On Friday, January 8, 2021 at 12:52:56 PM UTC-5, Peter W. wrote:
The internet is your friend.

https://www.pewforum.org/religious-l...tion/by/state/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmc...h=75d31c733c16
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/pres...ttainment.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lealane...h=48f4c78c2898
https://www.wyliecomm.com/2020/11/wh...literacy-rate/

There area many other sources - but the US Census is the most comprehensive. The key that obscures the statistics are that in some categories such as travel, trips are counted, not individuals in some counts. Example: 10% of all Americans traveled overseas for any reason in 2019. No, There were about 30,000,000 trips taken in 2019. By about 14,100,000 individuals. So, less than 5% in total. And, make sure that the count includes only Americans, not visitors. First, visitors and naturalized Americans tend to travel more, have far better educations and more languages than native-born Americans.. So a population with a high level of naturalized Americans will 'look better' that one that that is mostly native-born.

So, one has to read through an entire source to make sure that what is actually being counted is what is wanted to be counted.
Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

Thank you. I found the article about literacy interesting. I didn't know how bad a shape the country is in.
I also found it a little amusing that the article title uses the words Literacy Rate. Rate means 'something' per unit of time. All of the data that was presented is a sampling done at a specific point in time. They acknowledge that this sampling is done every 10 years but the data comparisons do not show increasing/decreasing values per unit of time, e.g. 10 years. e.g. they did not correlate the data over a time period. Could it be the people who are (allegedly) literate above and 8th grade level did not accurately title the article???
From my perspective, the concept of rate is presented somewhere between 7-9th grade science classes and definitely in a high school physics class. Then again, I believe HS physics in today's HS is (still) an elective, and many ppl don't take it because it is 'too hard'.....
The graph at the end that compares literacy competence by country make me wonder how the data was normalized to arrive at the generalized literacy score? Is there some standard somewhere that says this document (in any language) is the basis for assessing reading comprehension? Well, I guess that is more of an OT thread and subject to some google searches.
Thanks
J