
North Americans are the biggest bullshitters - js2
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/04/30/who-are-the-biggest-bullshitters
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js2
Link to study:

[http://ftp.iza.org/dp12282.pdf](http://ftp.iza.org/dp12282.pdf)

Economist summary:

 _A new study of the phenomenon has found that North America is especially
prone to speaking bull. John Jerrim, Phil Parker and Nikki Shure, three
academics, have used an educational survey of 40,000 teenage students in nine
English-speaking countries to find out who is most likely to spout nonsense.
They inserted a section into the questionnaire which asked students how well
they understood a collection of 16 mathematical concepts. Some were familiar,
such as “polygon” and “probability”, but three were fake: “proper number”,
“subjunctive scaling” and “declarative fraction”.

The results show substantial differences between countries. Canadian and
American teenagers were especially likely to profess knowledge of these bogus
topics, whereas the Scots and Irish were perfectly happy to admit their
ignorance. In news that will shock nobody, in every country men claimed to be
experts more often than women. The rich were more boastful than the poor. More
surprising was the finding that immigrants were generally more likely to bluff
about maths than native students were.

What explains these differences? The academics doubt that the bullshitters
were simply trying to impress the questionnaire’s markers. The students who
bluffed about maths were just as likely as the non-bluffers to admit that they
had skipped school recently, for example. A more likely answer is that the
blaggers over-estimated their own knowledge. They also tended to rate
themselves highly when it came to gauging their own popularity, perseverance
on academic tasks and problem-solving ability. The data suggest that they
might not be consciously lying, but instead be weaving their own fantasies._

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ordu
I wonder how immigrant status works. How much of their bullshit can be
explained by non-native language for a test. When you read foreign term for a
math notion (or any term from any domain), often you are unable to identify
it, while you are know it and all you need is to read wikipedia article and to
recognize familiar math constructions.

I might think that the 'proper number' is the 'perfect number', for example.
'Subjunctive scaling' is decidedly is not something I know: it is about logic,
I studied it but then successfully forgot after exam. While 'declarative
fraction'... What is it? Is it a some way to write down a number in fractional
notation and associated set of numbers that can be expressed that way?
Probably I know it, just do not recognize the term.

