Incredible talk by the super-smart John Mighton on how the bell curve drives just about everything in the world. And how we used to be concerned about "deterministic" values in the previous centuries, and now we are much more concerned and interested in "edge cases" and the "abnormal". Steve Jobs said "Think Different" -- indeed. Mighton raises a number of key issues about teacher expectations, assessment, and students' ability to learn.
This idea is driving password hacking today as well. Listen at 35:00 or so of this podcast called Security Now.