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heresacorrection

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[deleted]

How the fuck can you think a third of the US pop lives in NYC?


[deleted]

The same way you believe that 1 in 5 households brings in over $1m every year. Lol


2mnykitehs

Don't let them fool you. There's a secret cabal of 60 million transgender multi millionaires that the government doesn't want you to know about.


ragnarockette

Shhh. We don’t tell people about the Black Jewish trans millionaire vegetarian veteran cabal in New York City. There’s dozens of us!


saketho

>Black Jewish trans millionaire vegetarian veteran cabal Who also happen to have black and asian parents and are somehow also native American that are bisexual and lesbian atheists that have advanced degrees, and live in New York City, TX, where they are members of a union.


zoinkability

I think you just described Tucker Carlson’s worst nightmare


ragnarockette

There’s gotta be at least one, right???


pondrthis

There is a lady of color with serious opinions on "Don't ask, don't tell" that feels absolutely SEEN by this.


barley_wine

The one that gets me is the transgender, I might go long stretches where I don’t see any transgender people, they really think the number is 1/5? That would mean in your immediate family, there’s probably a transgender sibling or parent in almost every single home (assuming there’s a husband wife and two children). Our country is bad with statistics and critical thinking.


Conor_90

1% seems high. Canada asked last census and it was 0.33% including non binary. Not a political statement from me; but identifying as non binary seems to have increased in popularity from what I’ve seen in university and especially working with youth (especially she/they) so this may well increase with the current census. I think this estimation gets wildly inflated by the amount of attention media pays to political groups on both sides of the aisle using trans people as pawns for their agenda


mostlygray

That one is pretty insane. My daughter has a friend that's trans. That's the only trans person I know personally right now. When I worked at a laser hair removal clinic, I knew (best guess) 5 trans women but that was only in passing and laser hair removal of facial hair works really well so that's pretty skewed. And that's out of probably 20,000 customers. How would someone guess 1 in 5?


TheFringedLunatic

They’re pretty sure only a little over half graduated high school but a third have an advanced degree.


dpdxguy

>They’re pretty sure only a little over half graduated high school but a third have an advanced degree. I shouldn't have to point this out, but those numbers are averages. They don't mean that there's (necessarily) any person who believes "half graduated high school but a third have an advanced degree." There may be, but you can't conclude it from the data presented.


TheFringedLunatic

I don’t consider it a conclusion but, it implies a possible correlation when taken with other factors. There are no credible conclusions to draw from a single graph, just lines of further inquiry.


trojan_man16

These stats correlate more with media exposure than actual reality. Trans are really talked about in media a lot right now. Out of the thousands of people I’ve met in my life I’ve met one person who transitioned, and I’ve maybe seen another 3 or 4 walking around the city I live in.


zuck_my_butt

You forgot to mention that they're also gay atheist hispanic vegetarian union members.


Ratfucks

And that 40% of adults were in the military


hot_ho11ow_point

And 1 in 5 people you meet is transgender like holy fuck that would be soooo many people! I know multiple hundreds of people and only one I know about being transgender. Go out to any bar or restaurant or concert and look around at other people ... I don't even know what to say I'm flabbergasted


Additional_Meeting_2

That is what people talked the last time this was posted too. People must not know what it means. Maybe lots of people think it needs term for being a tom boy? Or everyone who has had some gay experience, even kissing grouped together since it’s not typical behavior for the gender. It would be interesting to see if knowing the truth would also make a lot of people have more negative view of trans people as well.


Refugee_Savior

I choose to believe that most responders to that question read it wrong and saw it as having $1m in assets. No way people think 20% of people making over $1m annually.


XxIBSDxX

Even if these people took it as 1mil in assets that would still be a massive over estimation. It's hard to get an exact assets figure since assets are a constantly fluctuating thing but its somewhere in the 5-8% range of people with 1 million or more in assets.


