The Ukraine conflict might very well also qualify for that.
Experience.
Clearly the map wasn't coloured to differentiate bodies of water, considering the clusters in the Black and Caspian seas. (But you'd think people could at least identify the major oceans...)
"In general, younger Americans tended to provide more accurate responses than their older counterparts: 27 percent of 18-24 year olds correctly identified Ukraine, compared with 14 percent of 65+ year-olds."
65+ year olds spent a big chunk of their lives in the cold war. Presumably they would know more about the geographical breakup of the Soviet Union than 18-24 year olds who didn't even exist when the Berlin Wall fell.
From a data analysis standpoint, I would say discard the outliers that look like mis-clicks. Based on the groupings you still have people that identified Alaska, Greenland, Canada, India South America, and so on. Irregardless of the colorings or map size, those should not have been chosen.
On another note, a given countries foreign policy always makes a hell of a lot more sense when placed in context on a map. I'm glad I read a lot of National Geographic as a child.
The point is, if you know where Russia is, you likely know where Ukraine is. The clicking at random is by people who have no idea about either.
EDIT: Sorry. I meant that as a reply to your comment regarding legitimacy of the map.
I wonder if that is from a side-scrolling artifact or drag/drop interface in the sampling (wild speculation there) or from an unconscious pruning algorithm, among people who are unaware of Ukraine's proximity to the Black Sea, roughly: "hmmh, Ukraine, medium-to-small country, former Soviet, I'll look further east, oops, there's China, better stop here.
Some more informative maps include languages and hydrocarbon pipelines:
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73094000/gif/_73094671...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-20/ukraine-situation-e...
That line is too sharp for a 'Hey, that's China!' stop. Besides, it's unlikely that many of them could locate China correctly, due to the generic lack of geological, geographical and topographic studies in US schools.
I think they got an America (as in: continent) centred map, something like this [1], with the small difference of being cut somewhere at the eastern parts of India, instead of the eastern borders of Iran.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/White_Wo...
Kazakhstan seems to be an attractor, probably because it's so big.
"Hmmm, so Afghanistan is in that general area, and it's a troubled country, so therefore Ukraine must be thereabouts also."
Nevertheless, I think the # of Americans that can point out the US on a world map is well over 90%. I don't see any definitive data to the contrary.
For example, would Greenland have been chosen so many times if a projection were used that didn't make it look so huge?
The distance from Ukraine for many data points is so big, that you can't possibly write it down to projection/UX.
Anyway US already intervened in Ukraine several times. I just hope this will not become another Iraq.
And the US will not actively intervene in the Ukraine, since NATO, as an organizational entity, would probably be damaged badly. Most of Europe wants to stop the Russian Bear but also wants to keep the situation from escalating.
If the US pushed for an intervention against the opposition of key NATO members (after having done so so in Iraq), where would that leave NATO?
Secondly. Who cares at this point? Seems like Putin keeps Crimea on the basis of some familiar reasoning that bodes poorly for outcomes here. There is no appetite or willing money for military intervention at scale.
Edit: Removed inflammatory language about Democrats and Republicans and will let the numbers speak for themselves.
And what do I gain from it?
Is a "look at how ignorant non-Europeans are about world geography?" going to have a different result? (And I would be quite curious to know how many, say, British or Spaniards can accurately place Ukraine on a map. I have a sneaking suspicion that the number is surprisingly low).
This coming from a non-American, by the way.
Assuming ignorance would fall in the same spectrum compared to other nationalities, you don't hear other nationalities confidently stating their opinions about things they know nothing about.
To be fair, I don't have data to back that up, but I can tell you from my personal observations that people usually refrain from commenting or are reasonably educated about the topic.
Why this is important in this case is because it's largely a matter of geo-politics, and if you don't even know where the damn country is, you should not seriously suggest a certain course of action.
I took it as look how most Americans are ignorant about world geography AND how much they want to intervene in something they know nothing about.
Here the article claims that a desire to intervene is correlated with a lack of geographical knowledge. _That_ is the point.
Your comment, whether you meant it to or not, comes off as the sort of defensive reaction that is so very common when any article on the Internet claims something that can be interpreted as putting down Americans.
