this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
614 points (98.0% liked)

Mildly Interesting

21597 readers
1526 users here now

This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
marcar@lemmy.world
WhatsHerBucket@lemmy.world
614
Americans overestimate the size of minority groups and underestimate the size of most majority groups (lemmy.world)
submitted 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) by Wulri@lemmy.world to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
172 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Source: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/41556-americans-misestimate-small-subgroups-population

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 16 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

People just have no idea what numbers mean. And, look at how education works here, who could blame them?

[–] potoo22@programming.dev 16 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Reminder that a McDonald's new burger campaign failed because people thought a ⅓ lb burger was smaller than a ¼ lb burger.

[–] huppakee@feddit.nl 7 points 20 hours ago

They really should have started selling ⅕ lb burgers to make up for their losses

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 4 points 20 hours ago

Astronomers have been telling us for a long time that humans can’t fathom the scale of the universe.

But somehow we can fathom numbers of the same orders of magnitude when we talk about earthly affairs.

If people can’t understand how far away Mars is, how can they understand human population numbers?