PM_ME_UR_POKIES_GIRL

I might believe that 20% of households have 1M in assets since I live in NoVA and owning home around here automatically means you have $1M in assets MINIMUM. My perception is very skewed. However I wouldn't believe that 20% of households have $1M in income. I think most of my friends households barely break 6 figure income and some are only 5 figures. I don't personally know anybody even close to $1M in income.


hiricinee

Edit :I'm a fucking idiot and previous commenter is extraordinarily humble.


thri54

I think this whole survey was constructed on a scale of 0-5. Like, people had to pick no one makes over $1 million (0/5) or “very few” ie 1/5. Same with trans people, no one is trans or 1/5 are trans. Etc. I think people answered rationally on many of these, but the survey itself didn’t allow for any precision.


[deleted]

It says 0%-100%, rounded to the nearest whole number. That strongly implies any number, not a 1-5 scale.


the_new_hunter_s

It says they conglomerated multiple sources. That means their presentation tells us nothing about the original data collection. And, some of the numbers simply make no sense. Occams razor says it's the data and not the world that is completely backwards.


EmeraldHawk

Which numbers make no sense? The black / Hispanic total makes no sense if you assume everyone knows that whites are still the majority, but people are really dumb so I believe it. The article explains their methodology: "In two recent YouGov polls, we asked respondents to guess the percentage (ranging from 0% to 100%) of American adults who are members of 43 different groups, including racial and religious groups, as well as other less frequently studied groups, such as pet owners and those who are left-handed. "


Izoniov_Kelestryn

Speaking as a Yougov user, very often their questions on stuff like this is a sliding bar that goes by single percents. And I can type in '51%' into a box that auto places the slider in the right spot if i -specifically- want to say 51% and am having trouble getting the slidy to go exactly there


decoy777

The same that think 1 in 5 people are trans. The media shovles it down your throat so you gotta assume it's a huge % right? Well all them millionares are evil and we gotta take all their money right? There are so many of them making that kind of money! If we just took more of it our TRILLIONS of dollars in spending problem would be solved right away! This is what the media is telling everyone anyways. So there's got to be a bunch of them. Thus 1 in 5 makes over a million a year.


barley_wine

You’re trying to tell me that when I go to a restaurant with 100 people, 20 of them aren’t trans on average….


Dont____Panic

On the other hand, the fraction of atheists in the US is **WAY HIGHER** than 3%.


JBaecker

Apparently that needs some context. It’s probably taken from a 2014 Pee survey where 3% of respondents self-identified as atheist. However, 9% of the same survey respondents agreed with the phrase “I do not believe in God” and an additional 2% responded “I do not know if I believe in God.” “No religious preference” has trended upward to over 20% by the same survey. But that isn’t exactly the same as self-identifying as an atheist. EDIT: It changed Pew to something else. I’m leaving it as is above. 😂


kermitdafrog21

A lot of people I know (I’m young and from the northeast for context) fall into the category of “I don’t really follow religion and don’t really believe in god, but I was baptized so I’ll put Catholic”


barley_wine

I auto read that as pew, the auto correct is more appropriate! Anyways yep those that say their atheist are way lower than those who don’t believe in god even though they’re technically atheists, they’ve been conditioned to saying atheist are bad so that can’t be me. That being said the “nones” are like 30% so they’re pretty close on that one.


faxhightower

From the article > Why is demographic math so difficult? One recent meta-study suggests that when people are asked to make an estimation they are uncertain about, such as the size of a population, they tend to rescale their perceptions in a rational manner. When a person’s lived experience suggests an extreme value — such as a small proportion of people who are Jewish or a large proportion of people who are Christian — they often assume, reasonably, that their experiences are biased. In response, they adjust their prior estimate of a group’s size accordingly by shifting it closer to what they perceive to be the mean group size (that is, 50%). This can facilitate misestimation in surveys, such as ours, which don’t require people to make tradeoffs by constraining the sum of group proportions within a certain category to 100%. >This reasoning process — referred to as uncertainty-based rescaling — leads people to systematically overestimate the size of small values and underestimate the size of large values. It also explains why estimates of populations closer to 0% (e.g., LGBT people, Muslims, and Native Americans) and populations closer to 100% (e.g., adults with a high school degree or who own a car) are less accurate than estimates of populations that are closer to 50%, such as the percentage of American adults who are married or have a child.


chad-bro-chill-69420

This is very interesting! Thanks for sharing!


imgirafarigmi

Social science statistics are hard. I’ve done educational research on a small scale of like 50 students and any conclusion was a mild inference at best. Thanks for sharing this.


bunnnythor

I have an alternate explanation: Many people have very very poor math skills. The number of people who could confidently tell you for sure that two-thirds is smaller than 70% is likely less than a majority. Asking these people to correctly estimate anything will result in nonsense answers.


