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what americans think --- group estimations

Comments

  • Maybe explains how somebody like Orange can win? Average citizens are just clueless.

    "For instance, in addition to believing that 30 percent of the country lives in NYC, the average American thinks that 30 percent of the country lives in Texas and 32 percent lives in California.

    People think that 20 percent of the country makes $1 million (or more) per year (real number: less than 1 percent); that 54 percent of the country owns guns (real number: 32 percent); that 40 percent of the country served in the military (real number: 6 percent); and that 30 percent of the country is vegetarian (real number: 5 percent)."
  • edited November 24
    21% trans ... and that's an average.

    Coming soon to your Maga-plex: The Transplot to Undermine America.

    Edit: it's just as hilarious that the overall average says 92% of the population lives in NYC, TX, and CA. (Well, it wouldn't be that much if a significant % of respondents think NYC is in either TX or CA.)
  • Some years ago, a 6th grade class was shown a map of Texas with only the contours, the shape, the borders. No towns, no rivers marked. Most guessed it was Brazil.

    I bet they're old enough to vote by now.
    But let's be fair: us guys can testify that there seems to be a genetic allergy to directions, maps and geography when it comes to the female of the species, eh?
  • edited November 25
    55 years of marriage and she still turns the map upside down. On the other hand, I once had a flight instructor of the feminine species who sure as hell knew how to read a map. And no, she definitely wasn't "trans".
  • edited November 25
    Old_Joe said:

    I once had a flight instructor or the feminine species who sure as hell knew how to read a map.

    Same experience here. The best person at instant relating of topo map to terrain/routefinding I've known over about forty years of backcountry adventures is a woman. I am/was good enough at it, but slow as spring in the Arctic compared to her.
  • Yes, total agreement here. They are out there. They can be found. Driving home from Quebec City once, many moons ago. I told my girlfriend to pick up the map and see how far we were just then from the USA border.

    She looked, put her thumb and index finger about a quarter-inch apart. She said, "about that far." My laughter could be heard up in Labrador.
  • My two youngest daughters (33 and 26) drive me batty with their total reliance on their smart phones for navigation. I can’t count the number of times I’ve driven to and back from DTW with the youngest one; however when she borrowed my car to pick up her sister at the airport last week, she said she had no idea how to get there without her phone. It’s not that I never get lost, but I generally know where I am and how to get to where I need to go, without resorting to the GPS. Driving in Europe with paper maps and TripTiks in my lap cemented a good sense of direction into my head.
  • edited November 25
    BenWP said:

    My two youngest daughters (33 and 26) drive me batty with their total reliance on their smart phones for navigation.

    Toward the end of my time in Alaska, there came a cautionary tale on phone navigation from the port town of Whittier. A visitor drove off the state ferry, and following what he understood as his phone's direction, instead of staying on the only road out, he turned right onto a pier and into the saltwater.
  • I'll take the fifth on this discussion!
  • I drove a fair amount in France with "only" paper maps. No problems at all.
  • @Old_Joe - wandering aimlessly is not the same as mapping out your travel
  • No, we weren't aimless- we had a definite itinerary and schedule. Was actually pretty easy. Wouldn't want to have tried that in Britain though.
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