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posted by janrinok on Monday December 23 2019, @04:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the perhaps-they-can't-find-it dept.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy-90-percent-of-people-dont-know-how-to-use-ctrl-f/243840/

This week, I talked with Dan Russell, a search anthropologist at Google, about the time he spends with random people studying how they search for stuff. One statistic blew my mind. 90 percent of people in their studies don't know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page! I probably use that trick 20 times per day and yet the vast majority of people don't use it at all.

"90 percent of the US Internet population does not know that. This is on a sample size of thousands," Russell said. "I do these field studies and I can't tell you how many hours I've sat in somebody's house as they've read through a long document trying to find the result they're looking for. At the end I'll say to them, 'Let me show one little trick here,' and very often people will say, 'I can't believe I've been wasting my life!'"


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Booga1 on Monday December 23 2019, @04:53PM (5 children)

    by Booga1 (6333) on Monday December 23 2019, @04:53PM (#935542)

    Thank you for the link. For a moment I thought it was just reframeing the same expression, but then I saw this:

    Among school teachers, the average isn't much better--it's currently running at 50%.

    So, apparently he really does mean it what he says.

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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday December 23 2019, @08:43PM

    by HiThere (866) on Monday December 23 2019, @08:43PM (#935623) Journal

    Maybe. But it sounds like he's doing a lot of rounding.

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    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday December 23 2019, @09:53PM (3 children)

    by krishnoid (1156) on Monday December 23 2019, @09:53PM (#935648)

    Teachers, that's a relief! At that percentage, they can get to 100% by just having one of them teach the other one. Had me scared there for a second.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by darkfeline on Monday December 23 2019, @11:00PM (2 children)

      by darkfeline (1030) on Monday December 23 2019, @11:00PM (#935677) Homepage

      They're called teachers, not learners.

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      • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 24 2019, @04:48AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 24 2019, @04:48AM (#935792)

        As a teacher, you have no idea how close you are to the truth on that. Even more so when you are talking about the ones that become disillusioned or stuck in their ways. For goodness sake, we had a geography teacher teach that the Czech Republic and Slovakia were the same country and refused to accept anything other than "USSR" in reference to Russia, among other indiscretions, and then lied about to the principal about it for years. The Assistant Superintendent himself ended up investigated after receiving so many complaints against the teacher.

        • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday December 25 2019, @12:06AM

          by krishnoid (1156) on Wednesday December 25 2019, @12:06AM (#935945)

          Well, hopefully, the person in Control was able to tell her to F her attitude to find a new way to do things :-|