An article in The Telegraph reports that a survey of people who took a free online IQ test reveals that the lowest IQs were found amongst Internet Explorer (IE) users.
As you can imagine, this has got a lot of people wetting themselves in excitement. But what it really shows is how badly a lot of people understand statistics.
Until very recently, IE was the deafult browser installed on computers. People with above average IQs would have been the ones most likely to install another browser. Likewise, people with above average IQs would be the ones most likely to want to install another browser.
This would mean that there would be a slight shift from the norm, and there would be a slight tendency for those with above average IQs to be using browsers other than IE. This is borne out by the fact that the results for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari…
…were very slightly above average. Camino, Opera and Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame were scored “exceptionally” high.
As the article reports, changing browsers is something typically done by computer geeks.
Further evidence that they’ve all got the wrong end of the stick comes with…
Within the group of IE users, version 6 users score lowest, while users of version 8 do rather better.
That’s because users of IE6 have probably just sat with the default setup since 2001 (and probably still have Windows 98 running), and aren’t even aware that there are updates to either the OS or the browser.
More useful information weakening the interpretation of the results is seen if you look at the full report from the consultancy which ran it, AptiQuant. What they say is:
it has been suggested that individuals on the lower end of the IQ scale tend to keep using outdated versions of antique web browsers.
This suggests that they set out to prove this premise. And in their conclusion, they say:
The study showed a substantial relationship between an individual’s cognitive ability and their choice of web browser.
That last sentence highlights the massive weakness of the survey from a statistical viewpoint. It isn’t a matter of “choice” of browser - which would be a positive action - It’s down to not doing anything at all to change from the default. So, although it is clear that their IS a tendency for those using IE to have lower IQs, it isn’t because they chose it. It is because they didn’t know how to change or (or that you could).
For the record, my IQ is above 150 (the test I did some years ago only went up to that). I use IE9 through choice. I have Chrome if I need it, and I’d install any of the other browsers if I needed those. I don’t need them, and I’m not trying to make a statement – the main driver behind switching from IE for most geeks.
And also for the record, if you look at browser usage statistics – and I mean global ones, not those from the highly skewed geek websites – IE still (in 2011) has nearly about 45% of the market share, with Firefox the closest rival at 30% (in Europe, it’s 50:50).
Update: Not sure what’s going on, but this BBC story suggests it was a hoax.
Does this mean that all non-IE users are total prats, like the perpetrators of this?