Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Why Ballplayers Don't Do Well on the SATs

My favorite part of the SAT was the analogies section. You remember: Cat is to kitten as dog is to: (a) crevasse; (b) ennui; (c) fungo; (d) puppy.

I liked that section because I'm pretty good with analogies. Roy Oswalt? Not so much:

Oswalt said he did not agree with the decision to include names in the Mitchell Report, saying that the findings were incomplete.

"There were 85 guys singled out, and there may be 300 [who actually used performance enhancing drugs]," he said. "You never know. You're only solving a third of it or a fourth of it. If five people get murdered and one confesses to it, you've still got four murders that nobody confessed to.

Unfortunately, the College Board people removed the analogies from the SAT section, which I feel only contributes to ignorance among our nation's youth. I mean, today, instead of losing points for unreasonably analogizing steroid use and murder, the next Roy Oswalt can gain points by writing an essay comparing and contrasting the evils perpetrated by Barry Bonds with those of John Wayne Gacy.

3 comments:

s1c said...

300? I think that number is probably less than actual. I have a brother in law who went to college with a few big leaguers, who have told him that PED was probably being used by over 60% of the major league players. Of course this is hear say and is in admissable but I would not be surprised if the number was that high. However, I am also sick of this whole thing. The past is past, look to the future. Did players use PED? Well duh!

Ethan said...

I can't believe that in that cascade of snark, you let slide the "85 were singled out" graf. Herded out?

Craig Calcaterra said...

I was good at analogies, but really poor at the quantitative reasoning, so I really didn't see the problem until you pointed it out . . .;-)