“If you’re talking tech with Americans, you may want to avoid using any jargon,” Salvador Rodriguez reports for The Los Angeles Times. “A recent study found that many Americans are lost when it comes to tech-related terms, with 11% saying that they thought HTML — a language that is used to create websites — was a sexually transmitted disease.”
“The study was conducted by Vouchercloud.net, a coupons website, as a way to determine how knowledgeable users are when it comes to tech terms,” Rodriguez reports. “Besides HTML, there were some other amusing findings.”
“27% identified ‘gigabyte’ as an insect commonly found in South America. 23% thought an ‘MP3’ was a ‘Star Wars’ robot,” Rodriguez reports. “15% said they believed ‘software’ is comfortable clothing. 12% said ‘USB’ is the acronym for a European country.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’re astounded that it’s only 11%.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Only when viewed through Internet Explorer
That’s rather clever.
Well, HyperText Markup Language *is* a STandarD.
😄
Did the survey ask them what an “STD” is? What kind of stupid survey was this…? Was it multiple choice?
QUESTION: What is HTML?
A. A type of military vehicle
B. A language used to create web sites
C. A sexually transmitted disease.
If the question was multiple choice, with the number of answer choices something like 3 or 4, ONLY 11% selecting “a sexually transmitted disease” is actually a GOOD thing.
If the question was open-ended (no specified choices), and 11% answered “HTML is a sexually transmitted disease,” THAT would be worth mentioning.
I’ve run into a number of ‘surveys’, especially those via political entities, that attempt to shove people into making statements, via their answers, that are not objective or even relevant. I always question the folks giving such surveys as to why their multiple choices are so incredibly limited and unrealistic. They claim ignorance. I claim: “Then I’d done with your ignorant survey. Good-bye!”
Survey design is a science, one ignored more often than not by callow practitioners and crass commercial publicity mills. But even experts fall prey to unconscious biases that fail to be recognised for decades. Because of that, survey results can never be more than an approximation of truth as imagined by the surveyor.
IOW, consider the source: human.
Another phenomenon of, at least phone surveys, is that they don’t randomly call anyone out of the phone book. I get a lot of survey phone calls because I’ve been willing to respond to them in the past. So, not unlike Spam Rat Sucker Lists, I’m on their Survey Sucker List and get called frequently. Easy mark, call this guy.
I’m being mean. Many surveys are of interest to me. I remember how fun it was to be surveyed on a particularly bad JJ Abrams (Bad Robot) TV pilot. They gave me access to watch it, I told them it sucked. Amusingly, they did the series anyway. I believe it was the second fastest JJ Abrams TV show to bite the dust within half a season.
– IOW: Surveys can be fun. But they end up surveying the people they know are willing to take the survey, which kills off randomness.
Was it Alcatraz? 🙂
The TV show? It was ‘Six Degrees’. If you want to study how to write a TV show poorly…
His worst ever show, according to himself, was ‘Undercovers’.
Survey design is a science, one ignored more often than not by callow practitioners and often exploited by crass commercial publicity mills.
There I fixed it for ya… 😉
Highly Toxic Male Libido?
Multiple choice questions is an American invention that is exactly and directly what is responsible for the low standards and products of all American educational institutions. It turns education into guess work and diminishes all reading, writing, comprehension and compositional skills.
Remember when you had to write essays, compositions and (eloquently) express your thoughts , opinions or knowledge unabbreviatedly?
INDEED.
Then this happened:
SAT essay jettisoned in revamped test debuting in 2016
If you can’t write coherently, you can’t function in professional society or business. The stupefaction continues apace.
Sometimes I think the concept is to make people so incredibly stupid that they’ll accept China/3rd World wages, bringing jobs back to the USA. Yeah, that makes sense. 😯
In related news, 1 in 4 Americans believes that the sun revolves around the Earth.
http://time.com/7809/1-in-4-americans-thinks-sun-orbits-earth/
Oops, sorry, I posted on the same subject after your post. I apologize.
I call BS. I’d like to see the way the survey questions were asked. That only 75% in U.S. and only 66% in European Union answered the question correctly indicates to me that the question or premise was confusing. And note, even though the Europeans answered incorrectly at a higher percentage than Americans, it’s the American’s that are painted as the backward, uneducated dopes in the headline. Leave it to Time mag.
This is a highly suspicious survey. I don’t even think one was actually done.
Which reminds me, there are 10 kinds of people in this world — those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
We all make snap judgements — one good example being the inference that those respondents are stupid, uneducated, or indoctrinated.
Maybe they were annoyed by the survey, and responded with a bit of mischief. Maybe they were using a geocentric coordinate system to simplify their calculations. Maybe they didn’t get the memo from the Pope that Ptolemy is out and Copernicus is in. Rational thinking yields these and other alternative explanations of the survey results.
On the other hand, snap judgments evolved as a time-saving (and potentially life-saving) neural mechanism that promotes the most probable idea of the lot. Whilst hunting on the savannah, best to utilise that instinctive faculty. Waving grass + no breeze = assume hostility.
Similarly, the survey result generates instant concern for our kinship group — being undermined by stupid, uneducated, or indoctrinated people.
I really fear for this country!
Yes, and you get it by doing the hyper text transfer protocol.
Believe it. How many people actually thinks the earth existed for only 6,000 years or so? 😉
I thinks it’s a little older than that. It must be 10,000 years old.
I dare say most people haven’t given such a question any thought at all.
A better question might be, of those who consider the age of the earth, what proportion believe it in excess of 6000 years?
