The usual role of a discussant is to clarify and correct the paper being discussed, but in this case, the author, Howard Wainer, generally agrees with everything David Thissen says in his essay, "Bad Questions: An Essay Involving Item Response Theory." This essay expands on David Thissen's statement that there are typically two principal purposes of using item response theory (IRT) in the contexts of assessments of educational achievement by stating that tests typically have one of three principal purposes: (1) Measuring instruments--How much do these students know? How much have they learned over this year?; (2) Contests--Who won? Who do we accept? Who gets the job? Who gets the scholarship?; and (3) Prods--Can Johnny come out to play? David Thissen's discussion was almost solely concerned with tests as measuring instruments, which is the newest use of tests, and only goes back a century or so. The other purposes have been recognized for millennia. Howard Wainer suggests that providing stability to inferences when sample sizes are small is a use of IRT, in addition to the two uses mentioned in David Thissen's essay. [For David Thissen's essay, "Bad Questions: An Essay Involving Item Response Theory," see EJ1088364.]