> Ok, you two have made me think a bit more about these polls. I was surprised by the totals for the "Do you have a large vocabulary?" poll, because I answered "No, about average" and found myself in the next-to-lowest category. Meanwhile, the highest category was "Yes, larger than average." I don't think I severely lack a decent vocabulary, but there are so many words out there that I've never even heard of, let alone used. When I look at it in those terms, I don't see how I could reasonably say that I have an "above average" vocabulary.

I think that your choice of terms are unacceptable, though. "Average" has a clear meaning which has nothing to do with the total amount of knowledge available -- it relates solely to the statistical distribution of that knowledge among a population. A simple analogy: If there were 1000 words in the English language and 95% of the population of the world knew precisly six of those words, then your knowledge of seven words, while still miniscule compared to the total available to be known, would quite definitely be "above average". Well, unless that other 5% of the population all knew all 1000 words. I'm assuming a bell curve distribution here, though.

> Ell"Sometimes insouciantly verbose, usually mildly corybantic"myruh

Don "Wonders if anyone would like to calculate out the precise number of words which the remaining 5% would have to know in order for Elly's seven words to be precisely average, if we assume that the population is sufficiently large that Elly's individual contribution to the average has negligible effect" Monkey