Statistkick me

I thought you might like to know how I scored in the cognitive tests.  I still have no idea if my inner psycho was too evident in the interview, but my tests scores and explanations are as follows:

For the verbal reasoning, you completed all 44 questions within the time limit and scored a total of 32 correct responses, an accuracy rate of 73% overall.

Hooray!  I hear you shout in community spirit.  But, wait! Tame that enthusiasm.

When compared against our New Zealand norm group of several thousand graduates and managers who have previously sat this test, your score places you in the 50th percentile. This means that your score was higher than 50% of this norm group and conversely, that 50% of this group has scored higher than you did on this particular test. In other words, your score is in the average range compared to your professional peer group.

That only took me about 10 minutes to understand. I think it's basically saying that I did reasonably well, until I compare my marks to everyone else, in which case I'm just average common schmuck.

Now, keeping in mind that the reason I never became a mathematician is because maths is not my strongest skill, I was thrilled to find out that I scored 54% in numerical reasoning! I passed. Er, not quite.

In comparison to our norm group, this score places you in the 18th percentile, meaning that your score was higher than 18% of our norm group and conversely, that 82% of this group has scored higher than you did on this particular test.

Ok. I feel so very stupid now.

But, wait again! It seems that those who do this particular test are in the top 2% of....something.....I'll say the population of New Zealand because that's quite a nice feeling in the circumstances.

Which means, the 50th percentile of the top 2% is pretty damn good. As is the 18th percentile of the top 2%.

Shame I don't have the mathematical ability to calculate what that means. If anything.