Also the map was impossible to read. Those numbers- could they BE more blurred? Israel was easy to find- I just looked for the smallest thing in the Middle East, but Italy threw me for a loop. Stupid map…
Some you could guess at by process of elimination. Although in real life, wouldn’t it just make more sense to give someone a map where they’re all written out? I mean who in their daily life needs to know where all of the countries are on a blank map, you know? I think a rough idea is useful enough.
But we’re a small country (roughly the sice of California) with a population of only 9 million, relying heavily on exports (Volvo, anyone?), and with a miserable climate to boot (Seattle… more or less), so we travel more, per capita, than any other nation in the world. And we need to know about other parts of the world to survive.
Of course, I got 20/20. Come on. It was too easy. And I’m one of them Swedes that get Game Shows on Geography on TV… (Actually … there is one )
I find it amazing that 29 % of the Americans couldn’t pick the Pacific Ocean…
So … Pop Quiz… no cheating now. How many of you guys know the following, without googling or checking a map:
Capital of Macedonia?
English name of Braunschweig?
What country was Stalin from?
Former (German) name of Gdansk?
Largest in size (sq.mi.): Germany or Spain?
How large is the population of Indonesia?
New York is on the same latitude as which Italian city?
1. Capital of Macedonia? - Skopje
2. English name of Braunschweig? - Brunswick
3. What country was Stalin from? - Georgia (the other one) (Although I guess if someone wanted to be really irritating about it they could say “the Russian Empire”.)
4. Former (German) name of Gdansk? - Danzig
5. Largest in size (sq.mi.): Germany or Spain? - Germany (Actual numbers when I looked it up after answering: Germany - 357,021 sq km; Spain - 504,782 sq km. Damn.)
6. How large is the population of Indonesia? - 200 million plus (Actual number: 231,328,092 [July 2002 est.])
7. New York is on the same latitude as which Italian city? - Fuck if I know. Milan? (Actual answer: Naples)
8. Population of Iceland? - 250,000 (Actual number: 279,384 [July 2002 est.])
9. Capital of Libya? - Tripoli
10. India - north or south of the equator? - North
Yup. The biggest surprise isn’t that the people being interviewed don’t know the right answer, but that they give a response (acting like they know exactly what they’re talking about), even when they have NO CLUE what they’re talking about.
Rick Mercer said it himself - the biggest difference between him and Jay Leno’s bit is:
Some examples of things he’s asked Americans, or told them and got them to agree:
to sign a petition decrying the “Canadian government’s barbaric practice of putting their senior citizens on ice floes, and leaving them to perish.” I mean, he got university professors to sign these petitions and make statements on camera!
“Should Canada be allowed to use US ports for their military ships, since Canada is a land-locked country?”
that the Human Genome Project has show that 90% of Canadians are “developmentally delayed or retarded” - he would ask them “Do you think Canadians should be ashamed of this? Or should they stand up and be proud of themselves for being okay with who they are?” People would answer with a completely straight face - not like they were going along with a joke or something. This is one of his “tricks,” I guess - he’ll throw something like “global warming” or “human genome project” into the question, and people will answer him no matter what because they don’t want to admit ignorance about what he’s asking.
“Congratulations Canada on switching to the 24-hour clock!” (He told them that until recently we’d being using the French (?) 20-hour-a-day system.
“Did you know that a Canadian company holds the drilling rights to Mt. Rushmore? Since Mt. Rushmore contains plutonium, do you think that they should be able to drill in to get it from the front, or should they be forced to do “precision blasting” from behind?”
I mean, c’mon!! And occasionally he will show people who don’t believe him or who start to laugh when he asks the question. But he has said that the proportion of people who catch on to what he’s doing is MUCH smaller than you’d think (or hope).
10 year old: 10
13 year old: 16 (got US population, religion, Kashmir and HIV wrong. Got all the map ones without needing to use process of elimination).
And these are products of close to the worst education state in the US: Georgia.
