Something you can all work on. To test Rob's general reasoning skills I gave him this IQ test question. See how you all fair. You'll not find it on the web as it comes from a time before the Internet. I pulled it from my own mind as it was the extra credit question for my 9th grade AT class.
INTRO
I am the entertainer,
I come to do my show.
You've heard my latest record,
It's been on the radio.
Ah, it took me years to write it,
They were the best years of my life.
It was a beautiful song.
But it ran too long.
If you're gonna have a hit,
You gotta make it fit--
So they cut it down to 3:05. ~Billy Joel
Not merely a catchy lyric this was Billy's personal dig at a policy in the 1970's, when the recording industry decided that the average length of #1 hits had been 3 minutes and five seconds in the previous decade...and that it would be a good idea to keep future songs to this magical musical time limit. The study done by the recording industry was actually inspired by the concept of the Golden Segment (discovered by Euclid). They thought that a similar magical formula for creating hits might exist in music. Here was their methodology.
1.The average was a simple average calculated by taking the length of each song that had made it to #1 in the last decade and dividing by the total of number #1 songs.
2.They got their stats from the billboard charts and radio show call in requests. The rules were simple: The most requested song during a particular week, was considered to be the #1 song for that week.
Now put yourself in the shoes of an up and coming executive in the music industry that has a chance to be promoted in the company if he shows where his current boss, that came up with this “cut it down to 3.05” policy, has erred.
List each individual flaw or error separately in it's own paragraph. Grading is on the number of flaws you find.
