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It's an individual fact, certainly, but it has greater implications for a person's understanding of the world. A professor I knew in college taught a non-major
by araneae 16y ago
It's an individual fact, certainly, but it has greater implications for a person's understanding of the world. A professor I knew in college taught a non-majors general biology class, and every semester he put this question on- order according to size, the following: cell, organism, atom, molecule, organ. Apparently this was a very difficult question for them, and it expresses a fundamental lack of understanding of how things work. If they don't know that the Earth is smaller than the Sun, then how can they understand that the Earth is a satellite of the Sun?
>What if women's intelligence distribution has a greater variance?
Sure. But if anything, it has a smaller variance (if there is a difference; the "greater" male variance hypothesis is a bit under fire recently.)
- yummyfajitas 16y agoIf they don't know that the Earth is smaller than the Sun, then how can they understand that the Earth is a satellite of the Sun? To be completely fair, there are stellar bodies much smaller than earth which an earth-sized planet could easily be a satellite of. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_black_hole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_black_hole Then again, if you know about such objects, you probably also know the earth is bigger than the sun.
- TheSOB88 16y ago>Then again, if you know about such objects, you probably also know the earth is bigger than the sun. Tongue-in-cheek?
- yummyfajitas 16y agoThis suggests another reason why 5-10% of people got the question wrong - they weren't paying attention and clicked/typed the wrong choice. (Ok, I admit it - I just don't know anything about astronomy. Also, elephants are bigger than the moon, right?)
- araneae 16y agoRight, but there's still a sex difference. So you're saying women lack attention to detail?
- TheSOB88 16y agoPerhaps smart women are less likely to use the site than smart men. I have heard that more men than women use dating sites, so the intelligence distributions are also probably different.
- Locke1689 16y agoDepends on how you define "bigger." If that refers to amount of mass versus volume then a stellar black hole is an extremely large object.
- ma2rten 16y agoThe question is actually difficult because an organism can be an microorganism or an animal with organs, so it's impossible to say which ones bigger. Also i'd say if you don't know that the earth is bigger than the sun than you most likely don't know how gravity works, and not that the earth is a satellite of the Sun.
- Locke1689 16y agoThe question is actually difficult because an organism can be an microorganism or an animal with organs, so it's impossible to say which ones bigger. Only if you allow for comparisons between life forms. If you assume that he's speaking of a single life form that contains all the systems then the question is well-defined.
- jeffbarr 16y ago> If they don't know that the Earth is smaller than the Sun, then how can they understand that the Earth is a satellite of the Sun? These facts are independent.
- Locke1689 16y agoNot really. Whether or not a system is a satellite relationship is based on their comparative masses and orbits. If the Sun where the less massive we would refer to it as the satellite (well, there would be a lot more consequences, but that's one). If the objects were approximately equal we would call it a binary system with the more massive being referred to as the primary.