The Wonderlich Test

Playoff Sunday and the Christian Science Monitor published a shortened version of the Wonderlich Test used to evaluate the intelligence of college graduates wishing to play in the National Football League. Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers scored a 35, Tom Brady scored a 33, and Tim Tebow got a 22. There are lots of simple math problems and a few verbal analogies, but you have to cover 50 questions in 12 minutes. The speed of the test makes it a real challenge. The sample test required 13 answers in three minutes. Without paper and pencil I scored a 42 missing a math question (not hard, just couldn't do it in my head) and declaring that credit and credence weren't similar enough for me. You can try the same test at this site. I'm thinking there may be a score above which you realize that having people trying to break you in half may not be the best way to make a living.

An interesting new (2009) search tool agrees with me on the credit/credence thing. I'm talking about Wolfram Alpha. This site is called a computational knowledge engine because rather than give you a million sites to check out like Google. It tries to take your query and present an answer often creating charts, tables, and graphs to do so. It's great for comparing elements, cities, countries and historical figures, but it also functions like a wonderful dictionary. Both credit and credence come from Latin roots, but credence is the older word first appearing in English writing for the first time 674 years ago. One places credence in something one believes to be true while credit is mere approval. Credit first appeared in English literature in 1526 and is one of the top 2,000 most used words in English. Wolfram Alpha also tells you,you'd receive 4 more points in Scrabble for using credence. Play around with Wolfram Alpha; it's a growing site with great upside. By the way you can use the site to solve all the math problems on the Wonderlich.