11 Percent Of Americans Think HTML Is an STD

[Olas]

Yes, we get it, we Americans are a country of stupid fat people and we should feel ashamed. Let's keep spending time conducting these polls so we can keep reconfirming to the world that Americans are stupid and keep posting pointless articles about it on the internet. Better throw in a picture from Dumb and Dumber to further make your point. Keep up the good work Escapist!

Actually, the most shocking thing about this poll (for me at least) is how unshocking it is. So 11% of the population doesn't know what HTML is? Big deal. Not everybody is interested in technology, or at least how it works under the hood. If you don't deal with web development in your daily life why would this knowledge be useful or relevant?

In fact when you take the elderly into account, it's kinda amazing that 89% percent of the population could correctly identify that HTML is a web coding language. And this is all assuming that 100% of the people answering the poll were actually being genuine.

 

[Neverhoodian]

I'm appalled. Not by the results themselves, but how the media is using bullshit like this as blatant click bait. You can't seriously expect me to believe that a multiple choice questionnaire from a fucking coupon website counts as a legitimate survey in any way.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I don't believe this for a second; I can accept some cultural ignorance (since we all have it to varying degrees) or perhaps a slightly self-important world view, but to boldly state that there are 30million+ thinking people in the US that think HTML is a sex disease is fucking bollocks of the highest order.

 

[Nathan Josephs]

they mustve meant DHTML. cause thats some pretty dynamic html scripting to become an STD.

 

[Caiphus]

I don't believe this for a second; I can accept some cultural ignorance (since we all have it to varying degrees) or perhaps a slightly self-important world view, but to boldly state that there are 30million+ thinking people in the US that think HTML is a sex disease is fucking bollocks of the highest order.

It would have been due to the multiple choice format of the survey. Or, I'm assuming it was multiple choice, because mistaking HTML for a sexually transmitted disease is a very specific, weird, wrong answer. There's a good chance that the survey looked like this:

Is HTML:

- A programming language*

- An International standard of measurement

- A US Army Protocol

- A sexually transmitted disease

And, naturally, people got it wrong.

*Is it actually considered a programming language? I have no idea if I'm using the correct nomenclature.

Edit: A quick google search suggests that it is indeed a markup language, not a programming language, whatever the distinction is.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

To be fair I wouldn't have gotten the 'SEO' one either.

But not knowing what a gigabyte or MP3 is...

 

[Smooth Operator]

USA sensationalism shines again, "Oh boy people don't know this highly specific technical abbreviation they probably never came across in their life? Hah! How dumb are they..."
Might want to take a minute for introspection when you go to such lengths just to feel above someone else.

 

[kael013]

1: This survey deals mostly with under the hood technical stuff (I have no need to know what HTML and SEO are) and terms that are interchangeable with others (I know no one that doesn't call software "programs").

2: This is coming from a bloody [i/]coupon site[/i]. Let that sink in for a minute, we're taking studies from coupon sites as fact now. Also, it means that the demographics the respondents are taken from is limited (for example, "who knows about/uses this site?" probably cuts out a lot of people).

3: Last I checked the internet is an international clubhouse. I also checked and Vouchercloud (the coupon site) deals in coupons for internet stores like Amazon. So why are we calling those surveyed "Americans"? Only the LA Times called them that (presumably as clickbait), while Vouchercloud (properly) called them "respondents".

 

[PH3NOmenon]

Can someone make a poll in the general board with the same question. Bet you a dollar the percentage of funny people saying it's an STD is higher than 10%.

 

[ForumSafari]

A quick google search suggests that it is indeed a markup language, not a programming language, whatever the distinction is.

Markup is a style guide or a list of instructions for drawing something, programming produces a piece of software that uses inputs and outputs to transform data.

Basically programming = "if temperature > 65 degrees then set fan = on" whereas markup = "background = blue, text = black, text here = centre justified, font 11, picture here".

OT: I've poisoned the well on a few surveys like this before where I felt like taking the piss.

 

[Caiphus]

produces a piece of software

You mean it makes comfortable clothing???

Gasp.

I kid, I kid . Thanks for taking the time out to let me know in such a polite way. That was very informative.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Alright, what's with the recent trend of X% of Americans are Morons articles lately?

