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 shithole 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?

[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.