Countries that have preoccupied Americans the most since 1900 • Hacker News Board

Re: Countries that have preoccupied Americans the most since 1900

#151

Post by zmw » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 8:36 PM UTC

Thriptic wrote: post #112

clatan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do be hard on yourselves, because the rest of the world isn't so proudly uneducated.

Being able to regurgitate the locations of countries doesn't mean you are educated; it means you sat down with a map for a few hours and did some memorization... Saying the entire United States population is proudly uneducated is roughly equivalent to saying all of the UK hates Europe and wants to leave the EU, or that all of Germany is racist because of recent violence against migrants, or that Italy is full of lazy…

I'm not sure about geography, but the vast majority of U.S. population is proudly uneducated in mathematics and many hard sciences. Math taught in high schools is pretty laughable and physics isn't even required in many places.

Source: Lived in the U.S. for many years.

Re: Countries that have preoccupied Americans the most since 1900

#152

Post by scythe » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 8:38 PM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #35

lordnacho wrote: post #24

What's interesting is if you did this for just about any other country, there would be a wall of star spangled banners. If you ever travel outside the US, you inevitably hear about what the US is doing, what they're discussing, who the important people are, etc. The reverse is not true: - Everyone outside the US knows the top US politicians. You even know what issues they are discussing, like gun control and healthca…

> You'll know the names of the states. How many other foreign countries do you know the subdivisions of I prefer to compare the USA with Europe as a whole, its member countries as states. In that light, I wager many Americans would know quite a few. Norway, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Ireland surely would make the majority? Maybe even Belgium. Are we still allowed to say UK? Americans love to chast…

People know about the political divisions of America which make the news. Likewise, Americans know about important provinces of other countries.

For example, when I was in China, people asked me all sorts of questions about Texas. It turns out the Lone Stars have built quite an international reputation as a... libertarian paradise. Hawaii, California and New York play on the international stage, but nobody has heard of Idaho.

Americans know the divisions of the UK. They might know Holland is a part of the Netherlands. Most of us know Bordeaux Normandy and Champagne are provinces of France, Bavaria is in southern Germany and Crimea is supposed to be in Ukraine. We know Venice, Sicily, Kashmir, Tibet, Manchuria, Xinjiang, Siberia, Baja California, the Yucatan and Patagonia.

Also our states don’t get redistricted often (ever), unlike some countries.

Re: Countries that have preoccupied Americans the most since 1900

#153

Post by supergirl » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 8:56 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #24

What's interesting is if you did this for just about any other country, there would be a wall of star spangled banners. If you ever travel outside the US, you inevitably hear about what the US is doing, what they're discussing, who the important people are, etc. The reverse is not true: - Everyone outside the US knows the top US politicians. You even know what issues they are discussing, like gun control and healthca…

that's how you think it is.

Re: Countries that have preoccupied Americans the most since 1900

#154

Post by allendoerfer » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 9:02 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #99

boomboomsubban wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of Americans could confidently name one state of India or one province of China? Our education system somewhat talks about Europe, but most of the world is basically ignored.

What percentage of people outside the US will know the name or location of more than a few US states? I'd bet it's extraordinarily low. I'd bet less than 1% of the world's adult population can name more than six US states. My experience has been, educated people I know from Europe struggle to do a lot better than that. Point them out on a map? Forget about it beyond the obvious or famous ones like California, Florida…

> US states have the population and economies of European nations. Americans are unfairly criticized for supposedly not being able to name or locate a lot of other countries.

Most US states are culturally and historically insignificant. The comparison between European countries with thousand years of history to most of the US states is lacking.

There are more US states than European countries, which have an older history and an overall larger population.

I am writing this without any intention to take away from the important US states. I am just looking at the bottom half here.

Re: Countries that have preoccupied Americans the most since 1900

#155

Post by Nicholas_C » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 9:07 PM UTC

sgt101 wrote: post #2

This is interesting more for what picking one country per month hides than what it reveals; the winner takes all approach submerges emerging trends and informative outliers and leads to abrupt phase change like artefacts in the visualisation - suddenly it's all about Russia, suddenly it's all about China....

It would be a cool feature if one could flip to the second or third most mentioned. Perhaps a different visualization of this data would be beneficial.

