Do people on RF believe they are more intelligent than everyone else?

[Meow Mix]

I know! I never go near it if I don't have to, I much prefer to substitute it for alcohol.

Me too! Though oddly enough, dihydrogen monoxide (though exceedingly corrosive) is a great hangover solution in moderation.

 

[Kathryn]

(Think Napoleon Dynamite with the chicken farmer)

"Do the chickens have large talons?"

"I don't understand a word you just said."

 

[Sunstone]

Me too! Though oddly enough, dihydrogen monoxide (though exceedingly corrosive) is a great hangover solution in moderation.

I wouldn't know about that. I never touch dihydrogen monoxide. Instead, I try to live a chemical free life by sticking to pure water as my only drink of choice.

 

[Sunstone]

Haha, where is this study? I want to show it to my girlfriend, who always disses me for being a night owl.

Night owl, check. Liberal, check. Atheist, check.

You would need a paid subscription to the Quarterly to have access to the study. Perhaps through your library? Either that or it would probably be worth subscribing just to show your girlfriend what excellent taste she has in lovers.

 

[Mathematician]

I think I'm prophetically less intelligent than a lot of people here, but that doesn't include people who are quick to get annoyed.

 

[Oberon]

I'd like to note that the t-score for the unpaired t-test (different sample sizes) was 2.505, yielding a p-value of 0.0201.

This suggests that the idea that RF believes they are more intelligent than everyone else is a statistically significant conclusion (given an alpha of 0.05)..

First, your n values here are rather small, particularly for the second sample (n = 10 which is a very small sample). Second, a t test for independent samples doesn't seem appropriate here (at least given your sample sizes). Each poll could have been answered by totally different people (i.e. the same people who rated their intelligence high might have done the same for others had they answered that poll). Perhaps if your samples were larger, you might be able to say that even if none of those polled answered both, the results could still be applied to the population of RF. All you've really determined is that one small group of RF members rated their intelligence statistically significantly higher than an even smaller group rated those around them, without offering any controls (randomization, comparison with other populations, accounting for sarcastic or humorous responses, etc). This doesn't seem to me to be indicative of much at all.