, the phrase needed to say "impress us for" (said phase, quality, or our own preference), to say that in one way they did excel, and that'd be significant, more and likely, while not in all ways: allowing the other equal or near performance.
The second referred to companies -facing- fierce competition for customers.... Fierce, does include face in the last of several dictionary senses,- but companies in competition are not facing, the competition, if they are truly competing: they are facing their goals!-- Albeit ... they may be faced-with, competition,- as that is the sense of the competition making itself known, at least repeatedly, in the sense of running peripherally side-eyeing the next lane; frequently, in the context; even continually, in the sense of fierce; but not continuously in the sense of a distraction from the gains stated,-- being occupied instead of watching where one is going, as in the case of war, where competition is the goal, not game (where goals are more like those in context) ... but finally the test question ended in a clumsy grammar of, faster than monopolies do,- instead of, faster than do monopolies ... when, monopolies don't do, faster: but they do do the goals,- at least in the context of the question that the goals need be done. (It's like a pro-verb: cf pronoun.)
But that was high school (SAT), this is college:
So, what happened in college?-- I'm not really sure ... sure, I'm glad I got in, and graduated, out,-- but-- why, did they try to teach me Schroedinger's Equation for the frequency of an electron (lepton; I studied electron clouds in fifth grade: a pamphlet on Atoms, Crystals, And Molecules), instead-of, without-ever, and not-after, teaching the Fourier Equation for the frequency of a standing, electron?!-- How did they expect [me] to jump from the Fourier Analysis at electron-standing (*) to the Schroedinger analysis of electron-moving, when the frequencies are two entirely different species?!-- Fourier's is a power spectrum (I had that, working Freshman summer in the Solar Astronomy Department laboratory),- a broad continuous spread of frequencies; while Schroedinger's is an enveloped single-frequency wave,- spread but not very alike ... and if they didn't teach both, and how to get from one to the other, there was not a lot of learning the way mathematicians learn (my forte):-- I wanted cross-discipline consistency, even while majoring!
* (Trying this lead back to neat questions of the internal structure of the electron:-- If an electron is two Kelvin-rings interlocked, as seems consistent with positive and negative charges [Kelvin supposed atoms were rings bi-rolling like smoke-rings -through the center and around the outside- because he noticed rings were stable and bounced off each other as atoms seemed to him]:- opposite versions then left-right mirror-symmetric, -and- a bi-rolling stationary ring drags an outer flow that can become a secondary ring structure,- if both inner and outer weren't paired wedge-rings naturally, or co-ring pairs through one: -higher order rings-bi-rolling-around-rings-bi-rolling-around-rings would lead to massive charged particles, and quarks-... then Schroedinger's electron wave would be limited to 4-5 density-zones: but that was refuted by atomic orbitals. And on top of that, the electron inverse-square fringe [field] would be lower frequency wavelengths, which under acceleration, would run-ahead, if waves in aether are like waves in water: longer waves are faster;-- which would mean that acceleration of electrons looses some mass-energy,- but which would be restored at the stopping end in point-to-point travel ... which would yield an altogether different explanation for neutrinos ... all very interesting: if they'd shown us their work ... but alas: that's another fallacy in contemporary education: all the long-ago tried mistakes are missed,- until someone finds a newly definitive experiment, and all the "re-searches" go back archive-diving.)
Well: I got my degree-- but I wanted more: I wanted answers, to work through them, to learn them;-- not a bunch of cross-discipline confusion that I'd have to debunk: I wanted to contribute where I was developing fastest, not end-up a cackling old maid telling the bigwigs their theories are all bunk, "Can't get there from here, Einstein." These days I reexplain (sometimes looks like debunk) the regular practice of scientists ... at least, we have the Internet, by which their information is more readily available, and I can improve and publish immediately instead of submitting to paper magazines (I did some of that back in the 80's while waiting for ARPAnet to connect an Internet, to attain the web,- which I'd designed back in the 70's: I mean the hypertext was a necessary meta-language,-- that's what the industry called it back then: meta,-- in particular Meta II, as I recall:-- formula quotated the text; meta bracketed controls).
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NOTES TO FURTHER REFERENCES:
Sincerely.
Mr. Raymond Kenneth Petry
USA interParty
Firstly of the original 13 United States of America, self-stiled by our Articles of Confederation
� 2004 Mr. Raymond Kenneth Petry