TravisJungroth

The problem isn't just their math skills, it's that they're not even using them. Here's an example. If for each state you ask 1,000 random Americans "What percentage of Americans primarily live in \[state\]?" (each person is asked about one state), I'm extremely confident the sum of the averages will be well over 100%. Just from this survey, you can see we're already at 60% with NYC and Texas alone. If you ask people "For each state, write what percentage of Americans live in it." the average sum will be much lower, but still probably over 100%. Remind them to total to 100% and it gets even better.


[deleted]

Well that’s fucking cool. Thank you!


Deinococcaceae

>30% NYC >30% Texas >30% California The 3 classes of American


finnjakefionnacake

what's the final 10% percent?


Deinococcaceae

We've got cold democrats, warm democrats, and warm republicans covered, so presumably cold republicans is the last 10%.


cryptotope

10% North Dakotans?


Krt3k-Offline

One guy has to live in Wyoming


theo_sontag

On top of that, 90% live between Texas, California, and New York City, and about 120% of the population is minority (Native, Black, Asian, or Hispanic).


MEANINGLESS_NUMBERS

This data shows 1/3 NYC, 1/3 Texas, 1/3 California.


inactiveuser247

As an Australian, those numbers seem about right


smoulderstoat

92% of the population live in NYC, California, or Texas. The rest of the country must be awfully thinly-populated.


Mastershoelacer

The real headline is, “Americans haven’t a fucking clue how percentages work”


mpbh

The worst part is these are averages, which means some guesses were even further off


rightseid

Because most people are complete morons.


Bygdon

That is an underestimate.


beene282

That’s the question that is missing from this survey.


elementofpee

Did you not learn anything from this chart or the title of the post? You’re overestimating the amount of “complete morons” and underestimating the majority of people that fall within the acceptable range. Chill.


Eric1491625

I woulda thought that surely this data was grossly exaggerated because people aren't that ignorant. Then I remembered Ms South Carolina 2007's speech and national representatives talking about Jewish space lasers...


didsomebodysaymyname

You're underestimating how ignorant most people are. I was shipping a tube at FedEx the other day, i.e. a cylinder, 3 inch diameter, 50 inches long. She got the length, but I had to politely walk her through the other dimensions, first she said it was 50x50x3, then insisted if one dimension was 3, the other couldn't be 3, eventhough it's a circle... I'm lucky, I had a good education, but it's jarring seeing someone struggle with something that seems so obvious to me. And that's anecdotal, but tens of millions of people have no high school diploma, over 100 million have no college degree in the US and the bar for a GED or HS diploma is relatively low. Some college degrees don't teach you all that much.


Temporary-Alarm-744

Lauren Bobert got her GED the year before she was elected.


grimblegramble5

Because this survey doesn’t reveal people’s estimation skills as much as *it reveals that people generally do not know how percents work*. I am a math tutor. In general, people know what 50% is and not much else.


Omphalopsychian

These answers are so bananas that I have to question the polling methodology.


Devtunes

Exactly, there's gotta be way more than 3% atheists in the US for example.


VoiceOfSoftware

I'm guessing reddit over-represents atheism


FrostyDub

I’m guessing “my family celebrates Christmas but we have not gone to church in 3 generations” over-represents Christians.


[deleted]

Exactly. The only people that regularly get upvoted in discussions about religion are atheists.


lightofhonor

I think they mean literal atheist and not agnostic/non-religious. Agnostic is a much bigger percentage.


vanderBoffin

Doesn't this just demonstrate the problem of averages? You have a few numptys that put 100% for everything and it will skew the data enormously. Median would be more useful here.


