Public’s Knowledge of Science and Technology

Saturday, April 27th, 2013

The public’s knowledge of science and technology is… limited.  Take this Pew Research quiz, and realize that getting all 13 questions right puts you in the top seven percent of Americans.

The quiz starts with four true-false questions. What percentage of Americans got each of these questions right?  Let’s see: 66, 47, 48, and 77.  That’s not too far from a trained ape’s success rate of 50 percent.

What percentage of American college grads got each one right?  82, 59, 58, and 85.

Anyway, Americans seem to know what sunscreen is for, but they don’t know much about our atmosphere.

Comments

  1. Dirk says:

    I was expecting some hard questions.

  2. Isegoria says:

    Those were hard questions, Dirk — for the public. It’s not normal to care about science.

  3. Erik says:

    Some questions had more than two choices. Apes would get less than 50%.

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