I sucked up the math portion of the SAT. But I did extremely well on the English portion.

And for the record, I got them both wrong because I didn't care enough to think long about it. I despise that kind of thing.

I didn't answer either one incorrectly, I got the first one right and skipped right to the part where they gave the answer to the second one. I figure it would be stupid to waste time thinking of the answer to a question that will be answered in what you are reading anyway.

EVERYONE is stupid sometimes.

True, but with some people it is a vocation.

Never took the SAT, I took the ACT because all the colleges I applied to were west of the Mississippi and, at least at that time, that meant they wanted ACT. I scored a 34 on the English (I think they called it verbal comprehension or something) and a 33 on the Math the last time I took it (36 is a perfect score for scale).

But you're right that standardized testing has little bearing on common sense. It just shows that you're reasonably good at tests and know how fill the dots in properly with a #2 pencil.

As I've said before: Moron is less a classification of people and more a state of being. Some just inhabit it more frequently.

I was going to insist that this was incorrect--that many people are stupid by avocation, but not vocation--then I considered reality TV, political pundits and [deleted to not enrage the wild Coz], and realized that yes, a great many people are, in fact, being paid to be stupid.

Standardized testing isn't supposed to measure common sense, it is supposed to measure how well you learn what they want taught to you. Public education... good luck with it.

I managed a 32 or 34 composite with a math score in the single digits... 13th percentile IIRC.

Isn't this really more "How intuition is bad at math"? Snap assessments only get you so far.

Two of those are fun. Ten of those are tedious. Fifty of those are punishment.