Kat wrote:
> 1) What is the East End and why is some pub there important?
> 2) What the hell is the Euro 2000 final?
> 3) Who is: Lara Croft, Eminem, or Anthea Turner? Why are they important?
> Why should I care?
It was VERY Brit-centric, but what really scared me was the variance in answer
rates - 86% of the sample knew the East Enders question (it's a suburb of
London, but more specifically a TV soap that has run for years) but hardly
anyone knew the authors - even JK Rowling who is very "in the news".
Even Lara Croft (the heroine of the Tomb Raider series of computer games)
wasn't well known, but the disputes and problems they are having on the set
during filming of the movie spin-off have been in the news in Britain quite a
bit.
I still don't get how so many of the questions had 90% or more didn't know -
statistically, even if they all guess there should be 25% guessing the right
answer. I can understand that 97% of respondents didn't know who the Poet
Laureate was, but how come 25% couldn't guess it?
As for the why should you care, the only one I would consider there is the fact
that Eminem is a very popular rap artist who gets famous by promoting some
seriously ugly memes, particularly violence and abuse of women. The Euro 2000
is a soccer match (while anything contested solely in North America is called a
world series, games genuinely played between many different countries generally
have much less grand sounding names)
Russell Chapman
Brisbane Australia
