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How smart are you?

The Pew Research Center is a respected non-profit organization that regularly polls Americans on a variety of subjects. They also have devised several online quizzes that we can take to find out just how smart we are about particular subjects. They are fun and instructive and even ego-boosting if you happen to do well on them.

I've taken some of the quizzes before, but I was reminded of them when I read the Bad Astronomy blog today. The subject of the blog was the tests on science and religion. The results from those who have taken the tests seem to indicate that - surprise! - Americans know more about science than they do religion. The bad news is they don't know much about either.

Now, these tests are pretty simple and are based on general knowledge that any reasonably well-read adult should have. They are brief - one has 13 questions and one has 15 - and only take a few minutes to complete. At the end, you get to see your results and how you ranked among others who have taken the quizzes.

So, how about it? How smart are you? Do you want to find out? Here are the links to the science and technology quiz and the religion quiz. Have fun!

*~*~*~*

Now here comes the bragging part of the post: I aced these tests! I got 13 of 13 and 15 of 15 correct. That's how I know these tests are pretty simple, because a genius I'm not!

The interesting part for me was in reading the results. I found that I had scored better than 93% of other participants on the science test and better than 99% of other participants on the religion test. So, participants were slightly more knowledgeable on science than on religion. But then, perhaps they were different groups of participants. Who knows?

At any rate, that was my ego boost for the day. I hope you did equally well on the quizzes. I mean, if you are a reader of this blog, you must be pretty smart!
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