Clearly we are in conservative-vs.-liberals territory, complete with brainscans showing the shriveled conservative hypothalamus and explanations about their fear of otherness being due to childhood trauma, while the sun-seeking open liberal mindset is due to caring parenthood and education in non-violence resulting in strong outswells of inner crying whenever non-liberals need to be forcefully controlled for their own good or sand-denizens need to be incinerated for democracy. Praise be!
iPhone fanbois outsmart fandroids in totally reliable test of brain power
A survey has found that iPhone owners may be slightly smarter than their Android-owing counterparts when it comes to brain teasers. The highly scientific test, apparently commissioned by bookies Ladbrokes, found that on average iPhone fanbois were able to complete a series of puzzles in less time than folks with other handsets …
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Friday 3rd January 2014 07:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Not really a surprise
It's been known for years that iPhone users are more affluent and generally better educated, study after study has shown this in the demographic that uses or buys the phone.
It is no surprise, especially as the majority of Android handsets are cheaper and aimed at the lower end of the market and a lower demographic.
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Friday 3rd January 2014 14:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Touchscreen Bias ..
"No. It is clearly the additional time to move your finger around the giant screens on the Samsung"
That's a really good point. I hadn't considered that.
Why would HTC, Blackberry, etc be slower though then? I guess if the Blackberry people were using a trackball that could slow things down.
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Friday 3rd January 2014 07:38 GMT Tim Worstal
I had a go at this test
And the way to get a fast time is not even read the questions. Just select a as the answer. If it's correct (25% chance) then on to the next. If not, hit b. If not, c and so on.
You get through it in perhaps 30 seconds.
So, fanbois are better at randomly pushing buttons to see what happens next?
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Friday 3rd January 2014 13:37 GMT JulianB
Re: I had a go at this test
What this shows me is that phones are slower than computers (or perhaps that touch screens are slower than mice) for web-based interactions. Their fastest finisher took 47 seconds and I've just done it in 45 on a Win7 laptop, doing it "seriously" rather than trying to beat the system.
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Friday 3rd January 2014 12:28 GMT MrXavia
That is what I was thinking, if they were THAT intelligent, then surely they would not bother with such a test..
And if I read that right, it is an average... the more you do something the better your speed... so I would assume iPhone users tried over and over and over again...
but also the key point is this...
"each must be correctly answered in order to advance to the next question"
So you just hit an answer until it lets you pass...
What was the rate of failed answer? THAT is more important than speed...
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Friday 3rd January 2014 09:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
I wonder if what is being "tested" here is something completely different
step 1) Get it linked at a bunch of places like CNET and El Reg
step 3) Profit!
The missing step 2 has something to do with seeing how many fanboys of all stripes who read these articles follow the link and try to get a fast time and boost the score of their favorite, or take a half hour while claiming to be a user of the "other guy" to drag them down.
The results they show came from an initial small test before people knew it had anything to do with their phone, but now they could get some interesting data seeing how many people take the test over and over again to boost "their" scores, or who take over 10 minutes (safe to say those people are trying the latter strategy)
The outcome of this study would be more interesting and relevant to the psyche of the various types of fanboy than the article was anyway.
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Friday 3rd January 2014 12:10 GMT h4rm0ny
I got as far as the second question and then decided I was smarter than the test's author. "How many months have 28 days?"
Obviously we all read that and know it is supposed to be a clever trick - "OMG! 'Cause like months that have 31 days totally also 28 days". But seriously? Every native English speaker naturally interprets that question to mean "how many months have exactly 28 days" and the question author fucking well knows that they're phrasing the question badly. They even set it up that way in their own phrasing with "some months have 30 days, some months have 31 days" implying that the latter case is distinct from the former case when in fact the correct wording EVEN IF YOU WERE USING THE QUESTIONER'S INTERPRETATION would be "some months have 30 days, some months also have 31 days". It's badly phrased twice over even within itself. I loathe questions that rely on their own ineptness with phrasing. If you want to test my actual ability with something, test it. Stupid little gotchas like that are obvious and for petty people.
The one about "how many nines between 1 and a 100" is also another stupid question. There is one. Obviously they mean how many times does the digit '9' appear in representations of all the numbers between 1 and 100, but to anyone with a programming / mathematical bent (which I will willingly argue is the more accurate way to think), the answer that immediately occurs is that there is 1. 9 is not 19, however you write it down.
The smartest people? Those that realize the test is only testing their willingness to wilfully go against the normal meanings of language. No-one can claim the test author isn't knowingly phrasing things in a way that isn't natural to the English language.
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Friday 3rd January 2014 12:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Is it clever?
To pay over the top for anything?
To use a bit of shiny in an feeble attempt to boost your status amongst your peer group?
NO is the answer.
If you see a can of baked beans for 50 pence and and same beans for 75 pence, you don't buy 75 pence beans because you can afford to!
The stupidity!
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Friday 3rd January 2014 22:49 GMT Observer1959
"If you see a can of baked beans for 50 pence and and same beans for 75 pence, you don't buy 75 pence beans because you can afford to!"
The key word here is "same" which implies identical in every way.
What if you can buy a can of beans for 50 cents and a better brand of bean for 75 cents, if you can afford to you might choose to buy the better quality beans.
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Friday 3rd January 2014 13:07 GMT Steven Raith
And in unrelated news...
People who get their sense of self worth improved by results of a bookies online game are shown to be....just awful people, regardless of smartphone platform.
They also spend a lot of time on the Daily Mail website, although there is no causal link noted. But lots of circumstantial evidence. Like the fact they spend a lot of time on the Daily Mail website.
Steven R
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Friday 3rd January 2014 20:49 GMT cambsukguy
Re: Not what it's cracked up to be
I checked... there are no 9's between that 0 and that 100 in your statement.
I double checked and just saw an 'a', an 'n' and a 'd'. Obviously there were spaces also, I didn't see them per se but I knew they were there by inference using the gaps - not sure if they were 'm' spaces or 'n' spaces though.