[dba-Tech] OT, definitely, but priceless

On 2012-11-04 8:58 AM, Arthur Fuller wrote:
> Recently I came upon the following sentence, which reminded me of why I
> dreamed of becoming a writer; but sadly, never achieved such exquisite
> sculpture as this:
>
> The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a
> large population of people, often with well-developed literary and
> scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to
> undertake analytical thought.
>
> -- Peter Medawar

Interesting. 
http://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp 
gives that sentence a Fox Index of 27.

The Fog Index is said to indicate the number of years of formal 
education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text 
on first reading. Many decades ago, a secretary (yep, that long ago) was 
quietly cursing a paper she was typing into the computer. When she was 
done, I put it through that year's version of the Fog Index. It said 
understanding the paper would require 82 years of education.

By way of contrast, the first para of our book, which you wrote, gets a 
Fog Index of 10. Seems you accomplished your goal.

PB




>
> Arthur
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