The Parity of Zero
This article is painfully oblivious to how people function! It reaches the correct (and I assume apriori) conclusion that people don&#x27;t care to connect things in their head, but it gets it from very silly data.<p>Consider the question about earth rotating around the sun and how long it takes. The answer to the first part is readily available BECAUSE ITS PART OF OUR LANGUAGE AND CULTURE. We periodically hear about Copernicus&#x27; heretical discovery. We hear the phrase &#x27;one more trip around the sun&#x27;, we see models of the solar system, etc. So the right answer is just instinctively top of mind.<p>In other words you can get this right by being completely ignorant of celestial mechanics because you almost can&#x27;t avoid &quot;knowing&quot; it by osmosis.<p>The question about the duration of the trip is a much harder question. You need to either recall a much less frequently referenced definition, or to model it out in your head. And guess what, people are not likely to do that work while answering a stupid poll. I bet if the question included &quot;take your time and if you get this right you will win $100&quot;, the correctness rate would shoot up.<p>On the parity of zero, it probably goes like this &quot;it seems like it&#x27;s even but they are asking a poll about it so there&#x27;s probably a trick. There could be some rule that makes zero special&quot; and because it&#x27;s an irrelevant quiz they say &quot;neither&quot; and move on with their lives. Again, if you phrase it to slow them down and offer a reward, more people would take time to think it out and answer correctly.<p>It feels like what is really frustrating the author is that people don&#x27;t totally nerd out thinking through twitter polls.