What Surprised You Most About the National Geographic Geosurvey Results?

[Gokul43201]

national geographic shocker !

Take this survey, and look at the numbers below each answer showing the results by country.

http://geosurvey.nationalgeographic.com/geosurvey/templates/question_1.html

Which statistic shocked you the most and why ?

 

[Gokul43201]

The very first one knocked me out : fewer Americans (ages 14 - 25) know the (ballpark) population of the US, than folks from any of the other countries.

There were several shockers along the way as well, but a big shock came near the end when it showed that many more Americans know where the Pacific Ocean is, compared to Swedes (by this time, I'd built up some disbelief momentum in a certain direction, and this complete reversal - though partially understadable - completely threw me).

 

[hypnagogue]

I'm still in the middle of taking this test, but I am shocked that only 89% of Americans could identify the US on a world map.

 

[end3r7]

I got them all. =)

I was shocked about the Afghanistan one...

 

[Gokul43201]

I got them all. =)

I was shocked about the Afghanistan one...

That was one that really got me too.

 

[Pengwuino]

Yah... the US has roughly 1/3 of the entire planets population right? :P

Wait, how does this know what age i am?

I'm guessing these country-based results were done ahead of time.

And wow, i did not know Christianity had the largest following... I always thought it was Hinduism or Buddhism.

I can understand why north america was the only good showing on the el nino one...

How the hell are the results for "Which two countries have populations over 1 billion people" so bad?

Again, amazing... 10% of americans surveyed didnt even know where America is on the map...

haha poor sweden, no one knows where it is.

 

[Evo]

The statistic that surprised me the most was that more French identified Italy on the map than Italians.

The fact that the US did so poorly overall was no surprise.

 

[Pengwuino]

I wonder what a math-based survey would look like

Or do i even want to know...

I wonder how bad this survey would have looked if they stuck to African or Southeast asian countries. I think everyone would fall within a margin of error from 0%.

 

[Pengwuino]

The fact that the US did so poorly overall was no surprise.

That's what you get when "feelings" and "creativity" are more important then ... not being idiots.

 

[Evo]

I wonder, given a picture of the solar system, how many Americans could pick out the earth?

 

[Archon]

On the other hand, a lot of American know which part of the world is the biggest exporter of oil.

It's also slightly hilarious that more Mexicans know where the United States is than Americans.

 

[Bystander]

Brits can't find Japan?

 

[ONJ's Noble Steed]

I wonder, given a picture of the solar system, how many Americans could pick out the earth?

That would make me cry.

I also wonder how many Americans could write out Maxwell's equations in their differential and intergral form, and the Schroedinger equation?

-That would make me commit suicide... Although I guess there's no shame if you can't.

 

[Moonbear]

I'm still in the middle of taking this test, but I am shocked that only 89% of Americans could identify the US on a world map.

That was the one that shocked me the most! I only missed the one about the largest world religion...I actually thought it was something other than Christianity.

I wasn't shocked, but found it disturbing nonetheless, that such a high percentage of Americans couldn't identify the middle eastern countries and didn't know which one the Taliban and Al Quaeda originated in.

 

[Kerrie]

Geography is one of my favorite subjects. I got 20/20 on the test

 

[Averagesupernova]

That's what you get when "feelings" and "creativity" are more important then ... not being idiots.

You know Pengwuino, I've watched your postings for quite a while and I have a pretty good idea of what your views are. But I cannot resist pointing out the grammatical error in the above especially considering the context. BTW, from watching your postings, I can tell you it's not the first.

 

[ONJ's Noble Steed]

Geography is one of my favorite subjects. I got 20/20 on the test

Well, it wasn't exactly a hard test. I think I suck at geography, and I still got 20/20 on that test.

 

[Moonbear]

I wonder how bad this survey would have looked if they stuck to African or Southeast asian countries. I think everyone would fall within a margin of error from 0%.

I would have been okay on Southeast Asian countries, but admit I'd have run into problems if the questions were all on African countries. I can roughly place them in quadrants of the continent, but definitely am deficient in identifying specific countries there.

 

[Danger]

I got a few wrong because of not being able to see the map very well. Some of the numbers were impossible for me to read. Also got the religion one wrong because of the populations of the countries where Buddhism and Hinduism are prevailent.

 

[Math Is Hard]

I wonder, given a picture of the solar system, how many Americans could pick out the earth?

I believe Jay Leno once did a show where he sent a crew out to Santa Monica College to ask students how many planets were in the Solar System and other basic astronomy questions. It didn't go well, but made for some good comedy!

Funny there was no statistic on how many people could find their backside with both hands. I would have thought that would have been question number one.

 

[Gokul43201]

That was the one that shocked me the most! I only missed the one about the largest world religion...I actually thought it was something other than Christianity.

