[i]You answered 31 out of 33 correctly ? 93.94 %
Average score for this quiz during November: 77.9%
Average score: 77.9%
Answers to Your Missed Questions:
Question #30 - C. decreasing taxes and increasing spending
Question #33 - D. tax per person equals government spending per person[/i]
Shit. Oh, well. I guess I’m smarter than a fifth grader or a Senator.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[i]You answered 31 out of 33 correctly ? 93.94 %
Average score for this quiz during November: 77.9%
Average score: 77.9%
Answers to Your Missed Questions:
Question #30 - C. decreasing taxes and increasing spending
Question #33 - D. tax per person equals government spending per person[/i]
Shit. Oh, well. I guess I’m smarter than a fifth grader or a Senator.[/quote]
I got #30 wrong too =[
[quote]The machine spit out results:
You answered 32 out of 33 correctly ? 96.97 %[/quote]
I missed #33, the one about taxes per person.
It’s been a while since I scored that high on a test.
You answered 32 out of 33 correctly ? 96.97 %
Average score for this quiz during November: 77.7%
Average score: 77.7%
Answers to Your Missed Questions:
Question #4 - B. Would slavery be allowed to expand to new territories?
This got me thinking, who are these elected officials?
Among the questions asked of some 2,500 people who were randomly selected to take the test, including “self-identified elected officials,” was one which asked respondents to “name two countries that were our enemies during World War II.”
There are 435 Members of the House, and 100 Senators, for a total of 535. If the population of the US is about 301,139,947 (CIA estimate for July 2007). Then, the odds of getting a elected official of the United States Congress at random is about 2,500/301,139,947 or about 1 in 562,878. Roughly speaking, the odds that any member of congress was chosen at random for this survey is about 535/562,878 or less than one in a thousand.
So the self-identified elected officials were not members of Congress. The odds that any of the respondents were member of a state legislature can only be around a percent or two.
So, I’m guessing that several ‘self-identified elected officials’ were actually liars and that there may have been one county or city elected official in the group.
i should not have said “Roughly speaking, the odds that any member of congress was chosen at random for this survey is about 535/562,878 or less than one in a thousand.”
but rather
The odds that any of the 2,500 randomly chosen respondents was actaully a member of Congress is less than one in a thousand.
[quote]Journeyman wrote:
i should not have said “Roughly speaking, the odds that any member of congress was chosen at random for this survey is about 535/562,878 or less than one in a thousand.”
but rather
The odds that any of the 2,500 randomly chosen respondents was actaully a member of Congress is less than one in a thousand.[/quote]
howd you get this calculation?
and you might be interested to know there’s a whole page on the ignorance of our elected officials: Civic Literacy Report - Additional Finding
Of the 2,508 People surveyed, 164 say they have held an elected government office at least once in their life. Their average score on the civic literacy test is 44%, compared to 49% for those who have not held an elected office. Officeholders are less likely than other respondents to correctly answer 29 of the 33 test questions. This table shows the ?knowledge gap? for each question: the difference between the percentage of common citizens who answered correctly and the percentage of officeholders who answered correctly.
[quote]valiance. wrote:
Journeyman wrote:
i should not have said “Roughly speaking, the odds that any member of congress was chosen at random for this survey is about 535/562,878 or less than one in a thousand.”
but rather
The odds that any of the 2,500 randomly chosen respondents was actaully a member of Congress is less than one in a thousand.
howd you get this calculation?
and you might be interested to know there’s a whole page on the ignorance of our elected officials: Civic Literacy Report - Additional Finding
Of the 2,508 People surveyed, 164 say they have held an elected government office at least once in their life. Their average score on the civic literacy test is 44%, compared to 49% for those who have not held an elected office. Officeholders are less likely than other respondents to correctly answer 29 of the 33 test questions. This table shows the ?knowledge gap? for each question: the difference between the percentage of common citizens who answered correctly and the percentage of officeholders who answered correctly.[/quote]
If the odds that someone chosen at random is a member of congress is 1 in 562,878, the odds that they are not a member of congress is ( 562,877 / 562,878 ). The odds that you could pick two people who are not members of congress would be about ( 562,877 / 562,878 )^2. If you choose 2,508 people, that odds that none of them are members of Congress is given by ( 562,877 / 562,878 )^2,508, which is approximately 0.9955. There is another approximation that makes it possible try the calculation in you head. So I guess I was off by a decimal point in my first estimate, it looks like there is about a 1/2 percent chance that one of 2,508 randomly selected people would be a current member of Congress.
So, comments about our ‘stupid Congress’ are not warranted.
What I was wondering was this. The people answering these questions self-reported their status as an elected official. I think that there are people that would intentionally answer incorrectly and then misrepresent themselves as elected officials. I hope that this would be rare, and that the pollsters would take care to prevent this. I cannot make accusations that this is the case, but it is possible and I am taking these results with a grain of salt.
32 out of 33
…and I am 3800 miles away