Given that the “estimated proportion” range is only between 20-76%, regardless of the question, this seems more indicative of a poor understanding of statistics than an over/under estimation of specific demographics, especially since a lot of contradictory demographics are way overestimated.
For example, I am significantly more likely to believe that Americans suck at percentages than that they believe nearly ever single person in the country is either Muslim, Jewish, or Catholic (these three “estimated proportions” add up to 98%).
Side note: interestingly all religious categories listed add up to 189%, but there is some overlap depending on definition (e.g. some people might argue that “Catholics are Christians” or “Jewish is an ethnicity so you can be Jewish and atheist”). Thus I picked the three that most people would agree are extremely unlikely to overlap, which coincidentally added up to nearly 100%.
EDIT: I would like to see this survey redone with the same questions, but with the addition of a few questions for things that are widely known to be extremely uncommon, bordering on non-existent, such as “percentage of people with only one ear” or “percentage of people with more than 12 siblings,” and some questions for things that are widely known to be extremely common, bordering on universal, such as “percentage of people that have electricity at home” or “percentage of adults who own a phone.” If even these questions result in answers grossly over/underestimating the percentage, what we have is actually an aversion to providing very small or very large estimates. (It is already known that people easily overestimate the frequency of things that are unusual especially if they can easily think of an example, such as overestimating the number of redheads because you had a classmate with red hair, or even because you can think of a celebrity with red hair).
I don’t disagree, but I have seen surveys before that list Catholic and Christian as separate mutually exclusive categories (as in they used “Christian” to mean “Protestant”) and Protestant is not listed in the graphic in question so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Those listings are misinformation though. So equally as wrong as the people who took this poll, and not something you should base your knowledge of the subject on.
Don’t mistake aggregate with individual responses. In aggregate a survey sample might result in a sum of 98% are Muslim, Catholic or Jewish but no individual selected that sum. We could imagine a scenario where each individual chose one of those as a large majority, for example.
That said, it is true that many people really don’t understand data and it’s implications and tend to consistently overestimate many unlikely probabilities. Source: I teach statistics…
I found it unbelievable as well so I tested these questions on college and graduate students. Answers were in range. CS majors literally believed that 40% of Americans are black and a third of the population lives in Texas.
What a person needs to answer correctly is sociocultural awareness.
I think this still shows a poor grasp of percentages/statistics. If you were to follow up the Texas question by asking in turn, “what percentage live in California?” " How about New York?" “And Florida?” “So then what percentage live in the 46 remaining states plus US territories?” you’d watch a classroom of students slowly realize they’ve way surpassed 100% thanks to their overinflated initial estimates. Or conversely, if you gave them a paper with a list of states and asked them to write down what percentage of Americans lived in each state next to the state’s name, it might not be accurate, but it would probably add up to 100% for significantly more respondents.
The over/under estimation problem is almost certainly worsened when you ask about a single demographic in isolation, rather than all possible demographics at once.
Given that the “estimated proportion” range is only between 20-76%, regardless of the question, this seems more indicative of a poor understanding of statistics than an over/under estimation of specific demographics, especially since a lot of contradictory demographics are way overestimated.
For example, I am significantly more likely to believe that Americans suck at percentages than that they believe nearly ever single person in the country is either Muslim, Jewish, or Catholic (these three “estimated proportions” add up to 98%).
Side note: interestingly all religious categories listed add up to 189%, but there is some overlap depending on definition (e.g. some people might argue that “Catholics are Christians” or “Jewish is an ethnicity so you can be Jewish and atheist”). Thus I picked the three that most people would agree are extremely unlikely to overlap, which coincidentally added up to nearly 100%.
EDIT: I would like to see this survey redone with the same questions, but with the addition of a few questions for things that are widely known to be extremely uncommon, bordering on non-existent, such as “percentage of people with only one ear” or “percentage of people with more than 12 siblings,” and some questions for things that are widely known to be extremely common, bordering on universal, such as “percentage of people that have electricity at home” or “percentage of adults who own a phone.” If even these questions result in answers grossly over/underestimating the percentage, what we have is actually an aversion to providing very small or very large estimates. (It is already known that people easily overestimate the frequency of things that are unusual especially if they can easily think of an example, such as overestimating the number of redheads because you had a classmate with red hair, or even because you can think of a celebrity with red hair).
Try adding up ethnic groups. If you count Jewish as a separate ethnicity, you get an estimated total of 225% and even without Jews it’s still 195%.
What? Of course Catholics are Christians. It’s literally a denomination of Christianity, a proper subset.
I don’t disagree, but I have seen surveys before that list Catholic and Christian as separate mutually exclusive categories (as in they used “Christian” to mean “Protestant”) and Protestant is not listed in the graphic in question so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Those listings are misinformation though. So equally as wrong as the people who took this poll, and not something you should base your knowledge of the subject on.
Don’t mistake aggregate with individual responses. In aggregate a survey sample might result in a sum of 98% are Muslim, Catholic or Jewish but no individual selected that sum. We could imagine a scenario where each individual chose one of those as a large majority, for example.
That said, it is true that many people really don’t understand data and it’s implications and tend to consistently overestimate many unlikely probabilities. Source: I teach statistics…
I found it unbelievable as well so I tested these questions on college and graduate students. Answers were in range. CS majors literally believed that 40% of Americans are black and a third of the population lives in Texas.
What a person needs to answer correctly is sociocultural awareness.
I think this still shows a poor grasp of percentages/statistics. If you were to follow up the Texas question by asking in turn, “what percentage live in California?” " How about New York?" “And Florida?” “So then what percentage live in the 46 remaining states plus US territories?” you’d watch a classroom of students slowly realize they’ve way surpassed 100% thanks to their overinflated initial estimates. Or conversely, if you gave them a paper with a list of states and asked them to write down what percentage of Americans lived in each state next to the state’s name, it might not be accurate, but it would probably add up to 100% for significantly more respondents.
The over/under estimation problem is almost certainly worsened when you ask about a single demographic in isolation, rather than all possible demographics at once.
I wonder if the questions were phrased like “none/some/many/most/all” and not percentages?
I don’t know how else a significant sample size would end up with an average guess that 1/3 of the US population lives in NYC.