

1 in 10 Americans think HTML is a sexually transmitted disease - tayk
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-1-10-americans-html-std-study-finds-20140304,0,1188415.story#ixzz2v1RQr6Ni

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fishtoaster
To clarify, 10% of Americans who fill out surveys on coupon sites ticked a box
indicating they think HTML is an STD. Since each question had only 3 options,
I would imagine you'll get at least 10% for any option, no matter how
ridiculous, as a result of people clicking without reading just to get their
coupon.

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seizethecheese
How is this on the front page? I could get 10% of Americans to click pretty
much any box if I designed the survey appropriately. Good riddance, this makes
me which HN had a down-vote button.

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argumentum
These kinds of articles _willful_ _schadenfreude_. From the bottom of the
article:

 _The study involved 2,392 men and women 18 years of age or older. The
participants were not told that the study was specifically looking into their
knowledge of tech terms. They were presented with both tech and non-tech terms
and were asked to choose from three possible definitions._

So in reality, 10% thought that "sexually transmitted disease" was a better
option than the other two presented (presumably one was actually correct).

Many conclusions made were based on answers that were deceptively close to
being right. I.e.

 _23% thought an "MP3" was a "Star Wars" robot. It is actually an audio file._
(i.e. c-3po)

 _18% identified "Blu-ray" as a marine animal. It is a disc format typically
used to store high-definition videos._ (manta rays _are_ marine animals, and
are blue)

In addition, one might easily say this is evidence of the average American's
_intelligence_ in outsourcing things they don't need to know to Google and the
web.

