It's official: IE users are dumb as a bag of hammers Update: This survey discussed in this story was apparently a hoax. You can read more here. A comprehensive study of web users has determined that the dumber you are, the more likely you are to use Microsoft Internet Explorer. After measuring the IQs of exactly 101,326 users and correlating their scores with the browser they …
Seriously: get Opera. It's very, very good. I started using it a couple of years ago when Firefox kept getting slower and slower and I've never looked back.
Looks much better than FF in Linux too, IMHO. Also, I got rid of Dunderbird mail client and just use Opera's built in one which is more than adequate. Saves about 400MiB of memory.
I know it might be hard to believe, but it's true, intelligent people are intelligent enough to explore alternatives, and understand the simple concept that the most POPULAR products are rarely also the BEST products...
I'm guessing many here are suffering from the Dunning–Kruger Effect, where they are too stupid to realise how stupid they actually are, and vastly overrate their own intelligence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
Clearly anyone thats bothered to fully explore alternatives to what their OS comes with, will come to likely conclusion that Opera is clearly the browser of choice based on performance, reliability, features and security track-record. You know tangible criteria to rate something against.
Nitwit, let me explain it for you.
Whether conservatives are more likely to be dumb than leftists (such as Communists) or not, the outcome of the leftists "intelligence"+worldview is horrific compared to the much more congenial product of more conservative frameworks.
Who? Anyone who classifies Obama as a Marxist, Fascist or Nazi . Or a tar baby.
Where? I don't understand the question. Above their own shoes, but below their own hats. Am I expected to geoip the lot of them for you?
Oh ... wait. You think the Tea Party are moderates? The people so far on the right that American conservatives are disowning them? The people whose only mission is to bring Obama down, no matter the cost to America or the wider world? Those people. They're not extremists?
There was a time when I would try to be more 'diplomatic' about such a statement and try to avoid the word, "stupid" in favor of, "ignorant." But watching America's crumbling infrastructure aided by the solid public support of the Bush administration and the current level of Tea Party extremists' control of Congress, I stand corrected. The word, "stupid" IS being diplomatic as it doesn't really represent what's actually going on.
Given that this is a forum for an IT website, and in most surveys IT workers are shown to have a conservative bias, we must conclude that the majority of thumbs up votes here are by infiltrators from other professions. Probably Sociology and Political Science graduates employed in government non-jobs at great expense, with bags of time on their hands to spend commenting on forums all day while the rest of us do the real work.
It would be interesting to see a graph showing time of day versus frequency of thumbs up and thumbs down votes, and whether they originate from .edu / .ac.uk / .gov / .gov.uk or .com / .co.uk etc.
Another thing worth considering, is that many users are forced to use IE at work or on public terminals while very few people are forced to use the other browsers. As such, most of the non-ie browser users explicitly chose to use their given browser, while a proportion of the ie-users don't have the choice.
It would be interesting to see if the stats could be updated to see the IQ of people who chose to use IE, i imagine the average IQ would be even lower.
I'd think that the IE with Chrome Frame users are those who have to use IE(6) at work (undoubtedly for some horribly coded but business-critical web app) and have put Chrome Frame on to ease the pain.
After all, Chrome Frame isn't very well advertised. If you don't keep up to date on the big G's blog and developments, it's highly likely you wouldn't have heard of it, so I'd say those users are more tech-savvy than your typical office grunt and are just trying to make IE a little less painful to live with.
I force people onto IE here at work simply because of GPOs. Chrome frame has been beaten out of the network (it is a "virus" here according to the AV....). Sadly that is the way of the policy. (No you cant use pocket opera either).
Internet is almost whitelisted too. Except for me, I use the unfiltered server proxy of course.
Blast appears using the ad supported version meant I was very dumb. But still tabbed browsing and session saves without some kak add-in back then was more important to me than some small banner ad. Although Netscape was around I didn't like it hence why I used Opera.
Then again it doesn;t state if this was desktop browsers only or all browsers for devices such as mobile phones where Opera is a decent choice in my view.
Many of those who it would not be reassuring to either don't care or may not even undesatand the assertion.
Of course, this does depend on the accuracy of it.
Of course we may hear things like "I know someone with an IQ of 180 and they only use IE." It is a statistical correlation not straight either/or.
and forward the results of the study to Dell and Cisco who are forcing users of some of their products (web management interfaces of some switches or wireless equipments, SSL VPN etc.) to use IE only.
