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

[TheBirdMan]

Originally posted by Dissident
More importantly why do most americans need to know useless geography?

Their only job is to work in a some ****hole factory or in a fast food restaurant. .

You are not going for a good fat job in "The Union" I guess?!

Edit. Sorry-sorry. You are already working and have that good fat job. Sorry

[Dis]

As long as they can read the bus route or other public transportation they can get to work.

Most people do not have jobs that require knowledge of other parts of the world.

The only way this could be of any importance is if they are voters.

[rah]

I would expect the posters here (as a group) would always score higher than the general population on any quiz. Just the fact that we're all literate (mostly anyway ) would raise the average over the general population. Add in other common factors (like we have the minimum knowledge to turn on a PC and connect to the internet) and that would increase the difference even more.

RAH

[Lorizael]

Twenty outa twenty. That was depressingly easy. And I am, despite my flag, an American.

The only one that gave me any trouble was the location of Sweden. But by process of elimination I managed to get that one right as well.

[TheBirdMan]

Originally posted by Lorizael
The only one that gave me any trouble was the location of Sweden. But by process of elimination I managed to get that one right as well.

Again:

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by TheBirdMan


Again:

Hey... I'm better than most Americans. Never claimed geography was my strongpoint. I know it is on that funny shaped peninsula in northern europe, but I can never remember which one is which there.

[Jack_www]

Well if you look at public schools here in America, one of the subjects that is often left out is geography. I dont know why, but at least when I was in grade school and then latter High School, we often had little instruction in geography. Yet I still know were a lot of countries and cities are in the world. I think too that Young people here could care less about geography, or history for that matter, which is sad.

[Nubclear]

20 out of 20 are correct....None of them gave me any problems at all, they were all very easy. Especially Russia

[Dis]

OK I'm taking the quize right now.

It's funny how very small amount of Mexicans realize the middle east is the largest exporter of oil. A question Americans did very well on.

But I protest the christianity question. I got that wrong. What does that have to do with geography? I voted Buddhism .

Haha. France doesn't know what El Nino is

Hmm Mexicans don't know Africa is infected with HIV. Mexico didn't do that well on populations over 1 billion people either.

I'm more concerned Americans can't find Japan on the map. A couple of times in the 20th century people though they could take over a large part of the world (militarily and economically)

Hey at least Mexicans can find their country on the map

What concerns me is 89% of americans can find the U.S. but only 80% can find Mexico. It should be common knowledge from movies that mexico borders the U.S. to the south. This leads me to believe 9% of americans cannot tell the south from the north.

Haha only 97% of Italians can find their country on the map

Haha!! Great Britain cannot find the Pacific ocean. Dumies :

Score a 19 out of 20 for me. I just missed the christianity question. I don't follow relgion sorry.

Hey at least we did better than Mexico

[Sava]

Originally posted by rah
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.

5% is a lot... I love how people throw out percentages like they are insignificant. Anyways, those polls are hardly ever constructed to accurately reflect the diversity of the American people. And for recognizing this, I'm ignorant?

[Ming]

Originally posted by MarkG
lots of talk but i dont see many our americans post their results

20/20...
The hardest thing about the test was trying to read the little numbers

[Jack_www]

yes the hardest part was reading the numbers on the map. It was hard trying to find the number on the map that was Sweden, they are so close togather. Also too that might be anther reason why some got answers wrong when they did survey.

[Felch]

It may be that they polled a very representative sample of young American adults, and being representative, they didn't care enough to bother. So for a lot of questions they either picked a random answer or simply said they didn't know.

By the way, Sava, every time you double the sample size you cut the percentage of error in half. So most surveys don't poll more than a couple thousand people, simply because the benefit of polling more people is less than the cost. The expense in surveying a million people would be ridiculous, especially if it gave you roughly the same answer as polling a few hundred or a thousand. What's important is that the poll be random, not that it be massive.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Felch X
What's important is that the poll be random, not that it be massive.

What's more important is that the sample is "representative" of the US and NOT just random

[Boris Godunov]

20 out of 20.

Interesting that Canada and the UK didn't do much better than the US in the survey. What is wrong with the English-speaking world?