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.
Scy Anide said:
LA Times said:
The study involved 2,392 men and women 18 years of age or older.
Clive Howlitzer said:
You mean 11% of an extremely small group that was polled?
Malconvoker said:
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.
Baresark said:
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.
Mr.K. said:
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.
kael013 said:
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.