I managed to have a few extra minutes the other night and caught an episode of Cash Cab on the Discovery Channel and was amazed that two people missed a question in which they had to identify a llama. I guess I am so conditioned to knowing of so many different types of farm animals from being a product of the rural Midwest that I didn't even consider it possible for other people to have never seen these creatures.
posted by Midwestern Mediocrity at
8:41 PM
1 Comments:
I, too, always find it fascinating (and often disturbing) when I discover just how little people seem to know. Being a fan of game shows, I see many examples of this, but the examples that are the freshest in my mind come from the tapings of my game shows on BuckeyeTV. One example came in the form of a $50 question...the ones I write to be the easiest. The question was: "In mathematics, what is the square root of 4,096...which also happens to be the number of squares found on a standard chess or checkerboard?" When I wrote this question, I figured that most people have played either chess OR checkers in their respective lifetimes, and thus would know that both boards are 8 rows by 8 columns, or 64 squares. Thus, I figured saying that the answer was the same as the number of squares on a chess or checkerboard would be a giveaway. Even the contestant who was answering this question told me she had played checkers, and yet she didn't know checkerboards were 8 by 8. Eventually, she got the question right by finding the square root the hard way (I saw her work it out on the cards I provide for the contestants), so it didn't really matter. After the taping, everyone who was at the taping told me that this was the most difficult $50 question they'd ever heard...they didn't know chess and checkerboards were 8 by 8, either. Apparently, I'm one of only a small percentage of people who pays attention to those kinds of details...go figure. As far as the llama goes, while I may have yet to see one in person...I've certainly seen more than enough pictures and videos of llamas to know one when I see it, so I certainly can't explain what you saw in that episode of "Cash Cab", Brittany. Are examples like this a cause for concern? I don't know, but it certainly makes me wonder about people sometimes....
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