Meme!

[altivo]

Since I'm still at work and can't start on Nanowrimo until I get home. From atomicat:

You paid attention during 100% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
Make a Quiz

Actually, I get extra credit for catching the quiz author's mistakes. He/she spelled Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night incorrectly as "Twelth Night". ;p

Comments

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Me too :D

Though I think I was lucky on a couple of the word ones, and that question on 1492.

You paid attention during 100% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
Make a Quiz

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I was sure about 1492, but you could tell it was a trick question anyway. Since you didn't go to an American high school, though, what exactly is this quiz author trying to say about you? That's the part I think is silly.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Saying If I did go to an American highschool I might have done pretty good?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Given your age group, yes, your score would be excellent. American High Schools were much more demanding at one time, but these days they have mostly collapsed so badly that a high school diploma doesn't even guarantee that you can read and write coherently.

There are several reasons for this, some political and others societal.

[woodychitwn.livejournal.com]

I got 74%

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*snicker* You must have been sleepy or something. You're obviously smart enough to recognize the trick questions and guess the right answers even if you didn't know them.

[woodychitwn.livejournal.com]

*shrugs*

Could be. But that percentage qualified as very good retention of knowledge, so I'm happy with it.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

I took that and got 90 something percent. I think the question on the "hanging modifier" got me.

I missed the spelling mistake. Cambridge University seem to think there is reason why that is so common.

http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/

[altivo.livejournal.com]

"Dangling modifier" is a rather vague descriptor, but there was only one of those sentences that had a really dubious construction.

That paragraph of scrambled spellings has been around the park several times, and over here it usually says the experts at "Haravrd Univeristy" were responsible for the conclusion.

Like most memes, this one contains some poor generalizations. Obviously, it assumes that the quiz taker is the product of an American high school, to start with, and apparently that they have no education beyond that. I'm inclined to agree that someone with only a high school education from a US public school, who graduated in the last 20 or 30 years, is likely to miss a few of those answers. However, schools here weren't always that dismal, and anyone who goes beyond the high school level has plenty of opportunities to improve on the results even today.

Since I graduated high school 39 years ago, and have a four year bachelor's degree and four years of graduate study after that, it would be pretty embarrassing to score less than 90 or 95 on this thing. Why, I can even find my location on an unmarked globe (a test that the majority of Americans fail at all ages, according to the National Geographic Society.)

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I got the full 100%, but I have to admit I had to stop and dig my memory about the Immaculate Conception thing.

I blame the Lutherans.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That may well be the most frequently missed question, with even a lot of Roman Catholics getting it wrong. ;p

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I think my only saving grace was that the Immaculate Conception vs. Incarnation of Christ thing had come up somewhere on livejournal very long time ago. And they say blogs aren't educational!

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Religious facts weren't taught at our highschool, and my history was more ancient history than around the Magna Carta (which I knew from a goon show episode XD)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

History here tends to start with the American colonies. Anything earlier is rushed over very quickly, but the Magna Carta certainly gets a mention because it's the foundation of some basic American legal principles.

Religious dogma is not usually discussed except as it contributes to secular history, for instance the British Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell, and the Puritans all are both religious and political issues. The Roman Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception used to be mentioned because it is one of only two examples of the actual use of ex cathedra papal infallibility. The concept of infallibility is of historic significance, even though it has been used just twice and only for dogma of limited consequence.

[doug-taron.livejournal.com]

I got 100%, too. The one that almost tripped me up was neither the 1492 date nor the immaculate conception. For the area of the triangle question, the formula is 1/2 the base x the height. The trick, of course, is that with a right triangle this works when the hypotenuse is the base. The question referred to one of the other sides as the base.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hmm? It works with a right triangle no matter which side you pick as the base. Of course, with the 3x4x5 right triangle, it is easiest to know the height if you set the triangle on one of the legs rather than on the hypotenuse. So 3x4x0.5=6 or 4x3x0.5=6 but if you use the 5 as the base, you have to figure out the height first, which gets into some messy trigonometry. The height turns out to be 2.4 in that case, but you need a bunch of trig tables to get it.

[doug-taron.livejournal.com]

Garrh...what was I thinking? And I got the answer right, too. I posted, then drew a couple of triangles on my white board and realized exactly what you just said. I should never post before 7 AM.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Just a case of trying too hard, I think. None of the questions were difficult, but some were worded trickily.