BBC's Test the Nation

I couldn't remember what kind of wine Merlot grapes were used to make

I didn't know which meteorological symbol meant 'sunny intervals'

I didn't know which of the 4 pictures was the European parliament. The one I thought it was turned out to be the *Irish* partliament! (the other 2 pics were the Welsh assembly and the Reichstag)

With 62 my 'quiz quotient' was 139, but I suppose it should actually be a bit lower.

They say the mean quoient was 124.5. I thought the whole point of these quotients was that the mean had to be 100, but I've always been a bit confused by this. Can someone explain?

This was the most interesting of the bits of analysis they provided:

Average quiz quotient by Number of siblings:

None. 110
1. 115
2. 112
3. 111
4. or more 109

Markedly better to have two children than one or more than two, if you want them to do well at quizzes. I wonder if this is just correlation or if there's any causal influence? Do well educated/educating couples just tend to end up with two kids? I guess in our society the poor do tend to have more kids* . But that doesn't explain why single children do much worse. Early broken homes? Unhappy homes?

Or maybe having too many or no siblings really does in itself damage your quizzing.

hmm..

* yes, I know you can be poor and be knowlegeable and raise knowlegeable kids but I'm talking averages

Actually, maybe they based the quotient calculations on a survey whose participants weren't self-selecting. Which would kind of give the lie to the whole project, I suppose.

I think estoric collective nouns are stupid anyway.