Why you should be suspicious of "people on the street were more ignorant of X than Y" stories

[mmcirvin]

I missed this in March: Mark Liberman of Language Log takes apart the "more people could name the Simpsons than First Amendment freedoms" story.

The people who could correctly name N First Amendment freedoms (I assume they didn't split freedom of religion into the establishment and free-exercise clauses) decreased monotonically with increasing N, whereas the Simpsons distribution was bimodal, with more people ignorant of even one Simpson than of one First Amendment freedom, but also a fairly large population who could name all of them. From these numbers it is possible to extract just about any message you want, especially if people repeating the story are inclined to garble the result in the desired direction.

Comments

[piehead.livejournal.com]

I would also like to declare a liking for pie.

[twillis.livejournal.com]

I propose that we all take a pledge that if we are asked survey questions on the street that we will always respond with "I like pie".

Mostly because it would be interesting to read Matt's analysis of the survey response.

I like the Wizard of Oz.

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

I like the Tin Man.

Re: I like the Wizard of Oz.

[twillis.livejournal.com]

NOOOOOOOOOO! You are wrecking the curve!

Leave me alone, kid.

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

I'm, I'm thinking.

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

No! No no no! You're all WRONG! No! Stop that!

It's MITTENS! MITTENS I TELL YOU!

YOU LIKE MITTENS! AS DO I!

(SSC: I introduced the "I like mittens" meme on this web BBS of stupidity, and it took off like nothing else. The background image there is mittens nowadays.)