Not My Most Brilliant Morning

[ndrosen]

Slate.com has weekday quizzes, on history, culture, science, and the news; readers can get a higher or lower score based on how many questions they answer correctly, and how quickly they choose their answers. I often take a quiz of one of the first three kinds; I have never been in top place, but my scores are generally above average, and sometimes place me in the top fifty, or even the top ten.

Thursday morning, there was a science quiz, in which I, Nicholas Rosen, B.A., M.S., Ph.D., an author or co-author of several scientific papers, scored lower than the average quiz taker, which ought to keep my ego in check.

Maybe I can do better on a culture quiz; it depends on whether the quiz emphasizes Greek mythology and other classics, or knowledge of movies and rock music.

Comments

[coffeetime]

Well, having read that, I detected a throwdown. My chance to outscience a scientist! I am chagrined, therefore, to report that I, an aging GenX onetime English major, also scored below average. I did, however, score higher than average on the vocabulary quiz posted a few days prior.

[filkferengi]

Now that they've changed Jeopardy!, including lots of pop culture, rap, Emmy winners, etc., we don't do nearly as well on it as we did on the original version. Stuff from our youth? Sure. Anything else? Parties with Schroedinger's Cat.

However, I do think the diversified categories have made the game better overall. Certainly the more recent winners are truly impressive, performing in such a wide variety of fields.