I'm starting to feel picked upon. I know my countrymen and women are not always the best and brightest we so loudly claim to be, but this is still starting to feel a little bit like harassment, Escapist. Just saying.

We have skits on the late night and comedy shows to tell us this already, your assistance is not required.

I would go so far as to say that a larger percentage of you than of other countries are in fact demonstrably stupid. But it's like when a game gets censored in Australia and I don't think "Fuck, everyone must see us as oversensitive prude old people", I just get to have a laugh/sigh at the stupid views of my countrymen safe in the knowledge I am not one of them. We know not all Americans are morons, and we even pity you for having to live with the ones that are.

 

[Strazdas]

computers are my hobby and while i wouldnt go as far as expert, i consider myself quite knowledgeable in it. And i didntk new SEO acronym either. Nothing spectacular about that one.

Also considering there is aquatic animal called RAY [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_%28fish%29] there may easily be a confusion that it was merely a species nicnamed blue (easy to misread from BLU) for its skin colour or something.

I could not found any disease listing that would involve HTML or similar though, google was not cooperative.

The study involved 2,392 men and women 18 years of age or older.

You mean 11% of an extremely small group that was polled?

a sample size of 2000 is about 4% of my city's population.

ah, not this again. sigh.
http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

Assuming US population is a round 300 million (and we ignore that they ignored <18 years old, which would actually be in thier favour), with 2392 we get:
95% confidence interval - which means that there is 5% chaance that you get nonsense - perfectly standart for surveys of this type
Confidence level of 2%, which means that the results wary +- 2% in reality. Which means that in reality "with 95% confidence we can state that from 9 to 13 percent of americans think HTML is an STD", but thats not a news title you wnat to read now is it.

Either way, it IS a viable population sample provided and enough to make these conclusions. Heck, with 99% confidence interval we would still get a confidence level of 2.64%, which would only put it to 8.36% to 13.64% americans.....
And 99% is something only used for very precise studies anyway.

the nubmers work out, the sample size is acceptable. in fact world statistic organizations claim that 2000 is the line from which US can be tested with enough confidence.

Studies like this are annoying actually, because it makes American's look stupid. I'm willing to bet you would get similar answers in any developed nation in the world...

the previous study escapist reported on (didnt bother copying the link for now), if you looked at the actual study, they also pooped western european nations. The results were similar, although slightly less "omg thats stupid" answers, but still plenty to make similar headlines. Its just that Escapist is American website so they report on the american part.

USA sensationalism shines again, "Oh boy people don't know this highly specific technical abbreviation they probably never came across in their life? Hah! How dumb are they..."
Might want to take a minute for introspection when you go to such lengths just to feel above someone else.

Because MP3 and Gigabyte is highly technical abrevations right? In fact anyone that passed math in highschool would get that gigabyte is a measure of something just from the name even if they dont know what it actually is.

1: This survey deals mostly with under the hood technical stuff (I have no need to know what HTML and SEO are) and terms that are interchangeable with others (I know no one that doesn't call software "programs").

Well, i heard software called multitude of ways:
programs
games
applications
apps
drivers
ect
those are all software.
the problem of ten is when software and hardware is mixed up. like people complain their software broke down when thier HDD fell apart.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

To everyone who thinks several thousand is a small sample size:

We approve potentially lethal drugs with assays based on less than a fraction of that sample size.

As a biologist, 2000+ is a huge sample size.

I'd be more concerned over the poll itself not how many they polled.

thats irrelevant, i took a statistics class, theres actually a formula for coming up with optimal sample sizes, all according to a confidence level and a margin of error

to make things simple, lets use this sample calculator

http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

lets set the confidence level to 95%, a margin of error of say, 2.5%, a US population of 317638000, according to wikipedia

and the magic number for sample size we get is... 1537

actually less than the sample size this study used, so it SEEMS this study used a more than appropiate sample size

computers are my hobby and while i wouldnt go as far as expert, i consider myself quite knowledgeable in it. And i didntk new SEO acronym either. Nothing spectacular about that one.

Also considering there is aquatic animal called RAY [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_%28fish%29] there may easily be a confusion that it was merely a species nicnamed blue (easy to misread from BLU) for its skin colour or something.

I could not found any disease listing that would involve HTML or similar though, google was not cooperative.

The study involved 2,392 men and women 18 years of age or older.

