Over half of all children have below-average reading skills


Yes, you read that right—this statistic was cited by Eugenia Cheng last weekend in her column for the Wall Street Journal on why Averages Aren’t Always What They Seem. In this case, a small number of excellent readers skews the distribution to the right.

But none of this applies to my offspring, them being in the Lake Wobegon region where all the children are above average.

I would never admit it, but deep down I realize that I’ve succumbed to the superiority illusion, aka the Dunning-Kruger effect. As advised in this June 3rd post by Forbes you’d best be careful not to be taken in by individuals who consistently overestimate their competence due to this cognitive bias.

Steve Carell took the superiority illusion to an absurd extreme as the manager Michael Scott in the “The Office” television series. It’s funny unless you are subject to someone like this.

“The knowledge and intelligence that are required to be good at a task are often the same qualities needed to recognize that one is not good at that task—and if one lacks such knowledge and intelligence, one remains ignorant that one is not good at that task.”

— David Dunning, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan

“Stupid people are so stupid they’re unable to grasp the fact that they’re stupid.”

— Letter to Editor of Oroville Mercury Register, 6/23/19

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