As Miles Vorkosigan says, "Never argue nomenclature with a pedant. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant."
I'm pretty sure I would have at least thought about saying, at the "I survived" point, "well, my kid is obviously smarter than you."
Later, I would have spent hours stewing over how to phrase it more clandestinely so as to leave her wondering.
I was appalled to be told that there were "no real differences" between children who are 99.9th percentile (like mine-- and like many of the children here) and those at the 90th percentile.
As I've explained to DS, when he is particularly frustrated at having no one like him to talk to -- 90th percentile is one in ten, 99th percentile is one in a hundred, 99.9th percentile is
minimum one in a thousand, since they don't split it off any further. There are only 700 kids in your school, K-12. You're a mathy kid, what does that tell you?
It would be nice if the "professional educators" could do that math.
ETA: Exactly, SFrog -- 90th percentile of the 90th percentile. I'll have to remember that phrase.
