this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
827 points (97.8% liked)

Mildly Interesting

21742 readers
25 users here now

This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
(page 3) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Sludgehammer@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

So looking at that chart the average person thinks that (roughly), one in four people are native American, one in four people are Asian, two in five people are black as well as two in five people being Hispanic. Or to use the given percentages the average American thinks that 136% of Americans are non-white. I suppose that explains a lot of the "white genocide" hysteria.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Kowowow@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Wouldn't have guessed you guys would have more vegans than union members

[–] Stowaway@midwest.social 8 points 1 week ago

There are companies that make you watch anti union propaganda as part of orientation. They also pay tons of money to bust up any attempts at unionization. The disinformation thats pushed put about unions is baffling. Anything from its communism to the unions steal your money. Its not super surprising to me at this point.

On the flip side all the wealthy actors are union... Says a thing or two...

[–] roguetrick@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Part of this is people obviously not thinking about one per hundred and just giving a random percentage like number. Everything is clustered around 25, and 50 percent. This isn't reasonably measuring much(if anything as I can assure you nobody believes 90 percent of people live in either Texas, California, or NYC). The headline should be "don't poll people by asking what they think about qualitatively and asking them to translate it into quantitative percentages because you'll receive nonsense." Trying to reach other conclusions from such absolute noise really is just making things up.

[–] prunerye@slrpnk.net 13 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Honestly the most shocking number to me is that 65% of Americans own a house. How can 62% have a household income "over $50,000" and 65% own a house? Is it all old people?

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

30% Jewish, 27% Muslim, 58% Christian, 33% atheist. A very odd mix to estimate.

[–] formergijoe@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

Well only 8% of the population lives outside California, Texas, and NYC.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The math contributes some to this. Let's say the correct answer is 1%, and out of ten people, 9 of them guess 1% and the other guesses 51% - that one guess shifts the average from 1% to 6%. And if it's 1%, then there's no room for people to underestimate and bring the number back down, and the same is true of numbers close to 100%. The numbers closer to the middle don't necessarily mean that people were more correct on an individual level, but that some people overestimated and others underestimated and it came out closer to the right number. The graph ought to give information about the spread of errors and not just the raw average.

[–] wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 week ago

Agree would be better to show the spread and highlight the median since they are more likely to be meaningful. Outliers have a huge impact here

[–] oo1@lemmings.world 8 points 1 week ago

Yes. Box+whiskers plot or something like that.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

29% Asian? 🤣

I fucking wish

As an Asian American, I don't feel safe going to a red jurisdiction.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago (16 children)

Only 85% of the population owns a smartphone, I thought for sure it would be higher than that

load more comments (16 replies)
[–] huppakee@feddit.nl 9 points 1 week ago

the proportion who have at least a high school degree: estimate 65% vs. true 89%

the proportion who have an advanced degree: estimate 37% vs. true 12%

So basically what they guess is ±⅓ has no high school diploma and another ±⅓ has an advanced degree, while in reality ±^1^/~10~ doesn't have a high school diploma and ±^1^/~10~ has an advanced degree.

Meaning while in reality 77% does have a high school degree but not an advanced degree, the estimate is that only 28% does.

[–] Poxlox@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

I did a quick check on one of the facts, the christian one, this says 70% in 2022 but i see 62% for 2022, which is a lot closer to the 58% estimate. Makes me feel a bit sketched out about possible cherry picking, but cool notion still.

[–] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Hold up.

83% have a driver's license but 88% have a car?

So 5% of Americans either have a car for the hell of it, or they drive without a license?

And there's only 3% that are atheists? More people drive without a license than are atheists?

Excuse me?

If these numbers are correct, the US is more fucked than I thought.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›