In this case it's not only the users of IE but also the developers forcing us to use IE that are victims of low IQ scores.
Not in the way this is being interpreted by some on here
The real correllation is ONLY that people with lower IQs ("individuals on the lower side of the IQ scale ") are more likely to be using ie - NOT that people with higher IQs are likely to be using something else.
Anyone who jumped to such a conslusion based on no evidence whatsoever is as dumb as a bag of hammers.
I could suggest that Opera is so difficult to install and use, and thus requires more intelligence to use. As I have on occasion used it I know this is not true. It could be a small-number effect. If the number of Opera users in the survey is comparatively small, random fluctuation are more likely. It would have been nice to have error bars in the graphs, so we could judge whether or not the differences are significant.
...that Opera is not difficult to install and use. It's probably the easiest browser to use and as for installation, well clicking Next, Next, Next, Finish doesn't seem overly complicated to me. Sure it's harder than just sticking with IE (or Safari) but no harder to install than any other non-default browser.
The sample is still based on people with nothing better to do with their time than complete an IQ test online, and the article suggest that these people have either searched for it or are the type who blindly click on adverts.
What would be interesting would be to see how the results correlate to the day and time that the test was taken as I expect that the trend would actually show that the lower the IQ, the more chance someone has of taking an online IQ test during working hours and most probably on their work-issued PC over their company-monitored network.
I'm an IE user. It does the job. Why should I spend 10 or 100 minutes of my time installing and tuning something else that might work too?
I once tried Chrome, couldn't do print previews, wasted 19 pages of paper.
I tried Opera for roaming (turbo mode), didn't render properly.
My coworker struggled with FF till he got pissed about it consuming gig+ RAM.
All that might have changed/improved, I just don't bother.
I also have enough confidence in my IQ, so I don't need some PHP telling me how smart I am. Not.
So he proved it right by not knowing about the current beta? Or is it that you just proving it wrong by not realising your on the beta downloads and not current release version?
Downloading plugins like IE Tab kinda defies the point no?
v13 adds print preview. Current live is v12 at this posting.
No. He proved it right by being hard of thinking and needlessly printing 19 pages of garbage.
"Or is it that you just proving it wrong by not realising your on the beta downloads and not current release version?" What has that go to do with anything? I didn't say what browser I use and I'd suggest that the OP was referring to an earlier version of Chrome than 12. Since one actively has to search out the beta of Chrome to download it, I'm confident that I know the difference. Clearly unlike you IE users; guessing by the tone or at least the horror show spelling, you are an IE user too.
@AnotherNetNarcissist:
So, if you don't know that a section of a road is closed and take a wrong turn, that makes you stupid? Worker's should've put up a detour sign at the turn, not local planning department in Alpha Centauri.
One of the qualities of being smart is to acheive a goal with minimum effort. Hanging around Google beta sites and downloading every day just says that you have no better goal.
"So, if you don't know that a section of a road is closed and take a wrong turn, that makes you stupid? "
Funnilly enough you're kind of proving the point. The road past my house has been closed for major works for several weekends. There's loads of signs out there pointing out the closure and the diversion from two or three miles away. Then on hitting the village there are two points where the left side of the road is coned off with a big sign reading "Road Closed - Local Access Only". And yet every weekend we have the entertainment of idiots driving right up to the blockage and having to do a multi-point turn. Usually after an altercation with the site foreman where the driver argues that the workmen should have erected a diversion sign.
To get somewhere back to the point of the article however it seems that car brand choice does not affect your IQ, at least in this particular area. What does however seem to have a bearing is that people carriers and 4x4s seem to be more likely to be driven by idiots than other types. Like we didn't know that already.
One people carrier driver decided to trust his sat nav for diversion directions rather than trust what the site foreman told him. He turned down a farm track and got stuck 200 yards from the main road. What was amazing was that he got 200 yards, the track gets worse and worse as you head away from the road, but he kept going until he could not go forward or back. Just like keeping driving past the road closed signs until you hit the blockage, he kept on driving as the road got nastier and nastier ignoring all the signs that his car would not be able to cope until the point where he was totally stuck. I don't know how much the guy with the Hi-Lux charged him for the tow, but I bet he could have asked for more.
