Math Forum Discussions

Marvin the Martian

Posts: 120
Registered: 5/24/09

Re: Quiz - Are you scientifically literate?
Posted: Mar 19, 2012 9:44 PM

Plain Text

On Tue, 20 Mar 2012 01:30:52 +0000, Mike Terry wrote:

> "Marvin the Martian" <marvin@ontomars.org> wrote in message
> news:YM2dnZyt8oS2WfrSnZ2dnUVZ5vqdnZ2d@giganews.com...
>> On Mon, 19 Mar 2012 23:34:04 +0000, Dr. Jai Maharaj wrote:
>>
>> > Quiz - Are you scientifically literate?
>> >
>> > http://tinyurl.com/7teaf23
>> >
>> > Or,
>> >
>> > http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/1209/Are-you-scientifically-
>> literate-Take-our-quiz/Composing-about-78-percent-of-the-air-at-sea-
level-
>> what-is-the-most-common-gas-in-the-Earth-s-atmosphere
>> >
>> > Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
>> > Om Shanti
>>
>> It's a silly little trivia quiz, at best it can be called "science
>> trivia" but there is nothing science about it. You could be totally
>> ignorant about science and still pass the test.
>
> There wasn't any pass/fail marking, just a % score at the end. It's
> true that lots of the questions would count as science trivia - um, i.e.
> the sort of thing that scientifically literate people might just happen
> to know.
>
> Of course, being multiple choice format it's possible that my cat (if I
> had one) could walk over my keyboard and get a good score - but not very
> likely. I think the test has a reasonable discriminatory power for
> gauging scientific literacy/illiteracy.
>
> My complaint would be that the website is SLOW SLOW SLOW, like it's
> reloading all the adverts each time you click a button - maybe that's
> deliberate because they get paid per advert download or something...
>
> Mike.

I didn't go through all of them because I had to press twice to get to
the next question.

The questions I did see had nothing to do with science. There should have
been questions about the scientific method and what a scientific
hypothesis is or isn't. Science is not a collection of facts that you're
to believe without questioning.