5 ms·
Some people think 2 out of 10 people are transgender or 2 out of 10 make over 1 million per household? I'm struck by either the lack of awareness of the average
by sockaddr 5y ago
Some people think 2 out of 10 people are transgender or 2 out of 10 make over 1 million per household? I'm struck by either the lack of awareness of the average person or the methodology of this survey.
- __del__ 5y agowe can safely assume at least 150% of americans are innumerate
- jeffbee 5y agoYeah, let's take the obvious choice and say this survey's methods might not stand up to scrutiny. Pew, a reputable outfit, says that most Americans report having never met someone who is transgender. That obviously can't be reconciled in any sensible way with a belief that 21% of Americans are transgender.
- tedunangst 5y agoThe obvious reconciliation is that "they" all live "over there".
- jquery 5y agoThis is probably true. I'd also add though, how would most Americans even know if they've met someone who's transgender? By definition, the transition phase is transitory.
- lesam 5y agoYou could reconcile it by believing that people just don’t understand percentages.
- kiba 5y agoPerception does not equal reality.
- makeitdouble 5y agoWe’re talking methodology so I think it’s fair to dig deeper. The most obvious point is, how do you tell someone you met is transgender ? The question itself is pretty weird IMHO. It would also be interesting to see how many gay people the Americans responding to the pew survey reported to have met. All in all, these survey are about what people think, it seems pretty hard to come up with control numbers, or validate a methodology as much better than another in meaningful ways. At most we could have different surveys from different groups converging toward the same numbers.
- azinman2 5y agoA lot of the answers don’t make any sense, especially the percentage of people living in NYC. I’d love to see both the methodology, know who and how many were asked, and know more about some of these actual numbers (does # people who graduated high school include kids under 18?)
- AvocadoPanic 5y agoMaybe it's the amount of media dedicated to the phenomenon.
- jpcfl 5y agoThis and a poor understanding of math. I wonder how these responses would have differed if they had simplified the questions to something like: “If you were in a room with 100 people in it, how many would you expect to be X, excluding yourself?”
- AvocadoPanic 5y agoIt could have been asked with a local bias, 100 people from your town... May have better reflected actual experience rather than general 'perception'
- orangecat 5y agothe lack of awareness of the average person During Michael Bloomberg's brief presidential campaign, multiple reporters thought it was a plausible claim that he had spent over a million dollars per American (https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/06/msnbc/bad-math-msnbc-bloombergs-ad-spending-wasnt-enough/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/06/msnbc/bad-...). This requires both impressive innumeracy and a total absence of common sense.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]