Quiz created: 081006

Theory Quiz: Lumping & Splitting (1)

Instructions: Answer the multiple choice questions, guessing if necessary; then click on the "Process Questions" button at the end of the quiz to see your score in the adjacent message box. The program will not reveal which questions you got wrong, only how many points you have. Go back and change your answers until you get them all right. (The message box will rejoice at that point and the page will change color to show it is tickled pink.)

Points to note: (1) Questions with only one possible answer are one point each. (2) Questions with one or more possible answers (represented by check boxes) give a point for each correct answer, but also subtract a point for each wrong answer! (3) The program will not attempt to score your efforts at all if you have not tried at least half of the questions. (4) This quiz is for your own use only. No record of your progress is kept or reported to anyone.

Lumpers sometimes split and splitters sometimes lump, so the difference lies in what they tend to do as a default. That makes it hard to create a quiz with incontestable answers. In this quiz, the reason for my choice of answer is in each box if you click in it. But this feature won't work until after you've got all the items in the quiz "right" and the color has changed.

1. "The differences between Peking Man and Java Man are potentially quite significant."
The speaker is being a splitter  lumper  No Answer


2. "The differences between Peking Man and Java Man are quite trivial."
The speaker is being a splitter  lumper  No Answer

3. "Researchers today announced the discovery of a new specimen of Australopithecus afarensis."
The speaker is being a splitter  lumper  No Answer

4. "Researchers today announced the discovery of a new fossil, tentatively identified as a possible subspecies of Australopithecus afarensis, to be called Australopithecus afarensis jordani"
The speaker is being a splitter  lumper  No Answer

5. "Any language may be divided into dialects and even idiolects, but such differences rarely matter to the student of Japanese."
The speaker is being a splitter  lumper  No Answer

6. "This dissertation deals with the Jamul dialect of the Diegeño language, as represented in the speech of the late Mrs. Christopher Walker."
The speaker is being a splitter  lumper  No Answer


      Points out of 6:

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This consummately cool, pedagogically compelling, self-correcting,
multiple-choice quiz was produced automatically from
a simple text file of questions using D.K. Jordan's
dubiously original, but publicly accessible
Think Again Quiz Maker
of August 29, 2008.