Hacker News Reader

Comment by sillyquiet | Hacker News Reader

this is a 'haha Americans so dumb' myth that's been blown up - it's the result of a NY Times article that outline a private restaurant chain focus group result.

So tldr; some people in a private focus group questioned the value of a 1/3 pound burger over the same priced 1/4 pound burger. It's not indicative of any system numerical illiteracy.

I will add there were no actual data released - it's solely based on an anecdote from a A&W restaurant executive.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/28745/did-aw-cu...

View on HN

I was exposed to this myth in my youth as various European nations described their misadventures in the US of A or encounters with Americans and as a result came to US with wrong expectations. Now that I live here, things a little more clear to me. It is a nation of more than 350 million people ( depending on how and who you count ). Even a small percentage of certifiable idiots will be very well represented in terms of absolute numbers.

I would not say Americans in general are dumb though. I would say that:

1) they are under-educated ( and then we can also get about the quality of education for those that were educated ) 2) they are very heavily propagandized

Even more than that, the accounts we get claim that some of the people in the focus group said the 1/3 pound burger was smaller than the quarter pounder. Even if those claims are accurate, it's possible they were looking at the diameter, since the 1/3 pounder has two smaller patties stacked on top of each other, while the quarter pounder is one large patty.

Most places that report on this say that the third pounder was cheaper and that Americans preferred the taste, but they didn't buy it because of the name and their poor math skills. But its name was changed to "Papa Burger," and it still didn't become the quarter pounder killer it's portrayed as.

Since you bring up the name change... didn't it sell better after the name change?

But of course my point was never about the burger. It was just that many aren't good with numbers and finance (in the edit with the links).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com