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The Guardian reports on a multi-national survey by the Ipsos Mori market research company, comparing people's perception of a number of national statistics with the actual statistics. There's also an interactive quiz which allows you to feel superior to your countrymen. Some of the findings:
- In most countries, people overestimate the number of immigrants, often by large margins. In USA, the average guess was 33%, the real figure is 14.3%.
- Similarly, most countries grossly overestimate the number of atheists and agnostics.
- The country with the most accurate self-perception was South Korea, followed by Ireland and Poland.
- Mexico, India, and Brazil were the most inaccurate.
- Britain ranked mid-table in 16th place, while the US was fifth.
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How Well Do You Know Your Own Country?
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:15PM
I think South Korea did so well because they nailed the obesity question. I think it's no coincidence that China, Japan, and India were the only to overestimate obesity.
One question is "What proportion of the total household wealth do you think the wealthiest 1% should own?" Since that is an opinion, I hope it wasn't factored into the ignorance index.
It would be nice to see the atheist/agnostic question reranked by multiplier. Which would have India topping the list along with Saudi Arabia, etc. So I will do that in a moment.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:27PM
Sorted by the % of atheists/agnostics guests divided by the actual amount yields a more interesting list:
Atheists are like boogeymen in India, Turkey, Saudia Arabia, Serbia, Peru, etc.
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:31PM
*guessed
The accuracy may be off, since it seems to be rounded to the nearest integer for every country except India, but the ranking should be correct.
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(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday December 04 2015, @03:14AM
I just want to mention one thing - no one reads The Guardian in India. There is no circulation of The Guardian in India and has never been.
The only people who are reading The Guardian are then responding to this poll are highly educated, mostly Non-Resident Indians (NRI), i.e., highly educated immigrants to other countries. For that to happen they were 100% born in highly educated family who were also well to do to give such education to them.
If you ask their parents they will have better idea about actual India. People responding to this poll are a representative of what education does to people.
On a side note, people's awareness about how many women are in parliament and how many women are working only reflects the pro-women bias in media that is obsessed with feminism and never reports on male issues.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday December 04 2015, @03:52AM
This poll has nothing to do with The Guardian. It was conducted by the Ipsos Mori market research company.
Maybe you are right about the poll, but it's on the pollster to take a representative sample. There are methods to help do so.
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(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday December 04 2015, @09:02AM
Hmmm. I didn't know that. I still don't believe it is a representative of extremely populous countries like India or Brazil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @04:05PM
Where do you get that from? On the quiz page I get: "What proportion of Germany's total household wealth do you think the wealthienst 1% own?" No "should" anywhere.
In the article the question is given as: "What proportion of your country’s total household wealth do you think the wealthiest 1% own?" Again, no "should" in sight.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday December 03 2015, @04:48PM
They did ask it, but apparently they asked both questions.
https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/ipsos-perils-of-perception-charts-2015.pdf [ipsos-mori.com]
Pages 3 through 6
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