Average users won't know any better, that's why they are average. If you are working within the IT field you should know what browser does what, or at least have an idea of how to find out. It is part of your job after all. If you are a developer, curiosity in what is actually an important part of modern computing should have you knowing this stuff. those that look upon it as just a job and have no interested are I hazard of lower IQ anyway.
"So, if you don't know that a section of a road is closed and take a wrong turn, that makes you stupid?" In short yes. Not paying attention to your environment IMHO is a sign of simple mindedness.
"Worker's should've put up a detour sign at the turn, not local planning department in Alpha Centauri." You should accept culpability for your own laziness and stupidity.
"One of the qualities of being smart is to acheive a goal with minimum effort." http://lmgtfy.com/?q=print+preview+chrome No print preview? Print to PDF, or copy and paste into Word. Not that challenging really. Anyone with an above average IQ is perfectly capable of doing this.
"Hanging around Google beta sites and downloading every day just says that you have no better goal." If you knew what you were doing and what you were talking about, you'd know that Chrome updates itself. It is easier, and requires less intellect, to follow the herd and use what Microsoft tell you to use though, isn't it? Way to prove the point.
"I also have enough confidence in my IQ, so I don't need some PHP telling me how smart I am. Not."
So does that "Not" mean you do need some PHP telling you how smart you are or not?
Or does the whole paragraph mean you're not as smart as you think you are?
Perhaps it's time you took an IQ test.
Kind of reminds me of the idiot in our office who argued that he was every bit as smart as one of the geeks in our office. Nobody agreed with him so they went away and took an IQ test, and another, and another. The geek scored between 130 and 140 on all three tests. The other guy scored between 95 and 105. His reasoned response to this was that IQ tests are dumb and don't reflect real IQ. His reasoning? That he knew he was as smart as the geek, so the IQ tests must be wrong.
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As the Lynx user, I would like to point out the advantages. None of this javascript crap and pretty moving pictures to distract me from using the web as TB-L intended.
Not that I deliberately open a terminal in order to run Lynx if I have an X session running, but if I'm at the command line, lynx gets me where I'm going faster than starting X up.
What is an IE, anyway?
As with all these surveys, it's a complete load of old bollocks.
IQ tests - also a load of old bollocks. You practise a few of these tests and you're IQ goes up massively compared to before you'd ever seen one. How can your IQ go up within hours? Like I say, bollocks!
Internet browsers - barely any difference between them. How different could they possibly be? They all copy each others "innovations" within months and the swiftness of one browser over another is totally lost in your Internet Provider's bandwidth choking antics - Damn you BT!
"Internet browsers - barely any difference between them. How different could they possibly be?"
Well, it depends. You'd expect that when you do a String.split, the results would be the same in all browsers; so something like "88 ACACIA AVENUE|ANYTOWN|COUNTYSHIRE|WX123YZ", returned by a script from an AJAX call, would give the same result in all browsers. And indeed it does: an array with 4 elements; "88 ACACIA AVENUE", "ANYTOWN", "COUNTYSHIRE" and "WX123YZ".
Something like "120 HIGH STREET|BIGCITY||PQ12RS" (with the county field intentionally left blank) returns a 4-element array "120 HIGH STREET", "BIGCITY", "", "PQ12RS" in *most* browsers. Guess which browser's JavaScript implementation returns a *3*-element array "120 HIGH STREET", "BIGCITY", "PQ12RS" ?
"IQ tests - also a load of old bollocks. You practise a few of these tests and you're IQ goes up massively compared to before you'd ever seen one. How can your IQ go up within hours? Like I say, bollocks!"
Sorry, but IQ tests are carefully designed so that this is not the case. However even if it were the case this test would not be affected by such a phenomenon. If you don't understand IQ tests, think about statistics.
Take a look at that graph over time.
As of 2006, the smarties used IE, and the Opera users were merely normal. Now there seems to be a migration. Is it because Opera has become so difficult to use that the average person has abandoned it? Also, look at the differences between IE8, Chrome, and then IE8 with the Chrome frame. Bit of a rise along the way, there.
Now, graph out the IQ of those who are using a browser they built from source, as opposed to mere users.
As a user of several browsers, the only one in which I tend to actually see online advertisements is Internet Explorer. When I use Firefox or Opera my experience is almost completely ad-free, so IQ test or tat: I wouldn't see it. Has that been accounted for in these results?
