The year I took the SATs (1600 scale back then) someone on the Educational Testing Service board threw in a knuckle-ball with an analogy question in the Verbal section that used the term winnowing. I wish I could remember the question..
Post-test, there were quite a few complaints from the super students (some of them confident in scoring in the 1450-1500 range), as it was a curve ball because as suburban-bred kids how could we be expected to know what winnowing meant and more importantly, the correct multiple-choice answer.
Winnowing is not a terribly esoteric word. This whole comment thread is a discussion on winnowing. It's often used in literature, and I believe it is used in certain translations of the Bible.
Post-test, there were quite a few complaints from the super students (some of them confident in scoring in the 1450-1500 range), as it was a curve ball because as suburban-bred kids how could we be expected to know what winnowing meant and more importantly, the correct multiple-choice answer.
That's what I hate: this idea of a "perfect" test, or a test that has an "acceptable" range.
Perhaps I'm drawn to the things I am - art, entrepreneurship - because they're harder to measure and can't as easily set standards. Or perhaps I'm drawn to those things because they're more meaningful than things that you can judge by assigning a number or plotting a chart of scores. In either case, it annoys me when people take numbers too seriously in that regard. The only numbers that really ought to matter are personal numbers: not your numbers compared to somebody else's.
Post-test, there were quite a few complaints from the super students (some of them confident in scoring in the 1450-1500 range), as it was a curve ball because as suburban-bred kids how could we be expected to know what winnowing meant and more importantly, the correct multiple-choice answer.
Winnowing: the act of separating grain from chaf