Slashdot Mirror
Chrome Users Are Best With Numbers, IE Users Worst
New submitter dr_blurb writes "After reading about last year's hoax report 'Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Browser Usage' I realized I was in fact already running a real live experiment measuring number skills: a site were you can solve Calcudoku number puzzles. I analyzed two years' worth of data, consisting of over 1 million solved puzzles. This included puzzles solved 'against the clock,' of three different sizes. For each size, Chrome users were the fastest solvers, Firefox users came second, and IE users were the slowest. The number of abandoned puzzles (started but never finished) was also significantly higher for IE users. Analysis shows that the differences are statistically significant: in other words, they did not happen by chance. I put up more details and some graphs, and also wrote a paper about it (PDF)."
> The number of abandoned puzzles (started but never finished) was also significantly higher for IE users
As usual, Microsoft products users show more common sense: they are the ones that figure out quickly that the puzzles are a waste of time!
lucm, indeed.
Statistical significance just means something is unlikely to occur by random chance. Said another way, it means there is evidence that it didn't happen by random chance, but not definitive proof. (This couching of conclusions is a mainstay of statistics.) Moreover, statistical significance doesn't necessarily translate to practical significance, but I didn't RTFA to find out if that was being claimed.
Douglas Whitaker
What does this seemingly never ending quest by people to formally define and declare who is best or smartest using various proxy measurements say about the people pursuing it?
Are they afraid they aren't smart enough and are looking for some kind of reassurance?
Maybe they want to make all the "not smart" people wear some kind of button. More likely, they just want to crow and be admired by other "smart" people.
Many "smart" people would be end up standing up in their own shit because they don't understand plumbing. Many "dumb" people end up running the company and making gazillions of dollars. "Smart" is what you do with your brains, not your brain itself.
Some people need to get a life.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/iq-and-motivation/
So what the guy is really saying is that Chrome users are obsessive compulsives and I.E. users are normal.
Deleted
Yeah, my first thought was that maybe his site causes IE to crash sometimes, which would look like an abandoned game.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Rule number one in science is never to form causation from generaliztion of data. Studies show that rap music makes you a better basketball player. Ice cream can give you heart attacks too. Why?
Statistically most NBA basketball players who are African American listen to rap music, therefore rap music made them great basketball players. The ice cream study was based on very hot days in New York when the temperature soared over 100 degrees. People tend to eat more ice cream on those days and there was also a rise of heart attacks. Therefore ice cream gives you heart attacks.
In Korea there are warning labels that fans give you heart attacks and there are settings to make sure they turn off at night as Koreans believe you can die if you leave the fan on at night. This is because when it is hot people have heart attacks and you can guess where the media made the conclusion.
It is silly and dangerous to make assumptions. You need a full hypothesis and use the standard scientific method to reproduce the results.
For all we know more old people use IE who are mentally further declined, or people went to that site at work when the boss wasn't looking and quickly alt tabbed and let the game time out when work needed them, etc. These are valid reasons and does not equate stupidity for people who use IE. Until we know more we just do not know. The work thing with IE is a very likely reason why a user would stop the puzzle as corporate America loves IE and users tend to hate work.
http://saveie6.com/