Kim – Kim depending on the hours of the course you may get to the one way anova secret formula which gallop has been using for decades.

Dr. JPL – Thanks for leaving the note. I’d like to say the absence of the spell checker is deliberate on my part. TBH, I haven’t encountered a spell checker for comments on any blog. I always enjoy stories like the one of Juan. I read an article a long time ago where a researcher’s hypothysis was that genius was often a result of a higher percentage use of potential. Whether that true or not, I don’t know.

One of my intellectural heroes is Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize winning physicist. Reading Feynman’s biography is a fun trip sitting next to a truly bright man.

The author says Feynman’s IQ was “only 120,” but he just had unique ways to dealing with things. Feynman’s book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, relates in great detail how he arrived at a number of ideas that eventually were recognized by the Nobel committee. True, his discovery was sinultaneous with others’, but it was done in his “graphic” way, while the other winners dit everything with numbers.

Your comments about the bell curve and so forth are very astute. When I first taught (1959)in a boarding school in New Mexico, a local student tested out at about 105. His mother was a lovely lady, and asked me if I thought he could make college. I assured her, having taught her son, that he would certainly “make it” in college. Four or five years later I was back in Santa Fe and I met the lady. “I have to tell you, Juan is in Law school at the University of New Mexico, and is doing very well!” she said.

At best, even the brightest people get along on about ten, may q5 percent of their potential. Only challenges, “mind popping” events (see Cracking Creativity) and often dumb luck account for all that is done.

You know well the story of Harry Potter’s creator. So many “illuminations” come like a bold from the blue (actually welling up from the constant work going on in the subconscious) that distinguishing between a “genius” and a really inspired regular person become quite difficult.

I admire you and your work.
James P. Louviere
Editor (Apologies – I have no spell checker in this system.)