I bit it good on that test. I knew immediately going into it that I was in deep trouble, since I have great difficulty with remembering numbers and dates. I think it's because I'm right-brained. Or is it left-brained? Well, it's whatever side of the brain is not in charge of remembering things like which side of the brain remembers such things. Bad school flashbacks (did great on history discussion essays, crappy on "what year was the battle of Colonel Henry's Stolen Cow?")

When I do references here, I constantly have to go back and pull up the original reference. The numbers don't stick in my head.

Reading speed: 565 wpm, but about half of that included going back and desperately trying to fix all the numbers in my head, while still going for speed. Didn't help much. I suspect that if I went over the whole article and read it out loud, my score would only improve slightly.

40 percent comprehension. Blech.

Missed questions 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10.

It would have been 50 percent if I hadn't read the questions too fast and hit "b" instead of "c" on question 7. You could cut the irony with a knife.

I protest question 3, since I have references that place the prehistoric Yellowstone eruptions as the largest in North America's history. But that's neither here nor there since the point of the test was what was printed in the article.

No excuse for question 10 since it had no numbers at all. Just whiffed it.

This is why I would suck at politics ("what percentage of the current tax revenue comes from income groups between $20,000 and $50,000, Mr. Brosz?" Me: "where the hell is my computer?"), and why Gary Hudson (who can store volumes of numbers in his head) gives presentations at space conferences instead of me.

It would be interesting to take a second test and go solely for comprehension.