

Which country read the most - ulam2
http://mentalfloss.com/article/55344/which-country-reads-most

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Link-
There's something fishy about this infographic.

"The Culture Score Index Series is based on further analysis of the NOP World
Roper Reports Worldwide(TM) survey, which includes in-depth personal
interviews with more than 30,000 people age 13 and older in 30 countries
between December 2004 and February 2005."

This is a relatively minuscule sample compared to India's population which is
~= 1.3Billion in 2004/2005\. Same applies for many other countries. The
results are not indicative at all.

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shalmanese
It's easy to think that but it's not true. Regardless of population size,
providing a sample is truly random, a sample size of 300 is enough to measure
with an accuracy of + or - 3%. Increasing sample size much beyond this does
not meaningfully increase accuracy.

An analogy I've found useful thinking about this is, if you have a pot of
soup, tasting a teaspoon is enough to figure out whether the soup is
oversalted or not, regardless of the size of the soup pot, providing the soup
is well mixed.

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Link-
Assuming the set is homogeneous! Which in this case, is not. A sample
extracted from a more or less financially stable region of the country will
have drastically different output than a sample extracted from a poorer area.
Your assumption about 'the soup well mixed' is less probable to be true, given
the lack of any evidence supporting the claim that this study is either
meaningful or properly executed.

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shalmanese
Right, if there's a flaw in the study, it's in the representativeness, not the
sample size.

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Paul_S
Reading what? Newspapers? This survey is meaningless. At least use the number
of books as your measure. Maybe what this shows is that the UK has the fastest
readers in the world.

On the other hand in my experience readership is rather poor in the UK. All I
hear at work is how amazing some TV programme was and you'd expect positive
sample bias in a software shop.

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oneeyedpigeon
As a UK citizen, I find this pretty depressing. It doesn't mention what form
of reading it's measuring, though. BTW, usability tip: if you have to write
"Don't squint" next to something, that's a sure tip that you're doing it
wrong.

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chestnut-tree
It is pretty depressing. On a more positive note: if you look at this list of
books published per country per year, the UK does pretty well (even better if
you divide the number of books by population)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year)

It suggests there is at least an appetite to purchase books in the UK - even
if we're not reading them!

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seizethecheese
Hmmm, India has a literacy rate below 75 percent and we're supposed to believe
that on average they read the most in the world?

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brador
Well, if you're Indian and can take the survey you're probably in the pool of
well educated who can read. Poor survey, extreme sample bias, HN deserves
better.