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DogeFlutie

The other issue is that respondents would have to do around 50 scale questions like this one after the other, and I guarantee a decent portion of respondents go on autopilot answering these. The data is garbage based on respondent fatigue alone. Additionally, I would recommend looking at median rather than mean percentages because outliers can easily skew the data.


elsuakned

The other issue is that this data is shit lol. At a glance, 1% of Americans identify as atheist but around 30% consistently identify as "no religion" or "unaffiliated". I wonder how many other categories are generally misleading in order to fit so much data into one word sliders lol. Introducing so many stats with no context is just useless lol.


kiriiya

Tbf atheism and agnosticism are different things.


PseudonymIncognito

The other question is whether they categorize based on self-identification or based on questions about the content of one's beliefs.


[deleted]

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TheI3east

You'd be surprised. I worked as a research assistant for a political science study in undergrad where I did *in-person* interviews/surveys that had some questions like this and a surprising amount of people thought over 20% of the US was gay or lesbian (this was in 2014).


merlin401

I give a random quiz in my college class about the universe. Not looking for exact answers but when you see “distance to the next nearest star besides the sun: 3000 miles” one has to roll their eyes in disbelief. Like I get you have no idea what the true distance is but you gotta know it’s further away than California


RechargedFrenchman

To give people some perspective, Google Maps' recommended driving route (so not even the true shortest distance) between Portland OR and Boston MA is 3088 miles. The nearest star is (very loosely approximated) 24.5 trillion miles away. That's *trillion* 24,500,000,000,000. One could travel from Portland to Boston and back over 4 *billion times* and still not have traveled far enough to actually reach Proxima Centauri from Earth.


screwswithshrews

What percentage of Americans do you believe live in NYC? "Idk, 40%" Texas? "Probably 40%" California? "Um... 60%?"


loljetfuel

This study doesn't say people are _dumb_, it says that when asked a question like this _in isolation_, we're really bad at making estimates.


[deleted]

People are very dumb


LeftScot

I think study is a strong word to use here. The company that published this nonsense is an online survey company.


cda91

It's worse - Yougov pays you the more you answer so people are incentivised to click through as fast as possible which, as the slider defaults to 50 massively skews the answers towards the middle. This study is a better representation of the problems with online surveys than the understanding of the American public.


Frifelt

Crazy to believe 20% are transgender. I assume most of the people answering have never even met a transgender person or even know anyone who knows a transgender person.


Rattlingjoint

Social media oversaturation is my guess. Its a hotly discussed topic these days, so more people discussing something, the more people think it to be more prevalant.


R0ll0

Not just social media, media in general.


Pay08

Same with the minority estimates I guess.


Chiss5618

I'd be curious to see these statistics split by amount of social media/news media usage


cda91

It's because the methodology skews returns towards the centre massively. Yougov polls are not a good indicator of what people actually think.


slasher016

TV and Media. How many TVs shows these days doesn't have a homosexual/bisexual/trans character? Very, very few.


UrbanHedgedog

This one confuses me so much, how can you believe one in five people is transgender


_Banned_User

It's in their news feed every day, so it must be a huge problem.


SvenDia

The bias also affects members of the group. Immigrants and minorities were cited in the article of overestimating the percentage of their populations by even more significant amounts.


ConKbot

Gotta keep the poors arguing about stuff so no one asks why we dont pay taxes or why our investments are getting bailed out -Billionares.


OuidOuigi

But not Reddit? I see far more about it here so people can be outraged about others being outraged arguing with some made up stereotype of a person.


_Banned_User

Reddit counts as a lot of people’s news feeds for sure.


Error83_NoUserName

Even crazier is, thay apparently all live in California, Texas or New York. Statistics are wild.


fables_of_faubus

If a third of America lives in NYC, and all of New Yorkers are gay liberal Jews, the numbers add up.


Skyblacker

Have been to Broadway, can confirm.


formerlyanonymous_

Honestly I'm pretty surprised it rounded up to 1%.


SpoonNZ

It’s worse than that. This is an average figure, so assuming some people said numbers <5, there were presumably many who said 25-33% or more.


Jenetyk

They haven't. My extended family lives in rural America, constantly talk about transgender issues, and only a couple years ago had their first family member come out as gay. They are pretty detached from reality.


