Facts vs. Opinion

[Bernie Brewer]

I saw this quiz linked to a tweet from an economist I follow on Twitter. It’s a short Quiz developed by the Pew Research Center to test whether the taker knows the difference between factual news and opinion news. This is obviously a very real issue in this Country these days. I took the test and was able to correctly identify all 10 statements. Sadly, when they tell you your results, they compare you to other people and more than 75% had difficulty decerning fact from opinion.

Test your ability to classify 10 news statements as either factual or opinion.

http://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/news-statements-quiz/

[Ken]

How could anyone with even a HS level education miss one of those questions.

[onejayhawk]

Boringly simple.

I wonder how Politifact would do. 7/10 maybe.

J

[Redbirds Fan]

Boringly simple.

I wonder how Politifact would do. 7/10 maybe.

J

Opinion.

[onejayhawk]

Opinion.

Correct.

Politifact often comments on opinion as if it were a statement of (supposed) fact, so it's an informed opinion.

J

[Ken]

Correct.

You misspelled "Fact"

[Sour Masher]

My numbers are a little different. I got them all right and it says I did better than 73% of people for the factual statements and only 63% of the people for the opinion statements.

I suspect the reason why people are doing a little better on the opinion statements is that they are all obviously worded as subjective statements. I think why some might miss more of the factual statements, because they don't know the facts.

Also interesting is the break down by political party. Democrats did consistently better on each question that also happen to fit their political beliefs, while Republicans did better on ones that fit their beliefs. For instance, more Dems got right that Obama was born in the US, and that illegal immigrants have some constitutional rights, while way more repubs got right that "increasing minimum wage is essential for our economy" is an opinion, not a fact, as is "abortion should be legal in most cases."

But perhaps most interesting is that self-identified independents mirrored the percentages of Republicans on some things, and Democrats on other things, and were in the middle on some things. So, that suggests there really is such a thing as an independent . I know you folks get slack a lot for being closeted Repubs or closeted Dems.

Also, while the numbers seem close across the board, just eye balling it, the independents seem to do a tad better percentage wise.

[Sour Masher]

I did the math based on their question breakdown, and here are the results of who got what percentage right based on political affiliation:

1. Independents: 72.7% right
2. Democrats: 71% right
3. Republicans: 66.7% right

By my count, the questions were balanced so that an equal number would show a left or right bias, so these results seem accurate and fair to me. It shows there isn't a whole lot of differences across the board, but it does show that Independents and Dems are a bit better than Repubs in identifying facts vs opinions. I think that is about news sources most often used (opinion).

[Ken]

What would have made this interesting would have been to place non-truths among the list. Statements that were neither opinion based nor correct. As currently stated, the topics in the statements are not relevant to whether they are fact or opinion.

[onejayhawk]

You misspelled "Fact"

I have it correct.

J

[Bernie Brewer]

My numbers are a little different. I got them all right and it says I did better than 73% of people for the factual statements and only 63% of the people for the opinion statements.

I suspect the reason why people are doing a little better on the opinion statements is that they are all obviously worded as subjective statements. I think why some might miss more of the factual statements, because they don't know the facts.

Also interesting is the break down by political party. Democrats did consistently better on each question that also happen to fit their political beliefs, while Republicans did better on ones that fit their beliefs. For instance, more Dems got right that Obama was born in the US, and that illegal immigrants have some constitutional rights, while way more repubs got right that "increasing minimum wage is essential for our economy" is an opinion, not a fact, as is "abortion should be legal in most cases."

But perhaps most interesting is that self-identified independents mirrored the percentages of Republicans on some things, and Democrats on other things, and were in the middle on some things. So, that suggests there really is such a thing as an independent . I know you folks get slack a lot for being closeted Repubs or closeted Dems.

Also, while the numbers seem close across the board, just eye balling it, the independents seem to do a tad better percentage wise.

I just took it again. The questions changed slightly, but here is my result. On 5 for 5 on factual statements.

You scored better than 73% of the public and the same as 26%.

5 for 5 on opinion statements.

You scored better than 65% of the public and the same as 35%.

So I may have misstated the initial result. I was dumb and didn’t scroll to the bottom of the page. But as Ken said:

How could anyone with even a HS level education miss one of those questions.

That’s what stunned me as well.

[Fresno Bob]

terrifying

[B-Fly]

I wish we had an age breakdown of the respondents so we could make some assessments about how we're educating kids, but either way I think civics, statistics and logic are key areas that need to be covered in K-12. The Common Core, for all its controversies, gets one important thing correct, which is that "literacy" isn't confined to English class and certainly not just to fiction. We need to instill critical thinking and true literacy across social studies and science and technology, and even in math/statistics.

[Kevin Seitzer]

I don't actually agree with some of what they called "factual statements."

E.g., "ISIS lost a significant portion of its territory in Iraq and Syria in 2017."
Whether the loss was significant or not is an opinion, not a fact.

And this one was nonsensical:
"Spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid make up the largest portion of the U.S. federal budget."
What does "largest portion" mean? Does the budget come in factual portions? Who defines the "portions"? Presumably, defining what expenditures go in what "portion", so that you can even compare portions, is someone's opinion.

I guess I didn't think the test was nearly as clear-cut as some of you guys. Pew tells me I missed questions, but I think they are wrong or the questions were written poorly.

[Kevin Seitzer]

Or maybe they were saying that, together, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid make up >50% of the federal budget? Which I don't know if they do or not. But if that's what they were saying, then that would be a factual statement. I just didn't read the statement that way. They probably should have said "larger portion" (or just "more than half") if they were just comparing Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid to "everything else."