May 16, 2014

Smarter than the average bear

Online polling company YouGov asked people in the US and Britain about how their intelligence compared to other people.

For the US, the results were

usintel

 

They pulled that graph only seconds after I found it, and replaced it with the more plausible

intelligence2

The British appear to be slightly more reluctant that the Americans to say they’re smarter than average, though it would be unwise to assume they are less likely to believe it.

 

selfassess1-2

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »