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

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.

I found that the easiest one to get right, because I read the question and it had to be the smallest number by far.

I didn't get the number of twitter users right... or the child poverty one. I went for 20%
 
Who even counts as a "single parent"? Is it only parents who have children out of wedlock and the other parent doesn't have contact with the child? Do divorced parents count as single parents even if they share custody? Do widowed parents count, since their spouse can't help raise the child for obvious reasons?

The single parent question is really bugging me because it's such a poorly worded question.
 
These type of quizzes are so silly. Had the plumber over here today and he started talking to me about rust and condensation. Blah, blah, blah. He would have thought the same thing if I started talking about the US Civil War. It's not about intelligence, it's about interest and ability. We're all different.
 
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The single parent question is really bugging me because it's such a poorly worded question.

Yup. I'm a step-parent and if my spouse dies before me does that mean I am now a single parent? Make it stop!
 
I only got 4, but my excuse is that I'm American and my stockpile of guns got in the way...

Remember, as Americans we have to keep our stockpile of guns at least 3 feet away from the computer!
 
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.

I think some people may be a bit confused about this quiz. It really has nothing to do with the Guardian at all. From the article:
A survey by Ipsos MORI for the Royal Statistical Society and King's College London
The Guardian is simply reporting on a scientific study, and set up a poll with some of the questions. Whether it's actually good or particularly meaningful science is a different question of course, but not everything is a partisan media outlet trying to make their opposition look bad.

One thing I do wonder about, which isn't answered in the article and I can't get the link to actual survey results to work, is who they actually asked. For example, one point they note is that the average person thinks the proportion of blacks and Asians in the UK is around 30%, while in reality it's only 5%. But in London, black and Asian people actually make up over 36% of the population. In Birmingham, it's even more. That's nearly 1/3 of the population of England and Wales who live in places where view of the average person turns out to be absolutely correct for their local area. So rather than blaming everything on poor journalism and political games, maybe it's just due to people tending to think the whole country is similar to the parts they're familiar with.
 

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