I took this fun science literacy quiz, and got 47 out of 50 questions correct.
The ones I missed were all in biology and life sciences, my weakest subject. Since so many of the angroids label climate skeptics as “scientifically illiterate”, and because climate change is specifically mentioned, I thought it would be fun to share and to have readers post their scores. Many of the questions are simple, like the first one:
Then there’s some tougher ones, like about Planck’s constant and some that require some simple physics math, F=ma and stuff like that. There’s a bit of irony in whose website the poll is on.
The Christian Science Monitor.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/1209/Are-you-scientifically-literate-Take-our-quiz/
Surprisingly, there wasn’t a single question about climate change, even though they mention it. If you feel like taking it, don’t succumb to the temptation to look up everything on the Internet…there’s no sport in perfect scores.
41/50 not so bad for a french speaker…
UnfrozenCavemanMD says:
April 8, 2012 at 11:39 am
and
D. M. says:
April 8, 2012 at 11:40 am
Concur with both – a very Western centric test – a lot based on context within the Western English speaking world; with its affinity for all things Greek !
And I always had this problem at school – if I know how to apply Newtons nth law – why the heck do I need to know what number it is ? You can get many people to RECITE interminable lists of crud; not so many of those can apply any of the knowledge supposedly contained there in !
I had the dubious pleasure of sitting a psychosomatic ‘evaluation’ in South Africa that was based on US/UK English and symbols – one question required you to know what the UK Ordnance Survey symbol for a lock gate is; otherwise you picked the answer involving female genitalia – boy did I have fun with them afterwards; as the wrong answer lead to some questions being asked at later interviews; that really implied you were a devient of the worst sort (yes; an Afrikaans colleague of mine answered it wrong; surprise, surprise)
Unintended bias in these type of test is very easy to do – aquestion of not knowing what you don’t know about other people’s backgrounds
Oh – Process Control Engineer & Science Fiction fan — 42/50 – College is some 40 years ago
Can we get our Civil Servants who are in the Department of Climate Change to sit this; along with a few politicians ?
I was spooked,
the same face staring at me each time waving two vials of liquid with a grin put me off my stride,
and I thought the `nimbus` cloud question was a bit questionable,
OK if you knew the technically correct answer but if your not a cloud geek I would suggest they are splitting infinitives `is producing rain` or `does produce rain` and they are vertically formed.
The result of my test showed that they still have to change 11 answers to meet the nationally accepted consensus average answer.
apart from that 39 of 50
43.
Ouch.
Just 31 out of 50! But then I never studied biology or chemistry beyond 14, and slept through the physics ‘A’ level at 16-18 years.
However, an understanding of the relevance of CAGW is not primarily knowing particular facts. It is a complex subject, requiring an understanding of relevance, magnitude and likelihood. Understanding requires being able to sort facts like a lawyer, to substantiate one’s case. It requires a logical mind, and an understanding of rhetorical fallacies. But at the same time it requires a high level of numeracy. Not the precise numeracy of pure mathematics, but the vague numeracy of statistics. In other words, it is an interdisciplinary subject, that requires skills way beyond the sciences.
42/50. I got better during the second bottle of beer.
dh
41 correct. Three really stupid mistakes so it should have been 44. My excuse is my 62 year old brain was/is still awash from a little too much red wine last night and the coffee hadn’t kicked in yet.
Apropos speed, the pages loaded really slow initially and then sped up considerably. And that’s when the stupid mistakes happened.
My computer hung up three times, the last time totally at question 47. Up to there I had 5 wrong, with several lucky guesses (zygote and other biological terms about which I know nothing). The format is very slow and clunky, and to get back up to #47 would take more time than I am willing to put into it; I wish there were some way to skip up to where I involuntarily left off.
IanM
Apropos the use of the word literate, it literally means being acquainted with the literature. Unless you are a biologist and then it means ‘Marked with short, angulated lines resembling letters: applied to the surfaces of shells and insects’.
The test is pretty lame. If you go all the way through you just gave the CSM web site 100 page hits. It’s transparently made to pump up page hits for their adverts. If it wasn’t they’d have 10 questions per page and hold the answers to the end.
80%…though struggling with the english language, empirial measures and two glasses of Californian wine 🙂
Ooops, and gone…. bzzt pffffhh
So again:
80% though struggling with the english language, imperial measures and two glasses of Californian wine 🙂
33/50
Certainly would have been less, had I not been following the crowd at WUWT for the last 2-3 years.
40/50. I’m embarrassed. Physics major ’77, engineer/manager since. I blame that last title for my low score – spent too much time in marketing, where reality is a drawback.
Leif Svalgaard says: “There’s a bit of irony in whose website the poll is on. They did give as choices of the age of the Earth and the Universe the interesting number 6015 years.”
Yeah, Leif, I got a chuckle out of that. No irony, though. Many Christians think evolution is valid.
47/50. No excuses. I was ignorant.
45/50. I’m getting old.
The first time the program gave up at question 38 at that time I had 33 right
Tried again and it gave up at question 46, this time all were correct up to that point. What was the point?
32 out of 50 – pretty pathetic.
46 – misread 2 question 2 i didnt know
Quiz results
“38
Correct 12
Wrong You answered 38 of 50 questions correctly for a total score of 76%.”
As my degree subject was German Studies, I have to admit plenty of those correct answers were down to a very rudimentary knowledge of Ancient Greek and Latin.
I’ve long maintained that the three essential subjects for study in schools are Ancient Greek, Latin and mathematics. With that basis nothing you encounter in life should ever be so baffling that you’re discouraged from making the effort to understand it better.
@jorge
Me, a proud heathen knows, evolution isn’t valid. I’ll never understand Christians subscribing to Evolution Theorie despite possessing a book stating otherwise by the authority of their god ;-).
Correct! (30 of 50 correct)
I’m rapt. Also, as someone who uses 90% of his brainpower figuring out why one horse will run faster than another horse, amazed.
And I guess every party has a pwl.
lenbilen says:
April 8, 2012 at 3:11 pm
“What was the point?”
The point is in the article’s title: fun!
. . .
Mike Hebb,
Actually that was pretty good. I suspect the U.S. population as a whole would score around 15. Which would explain belief in the “carbon” scare.
I was initially ashamed at my 43/50, then I remembered that I screwed up my A-levels (over 30 years ago when they actually meant something) due to my youthful fascination with the distaff side and motorbikes.
Then I resampled the answers in line with peer-reviewed techniques and discovered that not only did I score 87/50 but I also aced my A-levels back in the day along with pulling the best looking girl in school and winning the World 500cc Championship …. which was nice!
42, at around midnight with a glass of whisky in hand. One of the wrong answers was kind-of-deliberate (I’m a creationist, so I was marked wrong for answering question 10, “What IS the age of the earth?”, but right for answering question 42, “ACCORDING TO THE STANDARD MODEL OF BIG BANG COSMOLOGY, what is the age of the universe?”) In all of the other cases I was able to narrow down the choices to two, but guessed wrong. I got the ‘nimbus’ one wrong, so I guess I haven’t been paying enough attention here.