How smart are you MPs?

[hhiusa]

How smart are your MPs
77% Of British Opposition MPs Couldn't Answer This Simple Math Question About Flipping Coins

Members of parliament were asked what the odds were of getting two heads if you flipped two quarters simultaneously.

47% of Tories got it wrong
77% of Labour got it wrong

I knew there was a reason I supported the Tories.

 

[counter_violent]

How smart are your MPs
77% Of British Opposition MPs Couldn't Answer This Simple Math Question About Flipping Coins

Members of parliament were asked what the odds were of getting two heads if you flipped two quarters simultaneously.

47% of Tories got it wrong
77% of Labour got it wrong

I knew there was a reason I supported the Tories.

https://iq-research.org/en/page/average-iq-by-country

Well given that your average Brit is 2% smarter than your average American, I'd say that our MP's are probably 2% smarter (on average) than your Politicians.

 

[Pat494]

Now now aren't you being a bit rough on them ? Everyone knows that politicians are big mouths, full of gas who can't do anything else. Mathematicians they ain't.

That 2% ! Is that all ? I blame the European politicians for sending their criminals and lunatics to the New World to get rid of them.

 

[alexaherself]

It was a very small sample-size (fewer than 1/6th of MP's took part), but I suspect it is probably true that Conservative MP's, overall, are actually better educated than Labour MP's.

Whether that's a good or a bad thing is perhaps debatable. One wouldn't want a preponderance of uneducated people in the House of Commons, but equally one wouldn't want it to be full of "posh boys who don't know the price of a pint of milk".

I knew there was a reason I supported the Tories.

I knew there was a reason I don't support either.

 

[Pat494]

I knew there was a reason I don't support either.[/QUOTE]

Difficult to find a political home these days. I tried the Liberals for a while in desperation but...............they never seem to agree with me and the electorate doesn't agree with them !

 

[alexaherself]

I tried the Liberals for a while in desperation but...............they never seem to agree with me and the electorate doesn't agree with them !

True ... I can't say I've warmed to their new leader, yet. I suspect the strength of his religious allegiances may continue to cause him political problems, too.

I thought Vince-the-Cable was under-appreciated, myself, and I never minded Clegg.

I was surprised by the extent to which the electorate punished them, anyway. (But so was everyone?).

They usually seem like nice, good, reasonable and pretty honest people individually, but collectively some of their policies leave a bit to be desired, I think.

Difficult to find a political home these days.

For me, certainly, but I expect that: I'm a socially liberal, fiscally conservative, somewhat Eurosceptic, European immigrant here, and that makes me a disenfranchised voter, I think. I don't mind some of UKIP's policies, but some of their participants seem almost as clownish and stupid as The Donald (ok, perhaps I'm exaggerating, there) and I can't manage to take them seriously. And most of the Greens (for all that Caroline Lucas seems very nice) are frankly deluded, it seems to me? :|

At the start of the Labour leadership campaign, Liz Kendall and her supporters were proclaiming that the only way they could win another election was by persuading some of the people who voted Conservative in 2010 and 2015 to vote Labour in 2020, and at the time this was said, I believed it. I'm less sure about that, now: they might be able to do it with the votes of previous abstainers, if they can collect enough of them, and some new (i.e. younger) voters? But they probably went so disastrously wrong by electing "the wrong Miliband" in 2010 that it may not matter any more, now. In my view ...

 

[Pat494]

Ah hum much the same thinking as many voters.
Andy Burnham would have been a more credible Labour leader imho but they have to reinvent themselves for me in a fair but viable mould. None of the old garbage from the 1970s laden with strikes and communist agitators.

The major European nations are about to get bogged down yet again in the Middle East where only Israel is the winner. They never learn.

I think the Turks are on a dangerous path shooting down aircraft that are maybe a bit close.

 

[alexaherself]

Andy Burnham would have been a more credible Labour leader imho

I've never liked or trusted him. He'll change his mind with the wind, support anyone/anything, and so on.