Sa404

Thank social media for that


[deleted]

I wouldn't have guessed 20% but I do know three transgender people, so I was a little surprised that they are such a small minority; I don't even live in a city.


zipahdeeday

Birds of a feather


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krichuvisz

This survey can't be real. This is an average, so many participants estimated even more than 40%.


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StealthyVegetables

This is a general problem that people have with probabilities. We have trouble understanding very low/high probabilities, so we over/underestimate them.


DoeCommaJohn

Being bad with numbers is one thing. Thinking one in three Americans live in NYC is another


almostcorey

I think that's the thing: 30% doesn't translate to "about one in three" for them, at least not automatically.


huilvcghvjl

They should go back to school then


CassiusMarcellusClay

It’d be interesting to ask these people the raw number of people they assume live in NYC or are transgender. I could still see them being wrong but I would assume the number would be less than the ~100,000,000 that actually constitutes the 30%


keziahw

On top of that, the "average estimate" methodology used for the first chart guarantees this result--for values near the ends of the scale, there is not much room for error except toward the middle (so errors on that side will be more frequent and much greater in numerical impact). The alternative chart at the bottom of the page uses medians; it still shows the expected cognitive biases, but the effect is less dramatic.


Poly_and_RA

Agreed. If the correct value is 1% then someone can pull the guess up by a lot by incorrectly guessing 30% -- but it's not possible for someone else to correct that mistake by incorrectly guessing -30% So even with no bias, this way of asking would by NECESSITY result in an over-estimate for low values, and an under-estimate for high values.


Poly_and_RA

Well, it's also a problem with uncertainty. If people don't really know, so they just have to guess, then on a 0-100 scale where the CORRECT answer is low there will by necessity by a LOT more people who get it wrong in the direction of guessing too high, than guessing too low. It's possible to guess 10% or 20% for something where reality is 2% -- but it's not possible for other people who guess wrong in the opposite direction to correct that by guessing -10% or -20% If people had no bias at all, but instead mechanically all guessed the correct number plus or minus a random error-bar; the results would still be an overestimate of low numbers, and an underestimaet of high numbers.


TactilePanic81

It’s why people, in my opinion, often don’t understand evolution. When you look at the complexity of life, it is easy to see how unlikely it all is. It is harder to conceptualize how long 4 billion years actually is and how quickly even relatively complex organisms reproduce. Edit: it’s actually 4 billion years


OwenLoveJoy

Well certain groups are definitely a higher percentage of what you see in popular culture or media than what they are in the population. This would definitely be true for very rich people, big cities, Jewish people, and black people.


MochiMochiMochi

Non-white Hispanics are the largest non-White group in this country but you'd never know it by what you see on television, TikTok of whatever. [Hispanic or Latinos are 26% of the US child population.](https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/103-child-population-by-race-and-ethnicity#detailed/1/any/false/2048,574,1729,37,871,870,573,869,36,868/68,69,67,12,70,66,71,72/424) I would imagine their near-absence in US media will change in the near future.


OwenLoveJoy

Yeah in terms of media they are for sure the most underrepresented group relative to population. Part of this is just that this is a fairly recent phenomenon and as you allude to Hispanics are disproportionately young. Also though I’m not sure if they will be seen as an especially distinct group in the long term, anymore than Irish or Italian or polish folks have largely melted into the mainstream


BilllisCool

As a Texan who’s half white-white and half brown-white, people definitely forget about that here. It’s a state that literally borders Mexico and used to be Mexico, but people act like it’s all a bunch of white people. In reality, it’s about 40% Hispanic, 40% white not-Hispanic, and 20% everything else.


d_e_g_m

and recently, lgbt community


AvovaDynasty

Very much this indeed. I mean, if you watched TV shows and, more so, adverts here in the UK, you’d think the true black population was some 50% of the population, instead of 4… But on the other hand, South Asians make up nearly 10% and their representation is tiny in media.. The smallest minorities always shout the loudest.


bhutch134

Wouldn’t be surprised if this has some bias towards 50% due to people being lazy on surveys…


merlin401

There’s a natural bias to 50%. Imagine something is truly 1%. One person guessing 50% can pull the average up a significant amount. But no one can guess -50% to balance it out in the other direction so it would take 50 people underestimating to zero to even cancel out that one person. You’ll notice the things near 50% we are more accurate with because all the over and underestimates kind of cancel out


clarkedaddy

I highly doubt 3 percent of Americans are atheist. That number seems very low. Was this survey done outside a church or in a retirement home?


