Top 10% In Science

[joreth]

Considering how easy the questions were, I'm actually quite embarassed on behalf of my country for this score:

The Science Knowledge Quiz



In the question-by-question breakdown, they compare your answers with how many people in several demographics got that question right, such as men, women, education level categories, and age group categories.

I found it very interesting that the women did better than the men on the questions about medicine (for example, more women than men know the answer to whether antibiotics kill viruses and bacteria and which over-the-counter drug is recommended to reduce heart attacks, but men did way better on questions of science "trivia", like if lasers are made from sound waves and what GPS uses to find its location).  I think this fits stereotypes of women as the "homemaker", because it was always supposed to be the mother who took the kids to medical appointments and maintained the medicine cabinet (along with all other groceries), but the men are expected to just know "stuff".  And that really annoys me.

My age group (31-49) did consistently and significantly better on every question except 1 (where we came in second to the youngest age group), and, not surprisingly, those who graduated college swept every category over those with lesser amounts of formal education. But it was damn depressing to see just how few people actually got the questions right regardless of what demographic "won".

There's something wrong when a college senior / drop-out who hasn't used math in so long that simple addition requires a pencil and paper, who switched majors to the Liberal Arts because the Freshman Biology course required for the Veterinarian's degree was too much work, and whose eyes glaze over when people start talking about processor speed does better than 90% of the population on a very easy, 12-question quiz on basic science.

Comments

[petite-lambda.livejournal.com]

I got all 12 correct, too, although I wasn't confident about the first one -- the heart attack drug (all the rest were easy). So, I'm inclined not to be too hard on people who didn't know that one... :-)

I think this fits stereotypes of women as the "homemaker", because it was always supposed to be the mother who took the kids to medical appointments and maintained the medicine cabinet (along with all other groceries), but the men are expected to just know "stuff". And that really annoys me.


My boyfriend and I fit the stereotype perfectly. He just knows stuff, about anything. He explains to me how printers work and why clouds don't fall from the sky and all kinds of stuff from economics to physics. He was one of these kids who swallow up entire encyclopedias when they are young, and then continue to have both curiosity and good memory. I wasn't.
And it's annoying when someone says "duh, of course, he's a guy and you're a girl", because, like you, I don't think that this trait is intrinsically correlated with gender. But, you know, maybe we are wrong...

[joreth]

Nope, it's that boys are conditioned to be interested in stuff like that and girls aren't, so when it happens that someone naturally fits that pattern, we use confirmation bias to assume the stereotype must exist for a reason.

Several studies have shown that it only takes a very little amount of conditioning or education to "train" girls to behave and/or respond exactly like guys in "guy" areas, like spatial dynamics. And that's because the guys have been getting that conditioning from birth, but the girls were simply lacking in it, so it didn't take much to "catch up" because it's not *actually* a "natural" gender-line trait. But when you're force-fed from birth the expectation that you should be any particular thing because of gender, it's really difficult to ferret out what is "natural" for boys and girls and what is conditioned. I'm just stubborn enough and far enough on the "boy" extreme that the conditioning didn't take very well.

I was one of those kids who used to read encyclopedias for fun (seriously, cover to cover like a book) and I have a photographic memory (which, for the record, does not mean that one has a *better* memory than anyone else, it means that one remembers things visually, so I could recall the information by "reading" the page in my mind, which makes it *seem* like it's more accurate).

I know a little bit about a wide range of topics and I'm a voracious reader in general. I've always been the one that all kids go to (and now lots of adults go to) when they're curious about a topic but don't want to go through the effort of looking things up. Of course, when *I* get that way, I just go ask tacit :-)

[petite-lambda.livejournal.com]

Several studies have shown that it only takes a very little amount of conditioning or education to "train" girls to behave and/or respond exactly like guys in "guy" areas, like spatial dynamics.

I was very excited to hear it, because I was long ago curious about this subject, and I was sure that it would be no problem to locate these studies on the Internet. However, after 20 minutes, I admit I'm frustrated... Can you please give me a link? Or simply recall anything you can about where you read it and what it said? Thanks!