(Obviously Opera is my favourite)
No need to take account of it. If Opera, Firefox etc. users are blocking ads, then they won't see the survey and won't feature in it. If the survey were intended to estimate the popularity of the various browsers, this would result in IE appearing to be more popular than it really is. Likewise, if less intelligent users are more likely to voluntarily take an IQ test, then the average IQ of the survey respondents will be less than the average IQ of the population at large (theoretically 100).
But that's not what the survey was about. For each respondent, they got an IQ score and a browser. The lower the IQ, the more likely that the browser was IE. This correlation isn't being accidentally selected, unless you can think of a good reason why high-IQ IE users were *proportionally* less likely to take the survey than the same-IQ Firefox and Opera users.
BTW the survey should have filtered out people using an employer's computer or an internet cafe, because high-IQ users of such facilities don't necessarily get to choose their browser. In other words, the correlation might be even stronger than these results suggest!
If you take out all the non-intelligent users (who probably clicked the ad my mistake and then assumed it was a legal requirement to complete the test to continue to use this interweb thing) then maybe it is only intelligent non-IE users who feel the need to prove their intelligence by taking an online IQ test in the first place. :-)
What this study does not seem to mention is what the percentage of respondents where for each browser. Obviously I would expect IE to have a much higher percentage of the respondents due to it's popularity thus the average IQ score would also be weighted lower. I would also expect many with the lowest IQ to be ignorant of other browsers since IE is usually bundled by default with most PCs and it takes at least some intelligence to go get another browser and so the people with the lowest IQ would likely still be using IE. It would be good to see how many high IQ scores above a certain level were present from each browser, I would bet that IE would actually show the most purely because of it's market share. Incidentally I consider myself fairly intelligent, I run two of my own Internet businesses for the past 10 years (web development and web hosting companies) and have 20 years IT/Internet experience but I still use IE and have done since IE v3/4 as I have always found the alternatives either to fugly/clunky (FF) or feature limited (GC) and believe me I have tried to move to those browsers wishing they were better. Now with IE9 i'm not about to go anywhere soon either.
And talking of averages, I also find it very interesting that nowhere in the pdf they've released does it even mention what kind of average they're actually using. Is it the mean, is it the median, is it the mode? I know most people will just assume it's the mean, but looking at the pdf, they're obviously attempting to present it as scientific research, and yet they leave out something as basic (and vital) as that.
That's just one thing that seemed to stick out, but there's actually quite a few. They go into absolutely no detail whatsoever about their methodology other than the absolute basics of how many people took their test and how they got them to take it. A previous study plays a large part in their findings but they give absolutely no reference to it whatsoever. They use phrases such as 'been bugging the web developers'. They cannot, it seems, even count to two - they have a grand total of two different graphs which they've managed to both call Figure 1. And yeah, that might seem like nit picking, but seriously, it says a lot about their attention to detail.
To me, looking at their website explains everything. They do offer free IQ tests, but it seems for a full report they require payment. Call me cynical, but what better way to drum up a bit of publicity for their website and their 'free' online IQ tests (not to mention their 'range of psychometric tests designed specifically for the use of HR professionals. Their scientific validity, clarity and insight have already won them the loyalty of more than 3,500 businesses throughout the world, including many Fortune 500 companies.') than call the users of the browser with the largest market share stupid?
And no, I don't use IE.
That's good - at least one person does.
I generally find that most people consider themselves intelligent, regardless of whether they are or not, but knowing the difference between "where" and "were" would be a good start.
I'm guessing those who clicked "like" didn't read far enough to see your last line.
"!...the fact that millions of man hours are wasted each year to make otherwise perfectly functional websites work in Internet Explorer,"
Yes, when IE6 was the latest variant of IE, which it isn't for over half a decade. We're at IE9 now (and IE8 for XP users), something which they obviously have missed.
This 'study' is a bag of pseudo-scientific BS. Maybe it's done because they were in need for some funding or they are just after the publicity. At the end of the day, many years ago it had worked very well for a certain wannabe-scientist from NZ with his pseudo-scientific 'study' about Windows Vista.
Ive just read spindreams and Brezin Bardout posts and i totally agree, to add to that...
IQs are a pile of shite, no really, very few individuals or large institutions actually take any significance in them, the reason being the questions asked.
IQ is supposed to be a average intelligence guage but what it does is gives a higher score to people with a good broad range of knowledge, it does not take in to account areas that that person may excel in.