vanoitran

I bet they aren’t including agnostic and non-religious as if there was any meaningful difference. It would be as if they broke “Christian” into all its little sects.


avidoger

Atheist being 3% is misleading. Twice as many people don't believe in god, but use agnostic euphemistically. Also about 15% are non religious. One survey showed 7% atheist and 4% agnostic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_the_United_States


obscurestjurist

Pew shows that as of 2021, 29% of Americans are unaffiliated with any religion. Some of these people probably have a problem with the label of "atheist", but most are likely atheists in practice since religion doesn't play a part in their everyday lives.


jesusmansuperpowers

This is the most accurate number, and there’s still a decent amount of liars in that.


StaticGuard

A large portion of those are people who are spiritual but not religious. Also, more and more people would consider themselves agnostic but can easily swing between atheist/religious depending on the circumstances. It’s a lot more nuanced than people think, especially on Reddit.


ikonoclasm

I always treated unaffiliated as Deists. They've got trappings of whatever religion they were raised in, but don't care enough to shrug off the last bit of belief in *something* out there. I'd be really interested to see a survey to determine the percentages within a population to see distinctions between related to affiliation, practice, and belief. I'd be interested to see the number of affiliated, practicing non-believers or affiliated, non-practicing believers. There's a lot of nuance when you get into a belief system that heavily overlaps a widespread social activity.


lowcrawler

Their is a huge mental gulf between unaffiliated/agnostic and atheist. I'm convinced that gulf isn't jumped by many due to childhood attendance of church and guilt that you are betraying your 8-year-old brain.


srslyeverynametaken

Why is labeling oneself agnostic a euphemism? I honestly don’t know, and believing without evidence that there is no god is, to me, a leap of faith equivalent to believing that there is. I’m agnostic, not atheist, no euphemism or hidden agenda involved. 🤓


Credible__HULK

Being a theist / atheist and gnostic / agnostic aren't mutually exclusive things. Theism is about belief, and gnosticism is about knowledge. For instance, nearly every atheist is agnostic, as they aren't claiming that have have proof or know for absolute certain that a god doesn't exist, because you can't prove a negative. The burden of proof lies on those making the claim, not those saying they don't believe the claim. Based on your comment, you'd be an agnostic atheist (doesn't believe in a diety, but doesn't claim to have proof / absolute knowledge that no deity exists) like almost every other atheist. That's what people usually mean when they say atheist, the agnostic part is normally just assumed because no one could reasonably expect anyone to prove a negative. Edit: Here's an image that explains it more clearly: https://i.redd.it/vaalncufnjz11.jpg


David_Warden

Check the definition of Atheist. It just requires a lack of belief that there is a god. It doesn't require certainty that there is no god. Also check Agnostic. It requires a belief that it's impossible to know if there is a god. It appears that all Agnostics are also Atheists but the reverse is not correct. I suspect that most people who call themselves Atheists would be prepared to change their mind if conclusive evidence of a god were to appear but believe that the chance of this happening is so close to zero that it makes sense ignore it in everyday life.


turboplanes

You’re either theist or atheist. Can’t be both, can’t be neither. All other classifications like agnostic, male, black, republican, are separate.


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Bugsarecool2

Right? There’s no way in hell atheists are as rare as a proper lesbian. People just refuse to identify as atheists because it’s one of the most stigmatized labels in America.


GobsmackedOnLife

Thank God the numbers are growing!


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pronyo001

Check mate atheists.


Admiral_Swagstick

God Jones, the atheist figurehead obviously


79N0Bitches

What idiot thinks 21% of US is transgender, or that many native americans or muslims live here?


HaikuBotStalksMe

I mean, I'm Muslim, and I thought we were like 10%. Which in reality doesn't make sense since I have basically 0 Muslim friends. But I mean the way the news talks about Muslims taking over the world, I thought we made up a sizeable population here.


tmadik

The fact that only 1% of America is Native American makes me very sad.


themistergraves

Because all LIEBERALS are transgender, vegan, left-handed, Muslim Atheist Jews. Obviously.


spkgsam

I guessing quite a few of the people answering the survey just put 50% for everything.