Re: Countries that have preoccupied Americans the most since 1900

#156

Post by Thriptic » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

zmw wrote: post #151

Thriptic wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to regurgitate the locations of countries doesn't mean you are educated; it means you sat down with a map for a few hours and did some memorization... Saying the entire United States population is proudly uneducated is roughly equivalent to saying all of the UK hates Europe and wants to leave the EU, or that all of Germany is racist because of recent violence against migrants, or that Italy is full of lazy…

I'm not sure about geography, but the vast majority of U.S. population is proudly uneducated in mathematics and many hard sciences. Math taught in high schools is pretty laughable and physics isn't even required in many places. Source: Lived in the U.S. for many years.

I agree that our primary schooling in general is suboptimal and inconsistent across regions. Where I disagree is that we are happy about that at a population level or somehow intentionally undermining education because we enjoy being ignorant (disregarding religious nonsense). In fact, if you look at where people decide to settle, school district quality is often a strongly weighted parameter.

Re: Countries that have preoccupied Americans the most since 1900

#157

Post by kylec » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

keypress wrote: post #144

lordnacho wrote: post #24

What's interesting is if you did this for just about any other country, there would be a wall of star spangled banners. If you ever travel outside the US, you inevitably hear about what the US is doing, what they're discussing, who the important people are, etc. The reverse is not true: - Everyone outside the US knows the top US politicians. You even know what issues they are discussing, like gun control and healthca…

Not that true in myopic UK. We know your president, and big news events. I can't even list one US box office movie from this year.

No? Honestly kind of surprised Avengers: Infinity War didn't cross your radar. That movie was huge.

Re: Countries that have preoccupied Americans the most since 1900

#158

Post by porphyrogene » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

giardini wrote: post #145

Far too noisy! A simple line chart (each line labelled with the country) versus year would have been far better.

A line chart would forgo the act of scrolling which would eliminate the narrative feel of the graphic (scrolling through time to see what happened next). Considering that the content of the graphic is somewhat complex I think the "noise" serves to represent the data in the clearest possible way (representing countries by their flags) while establishing visual fields that represent relevant conclusions (the long-term preoccupation with a single foreign country). If this had been a simple line chart not only would the data need to be different (showing comprehensive amounts for each year rather than one or two top values) but it would be visually bland. The informational margins and somewhat infotainment-esque color variety are perfectly appropriate for this graphic. A more studious design would betray its content for something more quantitatively robust.

Re: Countries that have preoccupied Americans the most since 1900

#159

Post by HAL9000Ti » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #24

What's interesting is if you did this for just about any other country, there would be a wall of star spangled banners. If you ever travel outside the US, you inevitably hear about what the US is doing, what they're discussing, who the important people are, etc. The reverse is not true: - Everyone outside the US knows the top US politicians. You even know what issues they are discussing, like gun control and healthca…

None of those feel true at all in western europe

Re: Countries that have preoccupied Americans the most since 1900

#160

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 10:07 PM UTC

scythe wrote: post #152

nothrabannosir wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'll know the names of the states. How many other foreign countries do you know the subdivisions of I prefer to compare the USA with Europe as a whole, its member countries as states. In that light, I wager many Americans would know quite a few. Norway, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Ireland surely would make the majority? Maybe even Belgium. Are we still allowed to say UK? Americans love to chast…

People know about the political divisions of America which make the news. Likewise, Americans know about important provinces of other countries. For example, when I was in China, people asked me all sorts of questions about Texas. It turns out the Lone Stars have built quite an international reputation as a... libertarian paradise. Hawaii, California and New York play on the international stage, but nobody has heard…

No-one has heard of Idaho, the potato state?

>"Most US states are culturally and historically insignificant." //

Someone said upthread.

Thing is they're not culturally insignificant, I've no idea where Idaho is (NW?) but somewhere I've heard about its potatoes! That's because in the UK almost all the TV is from USA. Perhaps someone in a film, cartoon series, TV serial, song was from Idaho, maybe a country singer sang about it.

That said, the impression as a European is primarily one of homogeneous culture, and primarily of European immigrants (though I'd say this is changing), particularly that Spanish speaking USA is making more impact in UK the last decade.

Generalising the UK impression is that French, Spanish, Italian, etc., are distinctive (and in stereotype monocultural) in the same way USA-ian (which most just call "American") is.

Yes, the differences of Silicon Valley/LA/Cali vs. the mountains of the Wild North, vs Washington, vs the Deep South, vs swampy Florida, etc. stand out. But the impression I, at least, get in movies is of no more variance across USA than within a Euro country.

My wife and I did a test and could name all but one of the US states (with no prep) but not all the UK counties.

There's a movie trope of kids learning the positions, shapes, State flowers, etc., of all the USA states ... I must have seen that at least 20 times in movies/TV. Never once have I seen anything approaching that for any other country (not even my own whilst I was at school).