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)."

Comments

Wrong conclusions

[lucm]

> 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!

Re:Wrong conclusions

[jamesh]

> 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!

Interesting conclusion. The more likely conclusion is that IE is likely to crash before a puzzle can be completed.

Could happen by chance

[dwhitaker]

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.

Inadequacy

[sycodon]

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.