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

[Pekka]

Boris, I don't know.. everybody learns your language, because it's the easiest one.. I wonder if there's any correlation there .

[Jack_www]

well one thing to keep in mind is that people might not really care when they take survey and just put answer down. This was taken from young people in 18-25 year old group. I know when I was going to school and we had to take tests to messure our level in school, but had no effect on our grade in class, even if you did badly, people just wrote a bunch of stuff down and did not take time to make sure answer was right, I dont think they even looked to see what the question was. I know that a lot of Seniors in my school did this.

[Dis]

No one has answered my question.

Why can 89% of americans find the U.S. on the map, but only 80% can find mexico.

Movie alone (like the Chase) educate people that Mexico borders the U.S. on the south.

This leads me to believe 9% of americans can't tell north from south

[Boris Godunov]

Considering how many missed the "Which city is the most West" question, that shouldn't be a surprise.

[Dis]

and reading the numbers was not that hard. some of you need to get your glasses checked. Of course I'm only running 1076 resolution...

I already knew where Sweden was. I just had to find the number that corresponded with one of the answers.

[Dis]

Hmm yeah good point.

At least we did better than Mexico on most of those questions.

The only question Mexicans need to know is which direction to get to the U.S.

[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.

That comment was what I was basing my "ignorance" comment. If you believe that, then you are. If you'd like to modify it, then I'll modify my opinion.

If it's the right 1000, it's enough. Granted, when we do a nationally rep sample, we will use a min. of 1500 to get to the level of error and confidence level desired.
We balance on regional location, income, householdsize, age, sex, race, and a few life style catagories. It's a true science. I have no respect for people that sample without balancing. They give our industry a bad name.

I would say, confine your comments to something that you have some knowledge of, but what the heck, this is the OT. So everyone has the right to look ignorant.

And you are good at it.

RAH

[Ming]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Considering how many missed the "Which city is the most West" question, that shouldn't be a surprise.

That question took me the longest to answer... Not because it was tough... but I thought it must have been a trick question. The answer was way to easy, so I kept looking to see if I was missing something

[Dis]

I thought it was a trick question

Try this one. Don't look at a map.

Which city is further west? Reno, NV or Los Angeles California?

[Dauphin]

Yeah, I half expected to see a north arrow pointing left, or something similar.

[Sava]

silly rah, that was my whole point... many of these so-called "national" polls aren't true representations of the demographics of America. I assume that you are in the polling industry. And you are correct, the people that do not effectively balance polls do give your industry a bad name. Do I think every single poll is crap? No. You should stop generalizing my words.

My overall attitude on polls is that they should be taken with a grain of salt, that's all.

It's nice that you assume I have no knowledge of the polling industry. But I will stop there as I'm not about to stoop to your level of name-calling.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Winston


Bah! That totals much more than 100%, so this survey is obviously a scam.

Each of those categories are not mutually exclusive

Anyway, this thread reminds me of 'that picture'

[Dis]

cool you found the picture. I was looking for that picture a few months ago. Classic.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Dissident
I thought it was a trick question

Try this one. Don't look at a map.

Which city is further west? Reno, NV or Los Angeles California?

Much of a muchness that one. Reno

What is further west, Barcelona, Spain, or London, England?

[orange]

Originally posted by Arrian


You gotta be ****ing kidding me. Are you SURE that you didn't experience a temporary malfunction of your sarcasm detector?

-Arrian

Absolutely positive. If this guy was going for Sarcasm, i'd have seen it...his sense of humour, when present, is always easy to read. He was dead serious. He's also not that bright.