Friday, July 29, 2011

IE users are mentally-challenged?

This is amusing to say the least.  AptiQuant conducted a sublime study of IQ and browsers, by purchasing ads and SEO placement of its free IQ tests (based on the common WISC-iV), resulting in over 100K scores from users on different browsers.

100 is the mean IQ score and people who score 71 - 85 are classified as "borderline intellectual functioning" under the DSM-IV.  If you click through on that link to borderline intellectual functioning, you can see the other ranges of intelligence as classified by DSM-IV and David Wechsler.

Oddly - or perhaps predictably - IE users averaged below 100 on their IQ tests, with one exception: IE with Chrome Frame.  Chrome users tended to score better than IE and Firefox.  Safari users scored just slightly higher than Chrome users.  IE with Chrome Frame, Opera and Camino users scored significantly higher than everyone else, in the superior range of the IQ test.  It appears that Google (as well as Opera and Camino) has had a significant impact on IE overall -- notice the shift of IQ scorers away from IE6 and IE7 to Chrome and IE with Chrome Frame.



When looking at the percentage of users opposite their IQ scores, there are three very distinct patterns:

  1. Most IE users are generally below the mean IQ of 100, and fall off towards the higher IQ range - a long tail;
  2. Chrome, Firefox and Safari users seem to resemble a statistical bell curve with the bulk of users scoring above the mean;
  3. Camino, Opera and IE with Chrome Frame users are the reverse long tail, where the majority of users score at the very top range of the IQ test.



So, which browser do YOU use?



Update 8/3: BBC reports that Aptiquant and its story was completely bogus!  What an excellent hoax, though.  It plays on the suspicions of many, about the types of people who would stick with IE.  A lot of people seem to be incredibly angry, but I think it's rather awesome that someone or some group could nearly pull off this spectacular hoax.

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