TNS ExCom Memo, 6/25/96

From: Kevin Langdon, Regent, P.O. Box 795, Berkeley, CA 94701
(510) 524-0345; [old e-mail address omitted]

Bob Kopp, Editor
John Cooper, Financial Officer
Jacquelinne White, Membership Officer
Kerry Williams, Ombudsman
Hal Darancette, Member-at-Large
Larry Jess, Member-at-Large

Ray Suttles, Elections Officer, Monitor, Greeter
Jim Grzegorowicz, Correspondence Group
Matt Urnezis, Archivist
John Kormes, Legal Officer

Dale C. Adams	Bill and Mitzi Kuehl	Daniel J. Schultz
Verlin Allbritton	Julia and Laura Lansberry	Gary H. Schultz
Lee Arhelger	Michael Madow	Kevin Schwartz
Cyd Bergdorf	Celia Manolesco	Michael J. Scordan
B.B. Crawford	Paul Maxim	Kent Shultz
Billy R. Fox	Daniel B. McElwain	Patrick A. Thomas
Wally Gannon	Pat McGrath	Robert G. Trbovich
Bob Gulley	Henry Milligan	Michael Vendetti
Loren L. Harris	Wilson Ogg	Clint Williams
Travis Houser	David Powers	Dennis Wilson
Adelaide Jaffe	Kenneth Rogers	Cal Woodruff
Barry Kington	Steve Schuessler

This Memo is late again, due to the small number of submissions received. Memos by Paul Maxim and Jacquelinne White are included herein. The next Memo will be published after new officers are installed.

[Paul Maxim's and Jacquelinne White's memos have not as yet been prepared for Web publication.]

The motion to appoint John Kormes Legal Officer has passed. The following votes were received: Yes, Darancette, Jess, Kopp, and Langdon; No, Cooper and White; Abstain, Williams. I'd like to thank Mr. Kormes for his willingness to serve the Society. Hopefully, there'll be little need for his services. The motions to authorize John Cooper to organize the 1996 annual meeting and to allow each TNS member to make one motion per quarter to be voted on by the Executive Committee have passed unanimously, 7-0.

Seven members have volunteered to serve on this Committee. All but Paul Maxim have submitted information on their background in statistics and psychometrics; Mr. Maxim has not responded to my request for candidates for membership in this Committee to submit summaries of their qualifications, has shown no understanding of or respect for scientific methodology, and approaches this subject with an axe to grind, as evidenced by his letters to Vidya and this Memo. Michael Madow wrote that he does not have experience in statistics but is interested in learning. Therefore, I move that:

* (7) Julia Cybele Cachia, Greg Grove, Robert Kopp, Kevin Langdon, and Henry Milligan are appointed to serve on the TNS Psychometrics Committee. Michael Madow shall be an alternate member of the Committe, to vote when a member disqualifies himself on a particular issue (as I intend to do in the case of any vote on my own tests) and to become a full member of the Committee in the event of a vacancy. The Committee shall elect its own Chairman. The Committee shall be responsible for revising TNS' admission standards. (Note on motion numbering: my motions numbered 4 and 5 in the April ExCom Memo should have been numbered 5 and 6.)

Summary of qualifications of proposed appointees to the Psychometrics Committee:

Julia Cybele Cachia: Psychometric studies for Mensa and ISPE, knowledgeable about the literature on many standard tests, creator of a table showing relationships among scores on various I.Q. and aptitude tests.

Greg Grove: Ph.D. in education, course work in parametric and nonparametric statistics and individual assessment instruments, familiarity with many standard tests, developer of I.Q./aptitude tests, has operated an educational assessment service.

Robert Kopp: Degree in psychology, advanced course work in statistics, familiar with a number of statistical packages, experience with ANOVA, multiple regression, canonical correlation, and factor analysis (article on this subject published in ``Teaching of Psychology'').

Kevin Langdon: Developer of a number of high-range intelligence tests, member of psychometrics committees of the Triple Nine and Prometheus Societies, many pubished articles on psychometrics in the journals of the higher-I.Q. societies.

Michael Madow: Harvard-trained psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, psychopharmacologist, interested in intelligence and intellectual creativity.

Henry Milligan: Course work in multi-variable calculus, statistical methods, deterministic and stochastic systems analysis, and statistical modeling, at Princeton University.

TNS has had a long-standing policy of admitting members of the ISPE, which we should take up officially, for the sake of clarity. Therefore, I move that:

* (8) Applicants furnishing proof of membership in the ISPE shall be accepted into the Triple Nine Society without providing additional evidence of qualification for membership.

Julia Cybele Cachia has created a TNS page on the World Wide Web. The URL is: [old URL omitted; the current URL for the TNS website is http://www.triplenine.org]. This page is an experiment. Comments are invited from readers of this Memo.

It has been suggested that TNS should register its own domain name (presumably, this would be tns.org, unless some other organization with the same initials has beaten us to it, in which case we might use 999.org, triple.nine.org, or something similar). This matter will be investigated further.

If the object of the allegations contained in Paul Maxim's memo had been any other member of Triple Nine, I would unhesitatingly have consigned it to the circular file. As I am Paul's target, I am publishing his memo in full.

Triple Nine is in good financial health. John Cooper has prepared a financial statement which will be published in Vidya soon. One member recently made a gen-erous contribution of $150 to the society, but aside from that TNS is not being subsidized by anybody.

I have not removed any member from the ExCom Memo distribution list since becoming Regent, nor have I refused anyone's request to be placed on the list. The Executive Committee Memo is, and always has been, available to any interested member. I have placed Barry Kington on the distribution list for this memo. Barry and I have had our differences, but I'm sure he will confirm that he has not been excluded from participation in this forum.

It was the first norming of the LAIT, in 1978, on which scores were approx-imately five points too high at the four-sigma level, by the standard established by the second norming a year and a half later, with a considerably larger sample. The over-whelming majority (98%) of those who took the LAIT received second-norming score reports; the other 2% received both first- and second-norming reports. All second-norming score reports are designated as such. Paul is correct that first-norming scores at the three-sigma level were approximately four points too high, but his demand that the names of people who scored 150, 151, and 152 (why not 153?) should be published, in violation of test confidentiality, is outrageous, underscoring his unsuitability for membership in the Psychometrics Committee.

Many of the concerns expressed in Jacquelinne White's memo have already been addressed. An updated roster with membership numbers has been sent to her by Bob Kopp. List maintenance without a computer is impracticable, but we are working on our systems so that officers will not be working at cross-purposes. The new Psychometrics Committee will work to resolve questions about admission standards.

Voting members of the ExCom: Please vote immediately, by mail, telephone (leave a message if I don't answer), or e-mail. We need to act quickly to bring our admission standards up to date and to publicize the society so that we can attract new members.