So for instance i may be a astrophysicist, the most leading credit one in the world, but i might have a lower IQ than a milkman (no offence to milk men, just using example as one just knocked on my door!) because my general knowledge isnt as good in other subject areas.
IQ is not a guage of how dumb someone is, sorry guys. So all this study says is that users of opera etc have a better broader range of knowledge in the questions that were asked, not nessarerly more intelligent
And for your information im writing this in opera just now, just playing devils advocate
IQ is a measure of how good one is at doing IQ tests.
As for how strong or otherwise is the correlation between someone's test result and what you perceive as their level of intelligence, that's a hard thing to study. However, I think it's unlikely that many of the folks who can't score more than 85 in an IQ test are going to strike you as any kind of super-smart dude when you meet them. In other words, there's a fairly good corellation with something that you'd like to measure, but can't.
As for self-selection bias, it's hard to see how there is any in this study, which gives the browser chioce by percentage, for people testing with similar IQs. For there to be a bias, you have to think of a reason why an IE user with an IQ of (say) 115 is less likely to take the test than a Firefox with that same IQ, whereas an IE user with an IQ of 85 is more likely to take the test than a Firefox user with an IQ of 85. That a dim lightbulb may be more likely to select himself than a bright one doesn't affect the results.
The missing detail is the number of people in the various buckets - it it's too small then the error bars (not shown) will be large and the evidence concerning those at the extremes of the
IQ distribution may not be enough to exclude the null hypothesis. The trends are pretty persuasive, though. Modulo self-selection bias, you can estimate the number of people in each bucket from the shape of the IQ distribution curve (more or less a normal distribution) because they give the total number of test results analyzed.
Why are there no error bars on that first graph? In the "Statistics" section of the report why is there no mention of statistical analysis? They talk about "significant differences" but give no methodology relating to calculation of differences.
This is not a serious study, their methodology is completely opaque and shame on The Register for reporting this ludicrous, unsupported and laughably transparent advertising piece as "research".
From loads of experience working at a computer surplus until about a year ago... IE users tend to be the ones that say "Oh I click on the internet". And the ones still using IE6 are the ones that are like "Oh, no, that Windows (either XP or 98...) is good and I'll never update!!" or even better "I like my Windows" then literally within seconds "Don't you hate how computers always" (then a litany of problems that are NOT computer problems but are Windows problems.. you know, registry problems, mysterious slowdowns, viruses, spyware, and the necessity of constantly keeping a virus and spyware scanners up to date, and on and on.) And then they are all surprised when I say "Umm, my computer doesn't have those problems, because I'm not using WIndows."
On the flip side, although I use firefox personally, I am not surprised the average IQ of Chrome and Opera users is higher. A lot of mainstream people know about Firefox these days, whereas I found the people who know about Chrome and Opera tend to be more academic (the type who spends lots of time on sites like this and other tech sites, etc.)
Take a look at the Wechsler Adutl Intelligence Scale site and scroll down to "New Subtests." The green and yellow puzzle is broken; it asks for the three pices that can form the shown shape. Problem is that is doesn't restrict the choice in the obvious way--no overlap--so there are actually quite a few solutions as written. So much for the IQ of the testers.
Notice they didn't list the income and living situation of the people in this study. Many more people are buying computers today then they did years ago. Computers have gotten cheaper, so people with lower income can afford them. They usually get older, slow systems with cracked versions of XP with no updates. XP came with IE6. They more often than not have less education (and opportunities) than those with more money, hence they do not mess with what works. Scope was too limited in it inclusion of weighted factors.
I have answered a couple of those IQ tests for fun, the ones that I came across were short and heavily USA biased. Being an Australian I do not know all the USA state capitals nor particular American individuals.
So I guess from my sampling (sample size 4) 100% of online IQ tests are a crock and a complete waste of time. Maybe we ned to publish those statistics :-)
How many non-IE users have spoofed their browser's user agent to fool MS-friendly website* into feeding them the correct contents? They're the really smart ones and they're going to boost the IE scores...
* You know, the ones that say they're only compatible with IE? or Netscape 4.?
