[masraum]

Not surprising. Just as some folks will never be great athletes, some folks will never be great thinkers regardless of training or study. There are always going to be folks that just don't learn facts and figures and processes as easily or as well as others. Then there's the question of whether the tests are testing overall education or intelligence. And if so, what about places where they specifically tailor the education for the standardized tests vs knowledge and then the test is a test of that knowledge.

It would be interesting to see the study of a truly full sampling of the population. I'd be curious to see the shape of the bell curves for various areas/regions/countries. I wonder if some areas would have a curve of slightly different shapes due to some people not receiving an education at all vs other places where most folks get at least a cursory education.