HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

[Renax]

As I've said before, some Americans are very stupid Imo. have a good one tho

[m.tt]

Damn, I'm late for this thread.....who did you guys declare independence from again?
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... _poll.html

Headline says 26% dont know who the US declared independence from. While actually 6% dont know with a 3% margin of error....optimistic use of statistics ftw!

Happy try to blow the place up with fireworks day.

Ignoring the error margin, isn't it fair to say the 20 percent that were "unsure" don't actually know ....therefore 26% don't know (Defining knowing in this context as being sure and also correct.)

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” - Disraeli

[Flynnstone]

Nope it means 20% were unsure. and 6% didnt know out of a relatively small sample in such a diverse country.

If its fair to say 20% were unsure and so didnt actually know its also quite possible that 20% did actually know but didnt want to make a gobshite out of themselves if they were wrong.

[m.tt]

If there is knowing and not knowing, 74% knew and 26% didn't know.
Or if you don't want to look at it like that, I know EVERYTHING about everything there ever was, has been, could be.....but I am unsure....but I still know!
The article was just indeed written that way for hype. It could've said 94% of people correct about independence question.

Not that any of this matters, it was just a topical article on the "stupid americans" stereotype
someone showed me.

I just put the TV on and The Flintstones is on!

[Flynnstone]

You've just highlighted what I was implying, 20% said they were unsure and that is all you can read into it. You can't assume their answer was anything but the correct one for their particular situation especially without knowing how the question was formulated. It doesn't mean they didn't know and it doesn't mean they did know.

[BBloke]

And you lot get on to me about stats! LOL..

What was the question again?

[m.tt]

Maybe it was a bad example when I said I know everything but am unsure!
Being unsure is not he same as being correct or not, so in the context of the article, if you don't know for certain then you are therefore unsure (even if you guessed right.)
Ie 20% of the people were unsure, that is, they did not know for certain if they were correct
so 20% unsures +6% wrong = 26% that didn't know.

"You've just highlighted what I was implying, 20% said they were unsure and that is all you can read into it"

...Exactly, that they might be right but they did not know!


"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns.
That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns.
There are things we don't know we don't know." - Donald Rumsfeld

[Flynnstone]

Fair enough your take on unsure is dont know and mine is they werent pushed to get off the fence.

[BBloke]

Damn the 4th of July for delaying the next episode of True Blood

[Taekwon-joe]

I doubt that survey is entirely accurate.

If someone came up to you in the street and asked you a straight forward question like that you would probably think that it was a trick question. This would cause many people to lack confidence in their answer and may phrase it like "I think its the UK" or "Is it the UK?". Answers like that would fall under the category of 'unsure'. Not everyone would give a definite straight answer.