11% of Americans can't find the USA on a map

[Zero-Tau]

Originally posted by N. Machiavelli


All 33 of them. Read the survey results details, they chose a massive sample size of 300 people from the selected countries.

Actually, it says "A total of 300 interviews were conducted in each country except the U.S.; in the U.S. nearly 500 interviews were conducted with 18-to 24-year-olds". So that'd be 500 people.

[Dom Pedro II]

I wonder what percentage of these people when shown the world map asked "What's that?"

[N. Machiavelli]

My bad. Still, 1000 is usually the minimum sample size for these types of surveys. It's still half that in the US. It's even lower in other countries, but I cannot seem to find data on the locations of the sample size.

[Jack_www]

That is really sad to see that American youth are that stupid. I took the survey on the site and got every question right, it was so easy. All you have to do is listen to the news and you would know were most of these countries are.

[Sinapus]

"11% of Americans can't find the USA on a map"

Let's see... the original survey was of 18-25 year olds, 11% of the people surveyed couldn't find the USA on a map... I would say it looks like some topic thread creators can't read a study correctly. 18-25 yr olds != all Americans.

Oh, and Ming? I must quibble slightly: making the survey in a richer neighborhood won't necessarily help. When I was a senior in high school in suburbia I was the only one in the class who could find/name all 50 US states and their capitals and had to help my classmates finish their maps. (It was a "first-day-of-class" assignment, and not supposed to be very difficult. Which was just sad.)

[Sinapus]

Originally posted by Jack_www
That is really sad to see that American youth are that stupid. I took the survey on the site and got every question right, it was so easy. All you have to do is listen to the news and you would know were most of these countries are.

I think the only time I ever got confused was in the early 90s when the Soviet Union's breakup cause map changes all over the place. Boy am I glad I never worked for Rand-McNally.

(Actually, there are probably some small nations I can't find. But then, that's what the index on an atlas is for... same with search engines.)

[centrifuge]

Well obviously, this is not representative of the entire population. I just took the quiz and only missed the question about religions... but wow, the results make me scared for the future of this world

[Kontiki]

I'm not sure the correct answer to the religion question is Christianity. Some people/institutions consider the majority of Chinese to be non-religious, even though almost all are at least tacitly Buddhist. Still, I could be wrong and Christianity does have more followers, but I have seen the omissions for Buddhism before.

[Pekka]

Originally posted by Richelieu


I had the same results! Must be a northern thing.

Must be, because I got the same result...

[MarkG]

lots of talk but i dont see many our americans post their results

[monkspider]

That was a startlingly easy quiz actually, the only question I missed was the El Nino one.

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by Sinapus
"11% of Americans can't find the USA on a map"

Let's see... the original survey was of 18-25 year olds, 11% of the people surveyed couldn't find the USA on a map... I would say it looks like some topic thread creators can't read a study correctly. 18-25 yr olds != all Americans.

"11% of a maybe not so random sample of 300 18-25 year old Americans can't find the USA on a map" would not just have the same sting as a thread topic.

And just for the record, I got all the questions right.

[Sava]

I maintain my position that the overwhelmingly vast majority of these polls are stupid. Until you poll at least a million people, I'm not taking you seriously. Even then, if you poll a million of the same demographic, you will probably get the same result. For example, I could out and poll a million Democrats and come up with results like "98% of people are in favor of impeaching Bush". Those results would be just plain dumb and would not reflect the attitude of the entire country. Good polls are the ones that poll specific questions to people within a certain demographic. Like, polling Civilization fans whether or not they like the new multiplayer. It's just plain stupid to try and determine the mood, intelligence, political views, or attitudes of 300 million people based upon the results of a 1,000 person poll. Believing in those results would also be wrong.

[rah]

20 out of 20. Thanks for who posted Christianity. (I probably wouldn't have picked it normally.) But even so, it would have been 19 out of 20.

So there Mark

[rah]

Originally posted by Sava
It's just plain stupid to try and determine the mood, intelligence, political views, or attitudes of 300 million people based upon the results of a 1,000 person poll. Believing in those results would also be wrong.

Pure ignorance. (not surprising). 1,000 people is a little shy of what you need but if selected properly, will get you within +- 5% with a high degree of confidence.

Which is why I'm always interested in seeing the sampling plan.