stales:

you said: > Amongst other things, we test each shortlisted candidate's "Verbal Reasoning" skills and report them as a percentile against an appropriate statistical population (in our case between 500 and 5000 previous "test-ees" - bit of recruitment humour there!!) As we are inevitably dealing with tertiary qualified people, it is (I suppose) pleasing to report that the great majority fall in the upper 50th percentile - because we're comparing them to each other and not ranking them by the correctness.

If you are testing them among themselves, the great majority cannot fall into the upper 50th percentile, can they? If I remember my stats course correctly, exactly one half will fall into the upper 50th percentile and one half will fall below.

TEd

PS

What's a tertiary qualified person? From the context I assume it's someone who is qualified for education above the secondary level, i.e., a person who would be accepted at university.

TR




TEd