You mean 11% of an extremely small group that was polled?

a sample size of 2000 is about 4% of my city's population.

ah, not this again. sigh.
http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

Assuming US population is a round 300 million (and we ignore that they ignored <18 years old, which would actually be in thier favour), with 2392 we get:
95% confidence interval - which means that there is 5% chaance that you get nonsense - perfectly standart for surveys of this type
Confidence level of 2%, which means that the results wary +- 2% in reality. Which means that in reality "with 95% confidence we can state that from 9 to 13 percent of americans think HTML is an STD", but thats not a news title you wnat to read now is it.

Either way, it IS a viable population sample provided and enough to make these conclusions. Heck, with 99% confidence interval we would still get a confidence level of 2.64%, which would only put it to 8.36% to 13.64% americans.....
And 99% is something only used for very precise studies anyway.

the nubmers work out, the sample size is acceptable. in fact world statistic organizations claim that 2000 is the line from which US can be tested with enough confidence.

Studies like this are annoying actually, because it makes American's look stupid. I'm willing to bet you would get similar answers in any developed nation in the world...

the previous study escapist reported on (didnt bother copying the link for now), if you looked at the actual study, they also pooped western european nations. The results were similar, although slightly less "omg thats stupid" answers, but still plenty to make similar headlines. Its just that Escapist is American website so they report on the american part.

USA sensationalism shines again, "Oh boy people don't know this highly specific technical abbreviation they probably never came across in their life? Hah! How dumb are they..."
Might want to take a minute for introspection when you go to such lengths just to feel above someone else.

Because MP3 and Gigabyte is highly technical abrevations right? In fact anyone that passed math in highschool would get that gigabyte is a measure of something just from the name even if they dont know what it actually is.

1: This survey deals mostly with under the hood technical stuff (I have no need to know what HTML and SEO are) and terms that are interchangeable with others (I know no one that doesn't call software "programs").

Well, i heard software called multitude of ways:
programs
games
applications
apps
drivers
ect
those are all software.
the problem of ten is when software and hardware is mixed up. like people complain their software broke down when thier HDD fell apart.

what are you doing? it was my turn to be smart

 

[Madman123456]

"what does ths 'html://www' mean that i have to type before every internet address?" i thought a long time ago, when you still had to do that. So i scanned several search engines and it was probably lycos who found me the answer.

I have seen the html tag several times here and there but it is rarely explained as hyper text markup language. Anyone remember when you last saw that mouthful instead of "html".

Now, 'www' might be rather self explanatory by comparison. I hear mentions of the world wide web being called that here and there and after a year or so my brain would eventually be able to connect that to the www.

Blu ray was the useless gimmicky bullshit that tried to bridge the gap until we have 4k TVs and a new medium to watch movies on that? *ponder*

I got Software and Hardware explained about 20 years ago. Old people like me still use those words while those who still smell like the living use "Computers" and "apps".



I saw some of those "People are stupid" surveys as a video where you could see the time of day shifting several times between cuts, so i suspect they ran around to find the one moron amongst thousands.

Sometimes i wonder why they wont just pay some people a few bucks to act stupid.

 

[Somethingfake]

Alright, what's with the recent trend of X% of Americans are Morons articles lately?

I'm starting to feel picked upon. I know my countrymen and women are not always the best and brightest we so loudly claim to be, but this is still starting to feel a little bit like harassment, Escapist. Just saying.

We have skits on the late night and comedy shows to tell us this already, your assistance is not required.

Pretty sure that if these surveys were about the french, UK, Spanish or what have you, then there wouldn't be so much noise. Do you really feel so hard done by a web site and its forums? Thin skin there.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

now that i think of it, these people probably mistook HTML for HIV

 

[J Tyran]

Alright, what's with the recent trend of X% of Americans are Morons articles lately?

I'm starting to feel picked upon. I know my countrymen and women are not always the best and brightest we so loudly claim to be, but this is still starting to feel a little bit like harassment, Escapist. Just saying.

We have skits on the late night and comedy shows to tell us this already, your assistance is not required.

I was thinking the same thing, for some reason these surveys seem really popular in the US over the last couple of years. If you do these surveys anywhere around the world you would get people making mistakes, sure some nations might be better at certain types of question but they would be worse at others.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

Well, at least it's not PHP. God help you when you catch that. Better to just put you down right away.