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

[commandlinegamer]

8/10.

It doesn't say, though, what the pass mark is. Mind you, even if they wanted to deport me, it's going to take them 37 years to process it.

 

[Foolmewunz]

9 out of 10, But demanding a recount!

I was jobbed on Question 1, also. 3% of the WHOLE POPULATION? Of what significance would such a statistic be? Quick, without looking it up.... What % of the population is under 16? What % is over 65. Answers: "A lot" and "roughly the same", respectively. More than 30% of the country are in these age groups that are rather unlikely to be a data point for "parent raising a child". Yes, there are some fourteen year old parents out there, I'm sure. And I know a guy who's in his 60s raising a small child , but the total of about 18 million would have such a minuscule probability of being a parent (much less a "single" parent) that the question is really poorly worded or selected.

 

[jj]

Yank got 8/10. And how do I know about who has twitter accounts? Geeze.

 

[Aepervius]

Wiki says this (you can look up the reference) :

"In the United Kingdom, about 1 out of 4 families with dependent children are single-parent families, 8 to 11 percent of which have a male single-parent"

If 1 out of 4 families with dependent children are single parent family, the 3% is definitively skewed and compared to the whole population, which for the purpose of such statistic make no sense whatsoever. You usually compare agaisnt family rising kids, not as pointed out above against other children or aged folk.

 

[Dave Rogers]

I score as detached from reality. But, really, these aren't things I use to base my day-to-day decisions on, and if at any time I do need to know them I'll probably come up with a sensible way to find them out.

Dave

 

[Foolmewunz]

I score as detached from reality. But, really, these aren't things I use to base my day-to-day decisions on, and if at any time I do need to know them I'll probably come up with a sensible way to find them out.

Dave

Oh, I absolutely agree. I didn't know the answer, with any degree of certainty, to a single question. I got 9/10 by logic-ing my way through them. (10/10, really - that one question is really poor.)

But when Thai Immigration puts a question on my visa renewal as to the number of Twitter subscribers in Britain, like you, I'd sure as hell find a way to get a better answer than my thumbnail estimate (1 of every 4* Brits I know is a git - gits get Twitter - go with about 25%). I also know the 3% is of the whole population, because to check it out I just went looking and found that there are about 2 million single parents in Britain - or roughly 3% of the total population.

*That is not, I should add, a representative sample. I am very selective. The actual percentage of gits in the UK is much closer to 75%, I'm certain.

 

[Milbrandt]

This Dutchie scored 8/10
I underestimated child poverty, and was actually shocked by the right answer. Also got the MRSA one wrong.
Then again, I wasn't sure about most of them and got the answers by using some logic to determine my best guess. I wonder if there is a very big difference between Britons and non-Britons scores in this test, as I think most of these questions don't depend that much on you living there to answer them correctly. Of course I live close to the UK and have a general idea about the country and how it differs from mine.

I used the same tactic (looking for the most plausible answer) to score 73% on a US civic literacy exam, while Americans averaged 49% on that one.

 

[Nogbad]

Got 8/10 Annoyed with myself for changing my mind at the last minute over transport. I'm a bit surprised by the answer to single parent households to be honest. I confess the answer to the Twitter accounts was a lucky guess...so maybe 8/10 is fair

 

[Primus]

7/10 for me. That single parents one is essentially a trick question though. Also the poverty ones are misleading as poverty as measured by the government drops during a recession as everyone has less money.

 

[LandR]

*That is not, I should add, a representative sample. I am very selective. The actual percentage of gits in the UK is much closer to 75%, I'm certain.

Brit here, I can confirm your numbers.

 

[squealpiggy]

The questions were carefully formulated to make Daily Mail readers look like angry right-wing jerks while allowing Guardian readers to feel smugly self-satisfied about their high scores.

 

[quadraginta]

The questions were carefully formulated to make Daily Mail readers look like angry right-wing jerks while allowing Guardian readers to feel smugly self-satisfied about their high scores.

They needed a test for that?

 

[squealpiggy]

They needed a test for that?

It's not really a test.

 

[Primus]

The questions were carefully formulated to make Daily Mail readers look like angry right-wing jerks while allowing Guardian readers to feel smugly self-satisfied about their high scores.

This ^

Given we already know about the existence of pissed off right wing mail readers and smug equally wrong guardian readers I don't see how a test to tell them apart really helps anyone.

 

[Darat]

This ^

Given we already know about the existence of pissed off right wing mail readers and smug equally wrong guardian readers I don't see how a test to tell them apart really helps anyone.

Which stats were wrong?

 

[squealpiggy]

Which stats were wrong?

The point of the test as it is worded in the Guardian article is not to test the knowledge of the Guardian readership. I got 8/10 mainly by choosing the low answer in the moral outrage questions and the high answer in the lack of moral outrage questions. In fact the two I got wrong were because i deviated from this and tried to answer based on my own knowledge.

So yes, the stats are correct, but that wasn't the point.

 

[Primus]

Which stats were wrong?

Only 3% of people are single parents. Nearly everyone reading about a percentage of single parents would assume that it is out of a percentage of parents. Including adults who don't have children in there as well as actual children is stat mangling of the highest order.
The actual % of single parents is more like 25% by any sensible metric.

 

[Darat]

Only 3% of people are single parents. Nearly everyone reading about a percentage of single parents would assume that it is out of a percentage of parents. Including adults who don't have children in there as well as actual children is stat mangling of the highest order.
The actual % of single parents is more like 25% by any sensible metric.

But that's not an example of a statistic that is wrong, your complaint is that it is not a "good" statistic. Which is quite a different matter.

 

[Primus]

But that's not an example of a statistic that is wrong, your complaint is that it is not a "good" statistic. Which is quite a different matter.

And if the mail had a quiz where one of the questions was "what percentage of Muslims on (particular housing estate in Rochdale) have been convicted of sexually grooming young white girls" the unusually high answer would also be correct factually but the questions are still pandering to its readerships predudices. My point was that it is dishonest not that the answers aren't technically right.

 

[Cain]

Saying "most Britons get these wrong" is a giant hint. I missed single parenthood households, twitter users, and transportation.