I wanted to see Chuka, or maybe Tristram Hunt (but he's probably too busy being a history professor and author, and anyway you can't really have a Labour leader called "Tristram"?!).

None of the old garbage from the 1970s laden with strikes and communist agitators.

A generation or two before my time, but I hear you. Come back David Miliband, all (well, some) is forgiven?

The major European nations are about to get bogged down yet again in the Middle East

No realistic other option, perhaps, at this stage? Doesn't do to encourage those "Jihadists"?

(Very annoyingly, the buffoon Trump was saying the other day that the world was a safer place, overall, with Saddam Hussein in it, and that he was really good at controlling terrorists in his country, and I'm afraid The Donald may just have that one right, much though it pains me to admit it.)

 

[Pat494]

(Very annoyingly, the buffoon Trump was saying the other day that the world was a safer place, overall, with Saddam Hussein in it, and that he was really good at controlling terrorists in his country, and I'm afraid The Donald may just have that one right, much though it pains me to admit it.)

Of course the US with their American views of democracy turned the centuries old and established rule of the minority Sunnis into a rule by the majority Shia. That was a bad mistake and upset the established law and order. OK as you say Trump has got that right. One can't really judge others by one's own standards and it has cost thousands of lives.

 

[hhiusa]

If by some chance, hell froze over and the UK became a superpower, it would be their prerogative to do such things. There are varying definitions of diplomacy.

“Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.”
― Will Rogers

The US has cornered the market on rocks.

Diplomacy works best when you have leverage.

 

[timsk]

If by some chance, hell froze over and the UK became a superpower, it would be their prerogative to do such things.

Some would say that in no small part, it's because of the hawkish attitude advocated here that the world finds itself in the mess it's in. I'd like to believe that if hell froze over and the U.K. became a superpower, that the incumbent government (be it to the left or to the right) wouldn't be so arrogant to presume anything of the kind.

 

[Pat494]

Someone once said that power corrupts. The US is an example of barmy things. US law is also subject to such lunacy. The judgements sometimes given, beggar belief. This new clock boy case may turn out to additionally prove it. The Supreme Court should be checking up on stupid judgements and overturning the more ridiculous ones.

Common sense and fairness rule OK ?

 

[tomorton]

What's a quarter?

 

[Pat494]

What's a quarter?

about 1/2 a 1/2 when I went to school but now who knows..............

 

[tomorton]

about 1/2 a 1/2 when I went to school but now who knows..............

Its well known that the probability changes with the value of the coin - less for higher denominations.

 

[hhiusa]

Its well known that the probability changes with the value of the coin - less for higher denominations.

Says the man who doesn't know what a quarter is.

 

[counter_violent]

Says the man who doesn't know what a quarter is.

Quarter, isn't that somewhere near "the iraq"?

 

[hhiusa]

Quarter, isn't that somewhere near "the iraq"?

??? Quarter and Iraq. That is an interesting segue or lack thereof as the case is here.

I will make a segue for you.

Qatar is not that close to Iraq. That is like saying London, isn't that somewhere near Denmark? London to the border of Denmark is about the same distance that Qatar is from the border of Iraq.

 

[tomorton]

Says the man who doesn't know what a quarter is.

Well nobody answered my question what's a quarter. Maybe they don't know either.

But anyway, happy you don't disagree with the main point - the more valuable the coin, the more probabible you will lose any competition based on probabibility. Its just like when you get a puncture - it will only ever be when you need to be somewhere in a hurry and that's another well known fact.

 

[darktone]

Well nobody answered my question what's a quarter. Maybe they don't know either.

Sorry Tom. As I understand it a quarter is most likely to mean 25%, or a fourth.
As in:-
The very smart man only knew 25% of knowledge and smartness of wot he thought he knew. There fourth being desperate to impress, he took the other two thirds in partials at 70% stakes of total knowledge at key times in history when he went back to the past.

I could be wrong mind.