Btw., thanks for explaining about photographic memory. However, when I looked it up in various sources on the Web, I couldn't find one that used the term in the same way you do. All the things I read thus far equate the terms "photographic memory" and "eidetic memory" to mean the ability to recall visual images in memory with extreme accuracy and/or in abundant volume and/or for a long time. [And so far, the existence of only four adults with photographic memory, in this sense, has been confirmed ("hyperthymestic syndrome")]. I haven't found anyone who used the term "photographic memory" to mean the condition where all their memories are visual (in particular, here (http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1693), in an article on photographic memory, the author says "This ability has been particularly interesting to me because I am a visual person and my memories are in the form of images, but I do not have a photographic memory").

[joreth]

Pick up the book Same Difference - it collects a bunch of studies done on the subject.

And The Skeptics Guide To The Universe podcast reviewed the topic of photographic memory where they cleared up some misconceptions about what it is that continue to get perpetuated on the internet. I wish I could remember which episode it was, but I can't.

[joreth]

I also over-simplified the definition for the sake of brevity. There are a very small handful of people that have the version of eidetic that is like turning on a recording where they recite things in perfect accuracy. But there are a larger group of people who remember things almost exclusively visually, and the memories are very, very accurate, but not perfect. They are subject to all the same flaws that all memories are, including failing with age.

It's a common symptom, people with photographic memories tend to lose some of their ability when they get older, just like everyone else, but because they relied on their memory being so accurate, it seems to be more distressing to them (us) when even small examples of not-perfect memory are noticed.

As an aside, I actually *did* go into those recital trances when I was younger. If someone asked me a question and the answer hit on some trigger for something I had stored in memory, I could recite entire books, word for word, much to my parents' annoyance.

I was also really good at mimicking tone and inflection, and to this day, my accent changes based on who is talking around me. It changes so quickly and seamlessly that my best friend didn't even realize that the accent I use with her wasn't my "natural" accent. I'm not even sure what my natural accent is anymore.

[joreth]

And I really ought to write this stuff out on Notepad or something, then reply later, so I don't have multiple replies :-)

One example of such a study that stands out in my memory is one in which they showed men and women a flat screen or paper with a 3D object drawn on it. They then had to match it up with the same object drawn from another angle. The men scored significantly better than the women.

But then they gave both genders a computer that allowed them to view a 3D object in a 2D medium (on a screen) where they could actually "turn" the object and look at it from other angles.

Then they took the test again. The men scored the same and the women's scores matched the men. This was only after something like 20 minutes of "training".

There was another study done on MRI images, and I don't remember the details here, but it turned out that, when asking men and women certain questions, both genders arrived at the same conclusions, but different areas in their brain lit up when they did it. This implies that physically, we may still be different, but it only means that we have to use different methods to have the same abilities.

[petite-lambda.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for all the information! I will look into it. I already asked my LDR boyfriend from California who's coming to visit to bring me a copy of "Same Differences".

And I really, really envy your memory. I feep feeling that I could be so much smarter if I could only remember even half of the things I read! *feeling like the protagonist of "Flowers For Algernon"*

[joreth]

I feep feeling that I could be so much smarter if I could only remember even half of the things I read!

It's funny you say that, since I've reached the age where the photographic memory starts to fade a bit, and I'm quite bitter about it. I can't remember stuff like I used to, and I feel as though I've forgotten more things that most people will ever read in their lives.

I definitely feel a strong connection to Algernon. I *know* my memory used to be better, and watching it slip away is a painful experience. That's why I do so much journaling now, why I write an annual holiday letter, and why I take so many pictures.

[joreth]

Oops, that's not the picture I wanted to use

[leora.livejournal.com]

That wasn't especially difficult. I did get them all right. But I wasn't sure about what causes tsunamis, but the correct answer just seemed so likely to be true. But I don't know that much about weather systems. This may relate to the fact that due to the timing of the class, I slept through about 1/3 of Earth Science. I also lost my Earth Science textbook partway through the class and just tried to muddle through without it.

I also expect that I know a lot more medical trivia than most people since my father was a doctor. I asked a lot of questions and I also sometimes read his medical magazines out of curiosity. Most people don't even have access to the magazines.

[emanix.livejournal.com]

Well, I just raised the score a little for the 18-27 age group.

I'd be interested in splitting the stats by age-plus-gender, though. I'm just curious to see if there is more of a gap in knowledge specialisation among the older generations.