The true interpretation of the data shows that people who use IE just don't care about browsers any more than they care what brand of hammer they use. The IE users just shut down their computers periodically, and often, so they can enjoy their real lives with their human friends and families. You know the type: have real sex, go on picnics, play with their kids and even read an actual paperback book every now and then. It simply never occurs to them that vicarious living the lives of others on the internet is something to envy. Or that life in a basement playing games and writing code is a real life.
Statistical outliers are more likely to show up by chance in small samples than large ones, hence why all the roughly-equally-popular browsers show up around the same, why the minority browsers show the most distance from the mean, and why the change in the results between 2006 and 2011 exactly reflects the changes in market share among the mentioned browsers. The methodology is bullshit, the conclusions are GIGO, nothing to see here except yet another stats 101 fail in a crude non-scientific survey done by a firm solely for reasons of garnering free press column inches.
Is not obtained by aiming one's product at the educationally elite.
Whether it was intentional or not, Microsoft made all the right decisions in that respect. As the company has more marketing ability than technical, and has had right from the start, my vote goes with *intentional*.
Who would aim an irksome paper clip at the intelligent, for god's sake?
Interestingly, Mensa say (or used to) that it's the other way around. The average score on their tests is well above 100, because the applicants are self-selecting.
Intuitively, that seems plausible. If you failed GCSE maths 3 times, you probably have a fair idea that you aren't a genius. Why embarass yourself by proving it? You might be stupid, but that doesn't mean you're an idiot, does it?
or how to get anyone to believe anything thanks to a bunch of meaningless, poorly obtained, consolidated and analysed numbers. I'm sure that statistically you could find a correlation between your car colour and which finger you use to scratch your ass in the morning.
As for people "who consider themselves quite intelligent", my study shows that 98.24% (only a rough estimate) feel that they have enough since they use this very intelligence to judge it.
having a higher than average IQ, but there being so few of them it skews the results in that the average for Opera is probably quite near the actual IQ of pretty much every last man twat of them. Whereas my IQ is much higher than any of those scores and I'm sure there are many reg readers with even higher than mine, who, like me, use Firefox.
Frankly I'd expect Opera users to support Arsenal.
The responders are a self-selected sample of browser users. The self-selection process can introduce all kinds of subtle bias. To get valid results you need to select a random sample and get high respose rates. The truth could be even more of the same, or less of a difference.
Intelligent people are more interested in the quality, reliability, functionality and usability of anything, even software, than how "open" it is.
Would-be intelligent people fret about how "open" it is without regard to what that means or the practical results
Now, where is that free, open source car mechanic when I need him? Busy doing my washing by hand, pending finding a washing machine with free, open source firmware.
These "research" papers are all the same. People are paid money to state the ****ing obvious.
Poor people are less likely to go to University.
Rich people eat more fruit.
People who don't have the wherewithal or curiosity to try a different browser to the one that was pre-installed in their machine, are less intelligent than those that do.
If you are an organisation that is too thick to know these things already, save yourself a lot of time and money and ask someone with a modecum of common sense. Sorted!
Dumb survey and a waste of time- IE is "distributed' as the base browser, thereby anyone switching would be doing so through a level of awareness. Just as vegetarians would score similar results to meat eaters- the list goes on and on. The folks conducting the servey are dumber than IE users.
asH
to understand that there is no correlation between the most advertised browser and the BEST browser.
Clearly Opera users are smart enough to understand the need to explore other alternatives, rather than just relying on what you saw in some advert, or using something that someone down toe pub told you was good once.
In other words, this is not just a IQ relationship, it's also about independent thought rather than sheep-like usage patterns.
I'm also guessing it's not just browsers, as for example if you survey the difference between Xbox and PS3 owners you will also see a very large gap with PS3 being higher IQ by some margin, simply because it's a smarter purchase choice.
... but I remembered just in time that I abstain from subscribing to any classifaction medium that attempts to 'pigeon hole' individuals into any form of collective entity. Particularly when it's based on random statistics, but especially when it's basis is, no matter how obscurely, comercially orientated.
So there.
One interpretation of these results:
Those who use computers as "appliances" are more likely to be used as "appliances" themselves by the marketing efforts of big companies like Microsoft (and the media industry, etc.).
One way to look at intelligence is as a measure of one's ability to evoke change to realize one's goals. The ability to discern the difference between one's personal goals and those of external agencies (like Microsoft, etc.) would be a prerequisite for this kind of definition of intelligence.
Then the ability to realize one's own goals (in this example, to realize the advantages of other browsers, and to learn how to install and use one of them) would be the second prerequisite.
