Britons are wrong about nearly everything. Are you? (Quiz)

Orphia Nay said:
"Think you can guess the percentage of households in the UK headed by single parents? Do you over or underestimate crime? Test your number knowledge of social issues and see if you're among the majority of Brits that consistently get it wrong."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/quiz/2013/jul/10/britons-wrong-are-you

This Aussie got 9/10. Give it your best shot, Pommies! :D
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This Pommie got the same score.

Although to be fair I cheated by guessing the most right-on answer each time which is what I presumed was the point of the quiz.


I am not sure which one I got wrong.

I also think that some of it may be somewhat skewed, but I'll wait a bit before I expand on that. :)
 
Ah! I checked the answers and now I realize why I got it wrong.

My guess was that with most of the questions, they were formulated along the lines of, these are all the things that Daily Mail readers typically go into a moral panic about, but we have discovered that they are frothing at the mouth about nothing, except for the one about child poverty which is absolutely completely true and something that we rightly have our knickers in a twist about, and that Daily Mail readers presumably don't care about.


:)
 
6/10 here. I'm an American living in Japan so I'm not ashamed that I don't know things like what percentage of Britons have a Twitter account or voted in the last election.

angrysoba said:
I am not sure which one I got wrong.
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Click the link that says "Show Answers".
 
One of the questions is a bit misleading:

#1 only 3% of Britons are single parents. But that's out of the entire population including children, the childless and maybe old people whose children are grown. Also, when a child is born out of wedlock, do they count both parents as "single parents" for this purpose, or only the one with primary custody? Do they count people as "single parents" after their children reach the age of majority? OTOH, the percentage of children born out of wedlock in 2012 was 47.5% and is expected to grow to a majority in 2016 according to the Office for National Statistics.

The questions I got wrong were 1, 4, 6 and 9.
 
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angrysoba said:
Ah! I checked the answers and now I realize why I got it wrong.

My guess was that with most of the questions, they were formulated along the lines of, these are all the things that Daily Mail readers typically go into a moral panic about, but we have discovered that they are frothing at the mouth about nothing, except for the one about child poverty which is absolutely completely true and something that we rightly have our knickers in a twist about, and that Daily Mail readers presumably don't care about.


:)
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Pretty much same as me. :)
 
Top marks here. But I do not read the Daily Mail or pretty much any of the newspapers. Plus I find myself doubting the TV news as well. People who think news headlines give them the facts are the ones who get it horribly wrong.
 
9/10,

Didn't realise elections got such a good roll up in a country where they are not compulsory.
 
4/10. I hold a UK passport, but I live in Chile & am working in PNG, so I think I have an excuse.

Some of the questions were poorly worded - the one about MRSA for example. What are they counting?

Also amusing/cheeky was the Guardian tells me that I am 'living in cloud-cuckoo land along with everyone else'. Actually, I just don't read that lefty-loopy-pinko rag. ;)
 
Orphia Nay said:
"Think you can guess the percentage of households in the UK headed by single parents? Do you over or underestimate crime? Test your number knowledge of social issues and see if you're among the majority of Brits that consistently get it wrong."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/quiz/2013/jul/10/britons-wrong-are-you

This Aussie got 9/10. Give it your best shot, Pommies! :D
Click to expand...

I got the same, with the only one I got wrong being the percentage voting in the last general election. The devil, though, it in the wording of many of the questions, e.g. the first being, "What percentage of people in Britain are single parents?" Given there are something like 25 million household in the UK, and given that some 30% have no children at all, it's fairly obvious that the actual number of people who can be single parents is fairly small out of the population as a whole.
 
Puppycow said:
One of the questions is a bit misleading:

#1 only 3% of Britons are single parents. But that's out of the entire population including children, the childless and maybe old people whose children are grown. Also, when a child is born out of wedlock, do they count both parents as "single parents" for this purpose, or only the one with primary custody? Do they count people as "single parents" after their children reach the age of majority? OTOH, the percentage of children born out of wedlock in 2012 was 47.5% and is expected to grow to a majority in 2016 according to the Office for National Statistics.

The questions I got wrong were 1, 4, 6 and 9.
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I suspect that a lot of children born "out of wedlock" are born to couples who are living together but not actually married, so wouldn't be "single parents".


PhantomWolf said:
9/10 got #1 wrong, assumed it meant Parents, not the entire population.
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That was the one I got wrong, for the same reason.
 
9 out of 10, and I can't get the "show answers" thing to work. This looks a quiz aimed at Sun readers.
 
6 out of 10 and no excuses. Probably why I try to check facts before using them. :(

The one that worried me was badly underestimating child poverty.
 
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