Hum! Did pretty well. Missed Braunschweig, but that doesn’t exactly bother me; as some lament, anglicizations are fewer and fewer these days. (In reporting on the next winter Olympics, American newscasters seem to favor “Torino” over the perfectly acceptable “Turin.” Never mind the horror that was the Ford Torino…)
Got fairly close on the population - Indonesia’s grown rather more rapidly than I thought, and with Iceland I rebelled against my original guess, which was the same as M.E. Bruckner’s. I ratcheted mine up an extra chunk, but still only came out about 30% too high. (Which just isn’t much in raw numbers…)
An extra credit point.
Rank the following from north to south: Portland, Maine; Portland, England; and Portland, Oregon
Portland, England, at 50 deg. North, followed by Portland, OR at 45 and Portland, ME at 43. This result always suprises me. In my mind, the U.S. is symmetrical, with Boston and Seattle at about the same latitude. Actually, if you draw a line due east from Seattle you end up a hair north of St. John’s, Newfoundland - hundreds of miles north of Boston. And almost all of inhabited North America is south of England - even though Portland’s actually an island off of England’s southern coast.
What other kinds of maps are there in real life? Having all the countries labelled on the map they used for the quiz would certainly have made it easier though :rolleyes:.
Probably from all those U.S. school maps that were oriented so that Maine and Washington are about equally high. Actually, the 49th parallel, starting out from Minnesota, is farther North than Michigan which extends farther north than any place in New England.
Yeah, that’s my point, everton- I don’t really see the need to know where the nations are without them being labelled. You might as well just give someone a labelled map…those are the ones you use in real life.
You seriously think that not being able to tell the difference between the USA and Canada without the labels doesn’t demonstrate a serious deficiency in a person’s general knowledge? Or Russia/China? The alternatives for Japan were the UK, Australia and New Guinea ferchissake. The choices for Mexico were Canada, Australia and Peru. etc. etc.
Anybody who could figure out every answer without the names filled in already is an ignoramus. What’s not to get?
20/20. I hate the fact that geography is not taught at all at my high school (and that many universities have no geography major) because it’s one of those subjects I gravitate to naturally. Considering that there’s a Geography AP Exam, I don’t think it would kill high schools to start teaching it as a class, because it is important material.
Well, no the obvious ones like the USA and Canada and Japan and all that. I don’t think Argentina was all that obvious. It’s been years since Evita came out after all.
Yeah it’s important to know basic stuff, but I always just assumed when someone said to pick something out on a map they meant a regular map with labels. I just think a generic understanding of where things are is good enough. The borders will all have changed in a few hundred years anyway.
Anyway, peace out, everton, I’m not disputing your right to exist. You don’t have to get all up in arms, man.
I’m not trying to slam you either, Zoggie (or anybody who got some answers wrong), but if they showed you a world map with all the names on and asked you which one was Argentina, wouldn’t it be too easy just to point at the one with “Argentina” written on? Please don’t think I’m picking a fight with you personally, I’m really not.
It’s a terrible thing for a school system not to teach any geography at all, and I suppose if you’ve never be taught it at school you’d have some excuse not to know. But I can’t remember anybody sitting me down with an atlas and formally telling me which country was which in South America (or anywhere else), it just comes with general knowledge.
For Argentina, the others were Brazil, Finland and Nigeria - so I hope nobody thought it was either of the last two. Brazil has the fifth highest population in the world; its not an obscure place and neither is Argentina. I think it’s scary not to be able to tell them apart and shows a big gap in a person’s understanding of the world we live in. So many wars are started because we don’t understand each other - it should be compulsory to get clued up.
I think the reasons some people have given – that they read too much into a question or thought Nat Geo might’ve been double-bluffing about al-Qaeda and the Taliban being based outside of Afghanistan – make some sense, but it’s really not OK to have only a vague about where countries are.
Before I saw the results of the test, I’d have thought that any British person should be able to pick states like California, Florida, Alaska and New York off an unlabelled map of the USA. After seeing the test maybe they couldn’t, but I think that’s truly shameful. The same goes for an American not being able to tell the difference between Spain and Italy.
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