If you can't tell the difference between what you want, and what someone/something else wants you to want (and/or are unable to accomplish simple goals like installing and learning to use a non-default browser), you are probably less able to think critically or effectively, and thus test lower on IQ measurement instruments.
From personal experience - I've had to take that test 5 times over the last 15 years, administered by 5 different psychologists (I don't count the times I've taken it online voluntarily) and gotten 5 different results. My highest score was 132; my lowest, 98. That's a huge variance for something that a lot of authorities set great store by as a judgement of someone's abilities.
IQ tests are inherently flawed, because they attempt to put a single quantitative value to something that by its very nature is qualitative. Intelligence isn't simply the ability to match patterns, do sums or retain read information, it consists of many indefinable qualities that enable each of us to perceive, interpret and respond to the world around us in our own way. It varies as well over time, with conditions such as general well-being, state of mind, stress factors, and illness. Taking the test when you have a shitty head cold and have just lost your job is going to produce a much lower result than when you're fighting fit and just landed a $50k contract.
So I tend to regard IQ tests, the WAIS test included, as so much bullshit. Anyone who sets store by peoples' IQ results is doing those people a great injustice.
I use Google Chrome on my home page I have CNN,BBC,Wikipedia,Dictionary,New.Scientist,Discovery News,SciFy,Democracy now,Weather Channel,New York Times,Phantoms&Monsters,Ebay,Anime News Network,NPR,Unexplained Mysteries among others things I don't find on Bing. that why I use it
The bag of hammers would have enough sense to see IE for the slow, bloated, dumbed-down basic UI piece of crap it is and whip into a rage induced sick-of-IE frenzy smashing it to pieces, switching to Firefox!
Paris, because even she's sexy and smart enough to NOT use IE!
Opera users don't need more incentive to act like smug bell-ends, surely?
Tried using it again this week after I did something stupid to my Firefox profile and couldn't be arsed rebuilding it for a few days. It's never been a shit browser, but in the end I missed the Awesome Bar and my plugins too much and rebuilt my FF profile. Muuuch better.
The study doesnt seem highlight those of use that use multiple browers. On the Mac I use Opera and Firefox on the PC I use Firefox and IE9. I wonder what that says???
Depending on the site I am going to I change browser to one that handles the site better or has better security etc.
On another note IE is the only browser I know of that has extensive enterprise control that can be integrated along side other windows based features so I guess that is why is used a lot its a commercial product rather than a consumer one (until IE9 which is more consumer focused)
She's never used a Mac. The "killer app" for her work needs Windows. I asked her what she thought about the other browsers. IE: "gives you viruses". Firefox: "slow". (based on 3.5 and her slow old laptop). Opera: "What?". Chrome: "too new" "don't want Google spying on me".
And she likes that accursed ribbon interface in Office 2007. Sigh.
I don't like the idea of IQ tests, how can you sum up all the different possible attributes of intelligence into a single number? You can have a very IQ score but be an amazing athelete is that not a form of intelligence?
check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence#Human_intelligence
I just find it rather curious that for the purpose of Microsoft bashing El Reg isn't dismissing this as more waffle from the trcik-cyclists of the scientific community!
All this study shows is that the kind of people most likely to click on anything as long as it says "free" haven't had a chance to practice their IQ test (try taking hte same IQ three or four times and see how much more "intelligent" you get in mere minutes!) and predominantly use IE. NOw if they're the pointless flashy banner clicking types they're the kind of user who could've care less what browser he/she is running as long as it "just works".
And for all those commentards busy lording up their huge intellect becuase they run Opera or Safari should rememeber the most basic maxim in IT: the less you have running on a system the less there is to break, and that in itself is reason enough to stick to IE (at least in a corporate environment).
And no, if you must know I don't use IE (except in the office)
I would never ever work for a company that forces me to use a piece of software that I do not want to use.
As far as IE is concerned: We develop a big web app and we develop it for Forefox, then port it to ie, nobody in our dev dep uses ie so we really need to test on ie. IE is a severe head ache for us and we are tempted to just not support that pile of crap. However, some companies have brainless IT directors that want to stick to IE - most likely those that filled out this survey and who are now pressing charge.
If you are using ie your opinion does not count!
