John writes:

> Um, yes, guys, this is all very interesting but what about some Quiz
>  code?? :o)

<massive plug>

The time has come to say: "Hey, John, can I interest you in a fine, spanking
brand-new copy of QueryCalc?" :-).

Seriously, everything you want to do can be done in an instant, using
equations such as these:

          @using mydatabase.mydataset, avg of balance when color is red
          @ucs, dev
          @ucs, num

where "ucs" stands for "using current statistics". Besides, on a more
practical basis, what you're currently paying for maintenance for Quiz you
can quite likely purchase QueryCalc outrightly. But it isn't price that we
compete on. There's just no comparison in capabilities between Quiz and
QueryCalc. For this one very small example, every query question in QueryCalc
automatically calculates the sum, the average, the standard deviation, the
variance, the number that qualified, the percent that qualified, the maximum
value and the minimum value. They're there for you to use, if you wish, with
no further programming.

If you wish to read more about the statistical capabilities of QueryCalc, you
can read a portion of its manual on-line. The chapter of interest is 6:

     http://aics-research.com/pdf/chap6.pdf

The pages of interest are 6-12 and 6-13. Also of interest (just to tie all of
this together), on page 6-19, you'll notice that we (sort of) misattribute
the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" quote to H.G. Wells. Wells wrote it
too, like a thousand other people, but we just didn't track it far enough
back. And he used the modified phrase that Nick Demos commented on last
night, "liars, damned liars, and statisticians".

</massive plug>

Wirt Atmar