I’d like to see that correlated with other belief studies, which would be fascinating as all get out but prove nothing about reality, only how people think. Which is not much, apparently.
I bit of relevant surrealism:
TITLEPat Robertson Dispels Creationist Idea That Earth Is 6,000 Years Old
If senile old Pat Robertson can comprehend science…
Apologies. “TITLE” was supposed to be cut from my pasts HTML. Yeah, I know what HTML is. I just can’t use it propertly. 😉
And ‘pasts’ was supposed to be “PASTED”. I had a rough week.
“ROUGH WEEK?” Suck it up, Derek. Flimsy excuses won’t cut it in today’s dog-eat-dog world. Last week I had a bad hair day and I’m still dead.
heh
Derek gets no break! lol
On of Apple’s (and Steve’s) goals has always been for the “average” customer to be able use their computers without the need-to-know what was going on beneath the UI.
Perhaps they succeeded too well. 😉
BTW – WE are not average customers.
Last month, a survey found that 25% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. In a 1999 Gallup poll, 19% thought the same thing. We are indeed a nation of dopes and getting more dopey by the minute.
And yet, it is now legal in some states to buy “dope” and also in others to use “dope” for medical purposes. Hmmm…
Almost as scary as people wishing the United States happy bday on New Year’s Day and wishing the earth a happy 2000th bday on New Years 2014. I can’t make this stuff up
Why the heck should an average member of the public know what html or seo are, any more than they’d know what Apache is, or C++, or a Cisco router, or a rectifier diode? What a stupid survey!
Now, 1 in 4 thinking the sun goes around the earth… that’s really disturbing. Kind of makes my gut clench in fear, frankly.
Gut clenching was attributable to 17.5 % of respondents.
Yawn, another ‘other people are ignorant’ article.
People don’t know about space terms either, ask anyone what a KBO is and they’ll look at you blankly. I hardly expect my mother-in-law or my barber to have the same kind of specialized knowledge I do, nor do I look down on them because of it.
I advocate teaching our own kids instead of fobbing the responsibility off on government.
Isn’t KBO a radio station east of the Mississippi River?
This is the best: KBO Keep Buggering On (Winston Churchill)
So the Sun DOES revolve around the Earth?
Hint: Pluto is one.
But everyone knows what FB is.
Fun bags?
Fine Bourbon?
But, keep protecting those teacher union votes and denying school vouchers so real competition can force failing schools to improve or close, Dems/Libs/Progs.
Of course, you already know that the more you dumb them down, the more likely they are to be dependent on your socialized medicine, food stamps, welfare, etc. and you’ll have a stable of brain-dead voters which is your true intent as it allows you Dems/Libs/Progs to continue growing government in order to provide do-nothing jobs for Dems/Libs/Progs, of course.
Spread the lie! Hate the truth. Blame intelligent liberal people for your ignorance.
Blame “intelligent” libs?
Er… what??
Tflint: There’s no way to spin this: Liberals have had an iron grip on the education system in America for a number of decades now, plenty of time to assess their efficacy.
Here it is the score:-
— F —
I “think” not. Inane conservative politics, cancerous and metastasizing..
@ “Think”
If that were true, how do you account for the fact that the general education is so much better in those damn “socialist” European countries? Or the fact that the most conservative states pretty much have a 1-on-1 correspondence with the most ignorant. In other words, knee-jerk, right wing bullshit.
And then we have Texas trying to force science textbooks used around the country to undermine the theory of evolution and/or claim creationism is a valid competing hypothesis.
Actually, teachers unions are a necessity if you want good teachers, as state politicians are certainly not looking out for teachers careers or wages. I can say that as I live in a state that continually screws with teachers.
But school vouchers should be available for students.
I.e. Don’t restrict teachers OR schools from negotiating and competing.
It seems odd to me that most people either think teachers should be restricted from free market behavior, or schools should be. Neither should be.
@First
Are you not a product of the public school system?
…and don’t call me frankly
That’s not that impressive. If you really want a statistic on the stupidity Americans are stupid, don’t think any top this: 3 out 4 Americans believe angels are real. Can you believe that? So many stupid bastards out there!
Mermaids, Bigfoot, Aliens you name it. We live in the new Dark Ages.
I would like to know how these questions were asked. If it was multiple choice with a fun answer as D (i.e. HTML being a STD), answers could be skewed by questioners trying to have some fun with these questions. I REALLY doubt that these statistics are reliable if this was the case.
If this study was given where people actually write their answers (doubt it), that’s pretty f*cked up. lol!
Are statistics ever reliable? I think not.
Click HERE to claim your price now.
Smoking too much PHP makes people stick their heads up their ASPs.
DAMN! My hiv-tags got removed. BASTARDS! 😛
In other news, almost half Americans are below the American average.
It stands to reason that the lower part of the normal distribution curve (10%, 25%) have a limited understanding of their universe.
The real problem is when these people make decisions on behalf of the rest of the distribution (e.g. IT departments)
I hear there’s an even stronger stain going around called HTML2
No Child Left Behind…right.
you mean it’s NOT?
F*** ! And I’ve been slapping my teenager around whenever he says “I’m doing HTML…. “.
Hardly surprising. There are lot of idiots out there. It’s one thing not to know a term, but sometimes even the slightest bit of common sense can tell you what things aren’t especially in the context of a survey like this.
I think I caught a form of HTML a few years back. I haven’t been the same since.
Who do you think voted for Obama. These idiots.