So, let me get this straight - you won't ever work for a company that forces you to use software you don't want to use, but in your current employment you are forced to use IE for testing purposes, which is a piece of software you don't want to use?
Let me also get this straight: the majority of users out there use IE (for many reasons, take your pick: it is familiar, it is already installed, they are stupid, it can be controlled through GPO or whatever) yet you and your web development team refuse to use IE and only grudgingly support it despite having a really bad attitude towards your customers. Am I about right?
So, can you tell us which company you refuse to work for, but do work for, so that we can make sure we don't trouble you by buying your products.
As pointed out by a few people, intelligence is not knowledge. IQ actually measures cognitive reasoning, or to put it simply, pattern recognition. Most tests measure 4 aspects of intelligence, vocabulary, mathematics, spacial awareness and deductive reasoning. A high IQ is not a prerequisite for knowledge, but can be an indicator that the person is good at independent thought and problem solving. IQ is also linked to memory, the higher the IQ the more likely the person is to remember something that they have learnt. From my own experience I find it very easy to remember things from school even today that I read only once. I was lucky enough to never need to revise at school as my recall of facts was excellent. Give me an Excel spreadsheet to debug and I'll have no trouble whatsoever. Just don't ask me to perform brain surgery on you. I'd much rather let someone with the knowledge do that...
The article cites that the researches actually stated: "Any IT company involved in web development will acknowledge the fact that millions of man hours are wasted each year to make otherwise perfectly functional websites work in Internet Explorer" ....if their study had to do with the correlation between the browsers people use and the correlation with their IQ, what is their motivation behind stating this? Also, mere correlation without knowing more information about the pool of data they're working with biases their results. IE is an operating system that ships with a Windows based computer. This immediately biases the results because those who do not know much about computers may not actively go out to seek a different browser. As a web developer, I use IE, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari...all depending on the task at hand. For example, I avoid using Chrome for media sites because OpenGL poses security threats and Google decided to roll that out into production despite the fact that OpenGL isn't even a 1.0 version yet....but on the contrary I will use it when I want to open a lot of tabs and still have something that is (somewhat) light weight and responsive (or I might use Opera). I will likely use IE if I'm running a Silverlight application. I like the way Safari shows some HTML5 apps... this study clearly has one goal and it's not to be objective.
While the gist of the sentiment may be true, all it really means is that IE is easier to use. I don't like it, myself, but being easier to use seems like a -good- thing, imho. And I can't stand Microsoft, don't trust it as far as I can throw it. But an advantage is an advantage - it's only natural that lower IQ users would gravitate towards the platform that's easiest to use. How can this possibly be branded a "bad" thing? :-?
I feel that "intelligence" alone is nonsense for evaluating someone's mental ability. The brain is made up of different parts, each having different powers. People therefore differ in their reaction to learning. Some grasp ideas quickly but superficially, others learn more slowly but gain a more proper understanding. Some have great memories, others may have poor memories but more powerful "cpus". Some are great at pattern matching. Others think in lists, etc .etc.
It is generally believed that intelligence varies widely from person to person. It is as if one person can be 10 or 20 times more intelligent than another. Rubbish. This belief is put about for the convenience of schools IMO, in order to explain why some people get 4 A levels and others nothing at all.
It looks like the "IE Users" are not happy with the study... AptiQuant is threatened with a lawsuit, which triggered an official answer from the company...
http://www.aptiquant.com/news/aptiquant-threatened-with-a-lawsuit-by-loyal-internet-explorer-users/
The whole thing is a hoax, The website is a copy of a that of a company called Central Test but with alterations, Central Test however have no knowledge of who these people are and no knowledge of this supposed research.
It only goes to show how easy it is to get the Register to post complete rubbish as scientific fact - for anyone who hadn't realised that already.
The whole thing is a hoax, The website is a copy of a that of a company called Central Test but with alterations, Central Test however have no knowledge of who these people are and no knowledge of this supposed research. This why Science has the peer review process and only recognises publications in peer reviewed journals.
It only goes to show how easy it is to get the Register to post complete rubbish as scientific fact - for anyone who hadn't realised that already.
Why blame the BBC. Plenty of other news providers (including this one) ran the story. Do you think that only the BBC are required to check their stories?
Obviously if you're breaking a story you should check your sources. However if you're copying somebody else's story I would say you should be even more careful. Don't bother checking and you make yourself look doubly lazy or doubly gullible.
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