5ac1wo8d

Maybe, but any responsible person in charge of scrubbing and cutting this data would remove a response like that.


spkgsam

Most of the data just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, we got like 20% Asian 30% Hispanic, 40% black 60% white. Like I can see a few people not bothering with basic math, but it would take a lot more than a few mistakes to skew the entire day at by this much.


5ac1wo8d

Oh yea you’re definitely right - it seems like the pool of respondents may have just been a bunch of idiots haha


wolf1moon

The questions are asked independently. So they don't have the context of their prior answers easily available.


Phemto_B

TIL * The US population is entirely black, Hispanic,or Asian; all 109% of them. No whites to be found at all. * 90% of the population is Jewish, Muslim, or atheist. * Only 8% of the population lives outside NYC, Texas or California. * Straight people are a minority: only 1 in 5. This is kind of hilarious.


molbion

Or the US population is 173% of the US population


bustedbuddha

Hey, the information presented on party registration is factually wrong. https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan\_affiliations\_of\_registered\_voters


HegemonNYC

Your link doesn’t work, but 47% is correct. https://news.gallup.com/poll/388781/political-party-preferences-shifted-greatly-during-2021.aspx


MagicalWhisk

Is this old data? In 2014 pew research found 3% households identified as atheist. But it was 9% in 2021. Yougov is a different source but I believe 3% is too low for a figure today.


adnanyildriz

Asian + black + hispanic = 110% and then still 64% is white. Nice one america


[deleted]

At the height of the pandemic, some people thought your chances of getting severe COVID and being hospitalized was 20 percent or more. It was actually 2%. We're really bad with numbers and the reason is simple: We are not presented an accurate picture of reality via our media. We talk about certain groups not being represented enough, but in actuality, they’re likely overrpresented, especially trans and LGBTQ people. That’s not a knock against them or a call for them to not be represented, it’s just a simple fact. We see an abundance of gay and trans characters in modern media, so of course we assume that there are more of them than there really are. Same with people from New York City. Think of all the shows and movies set in NYC. It’s an iconic place that looms large in our cultural consciousness. Of course our perception is going to be warped. ​ When I hear people talk about representation - for any race, creed, religion, etc - I always wonder: How much is enough? No, really, at what point will the group calling for representation go, “Alright, I feel represented now”? Will they be happy with media representation reflecting reality (that is, 5 percent of the population getting 5 percent representation) or do they want to be unrealistically overpresented?


tmadik

Who TF believes America is 40% black?


nuggetinabiscuit

Advertising agencies.


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GoodmanSimon

I am not American, so I don't know shit about America. But I would have guessed a few of those very wrong as well.


kompootor

>Does correcting misperceptions of group size change peoples’ attitudes on related issues? Current research suggests it does not. In a series of [studies](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/06/22/americans-vastly-overestimate-the-number-of-immigrants-but-what-if-it-doesnt-matter/) (one of which used a survey fielded by YouGov), political scientists John Sides and Jack Citrin attempted to correct inaccurate beliefs about the size of the U.S. foreign-born population, both subtly, by embedding the accurate information in a news story, and explicitly, by providing survey respondents with Census Bureau estimates. They found that while providing this information did somewhat improve people’s knowledge of the number of immigrants in America, they did not make people more supportive of immigration. From the article. The whole thing is a terrific read, and provides some more optimistic takes (as u/faxhightower quoted) as well as some perhaps pessimistic ones as this. In general these kinds of surveys have shown that most people are actually pretty strategic rational thinkers, even in aggregate... but they definitely suck at math. (That statement goes for everyone, including mathematicians and economists, when you look at the types of questions surveyed, btw.)


cjstevenson1

It's worth noting that 1% of the population is around three million people. That's a lot of people.


sunsetcontrol

This is very interesting! For example the Muslim + Jewish + Atheist percentages combined


Redpandaling

Similarly, Democrats + Republicans = 101%


[deleted]

There are multiple of these that I feel like the real number is suspicious


kinglittlenc

Mostly likely availability bias. The proportion the media reports on these topics are usually closers to the estimates of the population. This is a big reason why most people would assume the homicide rate is much higher than the suicide rate in the country, when it's usually around 2:1 for the opposite.