That was the only one that made me think a little bit. It's actually fairly workoutable. There's over a billion people in the Americas, most of whom are Christian. Europe has nearly another billion, so at least half a billion Christians there. Africa has around the same population as Europe but there's probably not more than a quarter billion Christians there. If you throw in all of Australia and about 5% of Asia, that should get you pretty close to 2 billion. China (including all of Indo-china) and India have smaller populations than that, so Buddhism and Hinduism lose. That leaves only Islam. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Middle East might have a total population of about a million. Throw in a quarter of Africa and maybe 10% of Europe...and that's still less than 1.5 billion.

So Christianity wins ! Come to think of it, there's probably nearly as many Catholics as there are Muslims.

 

[moose]

Jeez, in history class we were discussing the educational system. I was claiming it was extremely lagging behind other countries (I forgot the exact statistic, even though it's touch to measure such an abstract concept...education)...

This would have been proof!

Honestly, what's wrong with Americans? I feel ashamed!

Anyway, I found out that my school district is the best in Arizona, yay for me!

EDIT: I didn't miss any.

 

[wasteofo2]

I was really surprised that so few Sweedes knew where the Pacific Ocean was, especially after Sweeden did so remarkably well on almost everything else.

After Mexico embarassed the USA in so many topics, it was surprising that so few Mexicans knew the answer to the question of which city was farthest west...

I'm not really that shocked that quite a few countries knew where the USA was better than the USA did.

 

[wasteofo2]

And wow, i did not know Christianity had the largest following... I always thought it was Hinduism or Buddhism.

Christianity is the predominant religion of North America, South America, Europe, Australia, and the South Pacific. It's also got a noteworthy following in Africa. Due to the government of China enforcing Atheism for quite some time, about 100-150 million Chinese are Atheist, and there are as many people in China who follow different traditional Chinese religions as follow Buddhism. But even if everyone in China was a Buddhist, Christianity would still dominate in terms of numbers. There are 1.1 billion Catholics in the world, since the Catholic Church was the one that went out and actively converted all the world's "heathens". Pretty much everyone in the South Pacific, South America and Africa, or anywhere that isn't Europe or North America who is Christian is a Catholic. Beyond the Catholics, there are another 1 billion Christians of varying denominations, largely spread throughout North America and Europe.

Here's a pie chart of which percent of the world follows which religion.
http://www.adherents.com/images/rel_pie.gif

 

[Pengwuino]

You know Pengwuino, I've watched your postings for quite a while and I have a pretty good idea of what your views are. But I cannot resist pointing out the grammatical error in the above especially considering the context. BTW, from watching your postings, I can tell you it's not the first.

See! They can't even teach English correctly!

I just don't care about spelling that well online especially when I am typing a good 100WPM just tryen to spit out everything I am trying to say before i forget what I am saying (which happens a lot).

 

[Kerrie]

Well, it wasn't exactly a hard test. I think I suck at geography, and I still got 20/20 on that test.

but i am an american

 

[Gokul43201]

After Mexico embarassed the USA in so many topics, it was surprising that so few Mexicans knew the answer to the question of which city was farthest west...

I wonder if that might not have been a linguistic difficulty. It's not clear whether the test was administered everywhere in English.

 

[Pengwuino]

I wonder if that might not have been a linguistic difficulty. It's not clear whether the test was administered everywhere in English.

It couldn't have been or else things would have been much worse.

 

[ONJ's Noble Steed]

but i am an american

So you're implying that I'm NOT an American? How did you know that?

It's funny how in school we were indocrinated that we are the luckiest people in the world because we were born in this "great country" called the United States, which offers wonderful opportunities to get an education, etc. At least some of that is true, but I'm just sitting here thanking my lucky stars that I was NOT born in the US. I've lived in America for quite a long time now, but I don't plan to stay here forever.

 

[Pengwuino]

It's funny how in school we were indocrinated that we are the luckiest people in the world because we were born in this "great country" called the United States, which offers wonderful opportunities to get an education, etc. At least some of that is true, but I'm just sitting here thanking my lucky stars that I was NOT born in the US. I've lived in America for quite a long time now, but I don't plan to stay here forever.

Yah we're given wonderful opportunities

Unfortunately, people seem to think football, baseball, sports in general, higher enrollment rates, and politics is more important then... you know... education.

 

[Entropy]

I though at first that this was a survey to show how dumb America is, so I expected to see other countries in the 90s for every question. I wasn't suprized at America's results, it's the other countries like Sweden, Germany, and Great Britain that suprized me. Like a quarter of those countries' peoples couldn't find the pacific ocean on the map. That's just sad. And I thought Europeans had good schools. Bah!

I give up on humanity. I don't know how any reasonably intelligent human being could have missed more than one or two questions on that test. I only had to think about one question and that was the question that asked "where is Afganistan(sp?) located on this map?" But I still got 20/20.

 

[Pengwuino]

I honestly do wonder what would happen if i was able to walk up to superintendant of a school system and ask "why are these kids so stupid"...

And it's like no one really wants to deal with this problem! There has probably been 1000x as many articles published about this intelligent design in school crap then there has been about the overall failure of our school system. It's like no one wants to hear about this. No one wants to hear about their stupid little school system failing in all worthwhile aspects.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I wonder, given a picture of the solar system, how many Americans could pick out the earth?

