Internet Explorer Users Are Stupid

Tim Worstall
Forbes

July 31 2011

So it says at The Register: a survey has been done comparing the IQ of internet users and the browser they use upon the internet. And that survey says that users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are more stupid (perhaps, less impressively intelligent is politer?) than those who use Firefox, Google’s Chrome or the top dogs, Opera [ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/29/aptiquant_iq_survey/ ].

A comprehensive study of web users has determined that the dumber you are, the more likely you are to use Microsoft Internet Explorer.

After measuring the IQs of exactly 101,326 users and correlating their scores with the browser they had used to access the test, “There was a clear indication … that the subjects using any version of Internet Explorer ranked significantly lower on an average than others,” concludes the study [ http://www.aptiquant.com/IQ-Browser-AptiQuant-2011.pdf ], conducted by the Vancouver, Canada, psychometric-assessment firm, AptiQuant [ http://www.aptiquant.com/ ].

I’m not entirely sure that this is a robust conclusion but the methodology doesn’t seem deficient in any manner.

There is one nagging feeling at the back of my mind though. It was revealed just last week that all British government computer systems must work and only work within IE6. This might be true of the US, I’m not sure. Which leaves us with a conundrum. Are all those extremely intelligent people we employ in government and who have to use IE6 absent from the survey, thus lowering the average IQ of IE users? Absent, for of course no public servant would bunk off work to fill out an online survey.

Or are those public sector workers the only people left who use IE6 and thus they are included and we’ve a larger govnernance problem that we realised?

2:23 pm