1 in 10 Americans think HTML is a sexually transmitted disease

To clarify, 10% of Americans who fill out surveys on coupon sites ticked a box indicating they think HTML is an STD. Since each question had only 3 options, I would imagine you'll get at least 10% for any option, no matter how ridiculous, as a result of people clicking without reading just to get their coupon.

How is this on the front page? I could get 10% of Americans to click pretty much any box if I designed the survey appropriately. Good riddance, this makes me which HN had a down-vote button.

These kinds of articles willful schadenfreude. From the bottom of the article:

The study involved 2,392 men and women 18 years of age or older. The participants were not told that the study was specifically looking into their knowledge of tech terms. They were presented with both tech and non-tech terms and were asked to choose from three possible definitions.

So in reality, 10% thought that "sexually transmitted disease" was a better option than the other two presented (presumably one was actually correct).

Many conclusions made were based on answers that were deceptively close to being right. I.e.

23% thought an "MP3" was a "Star Wars" robot. It is actually an audio file. (i.e. c-3po)

18% identified "Blu-ray" as a marine animal. It is a disc format typically used to store high-definition videos. (manta rays are marine animals, and are blue)

In addition, one might easily say this is evidence of the average American's intelligence in outsourcing things they don't need to know to Google and the web.