Howards Stern used to bring people who were exceptionally dull mentally into his studio and ask them questions. I particularly remember that all of them did not know how many planets there are in the solar system, most did not know which planet Earth is, and one particularly ditzy stripper couldn't even identify what planet she was on at that moment.

 

[chound]

I got 20/20 but spent a lot of time figuring our Isarel(I thought it was a huge counrty near Iraq), I then did it by elimination.
I wonder why the NATGEO didnt take the survey in Asian countries

 

[neutrino]

I received a funny video clip via email yesterday. It's somewhat related to this discussion. Americans were asked, by an Australian (I guess it was taken from an Australian TV show), which country should be invaded next with respect to the War on Terror. Most answers were somewhere in the Middle East. Next, there was asked to mark that nation in a map with countries labled, and with Australia (mis)labled as that particular country! Even then many marked Australia! One even remarked how much larger "N.Korea" (Australia) was compared to "S.Korea"(Tasmania)!

Don't ask me how the presenter knew what to name Australia. It looks like he had a stack of maps.

As for this Nat.Geo survey, I got 18/20. Got the questions on the population of the U.S (Guessed 500M - 750M) and the location of Sweden wrong. Regards,
Navneeth

 

[BobG]

I was surprised that more Mexicans could find the US on a map than people from the United States -- especially since only 29% of Mexicans could find West on a map.

I'd say there must be differences in the geographic skills taught in each country. People in the US seem to be pretty bad at reading global maps while Mexicans don't seem to pay much attention to the people living in various countries.

The biggest shock was that Sweden has successfully hidden itself from the entire world. Besides Sweden, only Germans had a better than 50% chance of finding Sweden. I could kind of understand it if the alternate choices were Norway, Finland, and Denmark, but the other choices were Great Britain, Poland, and Australia!

In general, it seems that if you speak English, you don't know that much about geography.

 

[Gokul43201]

One even remarked how much larger "N.Korea" (Australia) was compared to "S.Korea"(Tasmania)!

That's just priceless ! Do you still have the file ?

 

[Astronuc]

Speaking of geography and maps -

http://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/hobodyer-large.jpg

http://www.odt.org/hdp/index.htm

 

[Monique]

Take this survey, and look at the numbers below each answer showing the results by country.
http://geosurvey.nationalgeographic.com/geosurvey/templates/question_1.html
Which statistic shocked you the most and why ?

11% of americans can't even locate their own country??
pretty much the whole survey shocked me, funny that the americans DO know which region exports the most oil..

 

[FredGarvin]

Only 15% of the French knew what El Nino is. France is stupid.

 

[Gokul43201]

Only 15% of the French knew what El Nino is. France is stupid.

I know you're kidding, but what's your guess on the fraction of Americans who know what the Mistral really is?

 

[neutrino]

That's just priceless ! Do you still have the file ?

Sure I do...can't afford to lose something as priceless as that! Want me to forward it to you?

 

[Chi Meson]

I was surprised (honestly) to find that only 98% of Swedes can find Sweden! If THAT statistic can't be 100%, nothing can!

 

[matthyaouw]

I wonder why so much emphasis is being placed on locating somewhere on a map... Is it really that important a skill? It's not like you'll ever be told you have to find your own way there, nor does not knowing where Afghanistan is affect your understanding of its political situation.
(19/20 by the way. Didn't get the religion one)

Here's a pie chart of which percent of the world follows which religion.
http://www.adherents.com/images/rel_pie.gif

Wow, I really had no idea Judaism made such a small percentage.

 

[Monique]

I wasn't suprized at America's results, it's the other countries like Sweden, Germany, and Great Britain that suprized me. Like a quarter of those countries' peoples couldn't find the pacific ocean on the map. That's just sad. And I thought Europeans had good schools. Bah.

Well, there are several different names for the Pacific ocean. I myself know it best as the Great ocean or the 'Silent' ocean, not the Pacific.

 

[scott_alexsk]

I had some good teachers, so I got all of those right, easily. These statistics do not surprize me especially sitting with some of these people who are bringing down the national average, every day at school. I think a lot of this has to do with television and the current culture of the United States. I find that I can't even watch something remotly intelliegent any time I want. I mean look at how far the discovery channel has fallen. I used to watch that all of the time. I loved "Blue Planet." But then slowly I watched it be consumed by reality TV and now I barely watch it. There is so much previlance on how things look and that is why most kids do not take the time to pursue what they are interested in.
-Scott

 

[Pengwuino]

I wonder why so much emphasis is being placed on locating somewhere on a map... Is it really that important a skill?

National geographic was doing the survey... those punks :D

I was wondering something, isn't El Nino more prevelant in the Pacific Ocean then in the other oceans?

 

[Gokul43201]

I was wondering something, isn't El Nino more prevelant in the Pacific Ocean then in the other oceans?

Yes, that's right.

 

[Pengwuino]

Well then that would make sense as to why north america had such better statistics as far as that question was concerned.

 

[Gokul43201]

Well then that would make sense as to why north america had such better statistics as far as that question was concerned.

...as did Japan, naturally.