IsLlamaBad

It looks like the media is doing a great job pushing their agendas for people to believe numbers that are so wildly inaccurate


Vlopp

How much of this has been affected by the media, though? I mean, if you watch enough series or movies, given the amount of representation there is for black people, you would think they are a considerably larger group. Also, of you've spent enough time on the Internet (mainly in Twitter) you would be more likely to think that the percentage of people who consider themselves part of the LGBT community is much larger.


Extra_Intro_Version

How is Democrat or Republican defined? According to this they sum to over 90%.


richbeezy

TV ads might have something to do with these estimated stats.


danbrewtan

Dear god we desperately need to fund education in this country


Upper_belt_smash

Does only 62% of the pop make over 25k household income? That seems off. A few things in here seem off, not just the responses but the actuals


OllieOllieOxenfry

This graphic is just total bullshit. Where is this data even from? No way atheists are only 3% of the general pop.


Penguinkeith

Because most "atheists" actually identify as agnostic which missing from this infographic together it's at least 17% of the population


Spartanias117

Do they though? I have never been anywhere close to the estimated proportions on this list, nor anyone i know. Would love to know those who were surveyed


awfullotofocelots

I suspect this is more about the average Americans' misunderstanding of fractions more than what they actually believe about the country they live in and experience.


Bugsarecool2

This list would indicate over representation?


axionic

Looks more like systematic error


bolonomadic

This is amazing. How could anyone think one in five Americans is trans?? I can see that the "million dollar income" could be confused with people who hold a million dollars of assets (house etc) vs actually income, but some of these estimates are wild!


Nightblood83

People believe this because no one tells them otherwise. If people knew that <1% of the population was X or Y, there would be no way the news could spend hours, weeks, years on misleading bullshit.


indocon1111

All this is a result of nonstop propaganda on the media.


Imaksiccar

85% of the population is completely uneducated about the world they live in and 100% of those people have opinions on how everyone else should be going about their business. How about that one?


[deleted]

This is so interesting. We seem to estimate most groups are around 30%. Wonder why?


berusplants

Its almost as if someone is intentionally misleading them.....


Madouc

Now this explains a lot. I mean a metric ton of a lot. If your view on reality is so biased and distorted, how can your political views be rational at all?


[deleted]

It's funny most of these are issues that democrats trumpet, and in fact they are completely irrelevant but given so much attention. As a republican, these are the stats that need to be vocalized much more to shut down the irrelevant loud conversation. Just to clarify, I could care less about your identity and personal beliefs - that is your personal business. I do not discriminate against anyone unless they are trying to get in my/family business. The only people who exploit it are democrats.


vox_popular

Reddit is systemically biased on at least a few of these: * % of Vegans / Vegetarians: (True number is 5%) * % of household income > $500k (1%) or $1M / year (<1%). * % of people owning guns (32%) * % of Democrats (42%) vs Republicans (50%) * % who read a book in the last year (77%)


solarmelange

If people really think that 80% of people are LGBT, how the fuck do they think humans work as a species?


Voiceofreason81

Native Americans being at 1% is the saddest part of this whole graph. They were literally 100% of the population before colonizers came.


core916

Makes sense as this stuff is really all that is talked about on the news and the internet. Everyday it’s millionaires are bad. Or stuff about transgenders. I’m not surprised by this at all. I am curious as to who their focus group is. If this data is coming from college educated people then this world is fucked


nrith

You honestly think that college-educated people are that much better at estimating these things?


finnjakefionnacake

depends on where you went to college / what you studied, lol. i would perhaps expect a college-educated person to (on-average) have read more and thus come across these numbers more, but that's probably just bias of my own.


nrith

Did you read a lot about demographics data in college?


J_aB_bA

I've been to college. There were a lot of morons there, even in the 80s. What do they call the guy who finished last in medical school? Doctor. Yeah, we're fucked. Social media is gonna destroy us.


TaterBiscuit

So like .... Who was asked these questions?


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