Once you get rolling with Internet tests, there seems to be no end of them. After joining Brain Health Registry, which takes about an hour, I was invited to join Mindcrowd, which takes only ten minutes.

Mindcrowd is in the process of developing a database of a million or more people who take two simple cognitive tests. Then, they will ask the same people to take the tests over time to map their cognitive changes.

First test, a two-minute piece of cake. A red ball pops on the screen, and you hit the return key. It is a test of eye/hand coordination.

Second test, really tough. They display twelve word pairs in a sequence on your screen. Then, randomly display one of the first words and prompt you to type in the second word of the pair. Some, like garden & grass have a connection that makes sense. Others like under & life evoked an image I could recall, or at least stirred my criminal mind. Then there were word pairs, like public & hard, that seemed randomly connected  and defied any link in my head. The test repeated three times. I managed to recall four pairs on my first pass, then six and then eight. At least I got better.

After three iterations Mindcrowd revealed my total score of 61% and offered me comparative results. I landed right at the median of all men. I scored higher than others my age, lower than other single people, but higher than married people. (Why is there an 8% difference between the singles and marrieds? Do married people prefer to forget pairs?). I was in line with others holding post graduate degrees, but the most interesting aspect of the statistics is that there is virtually no difference between how people score on these tests and how much education they have obtained. In fact, the highest scores among educational levels are those with only some high school, who average 66%. Perhaps the less formal education you have, the more you have to depend on your memory to get through the day.

Join the database at www.mindcrowd.org.