These days, we are constantly inundated with polls purporting to accurately reflect the opinion of the American people on everything from prospective officeholders to wedge issues to consumer practices. But we feel that polls could do so much more. And so, last week, we asked readers to propose a poll question they put ask to Americans.
Many entrants remained in the political realm. We enjoyed @WolmanTweets’s bipartisan, lousy-with-double-negative submission, “Agree or don’t not disagree? Mitt Romney is rarely not as much of a pandering waffler as John Kerry often wasn’t in 2004,” and @somerbill’s frightening modest proposal disguised as a question, “If the United States could split in two—red states becoming a country & blue states another, but w/ no Civil War—would you support that?” If @somerbill’s question were asked, by the way, it would divide respondents along an entirely different line: those willing to see the nation riven, and those unwilling.
Some readers sought a broader sense of life’s meaning, and did so earnestly. There’s no penalty for earnestness. So we applaud @chele_sews’s question: “What does being a success mean to you? A) Happy/Healthy Relationships B) Wealth C) Achievement D) Integrity.” (We’d add that respondents are encouraged to select more than one.) Also good was @LauraDakota’s “What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? And better yet: What’s the most courageous thing your neighbor has ever done?” Actual polling data on these two questions would offer a window into America’s ethical existence.
Other submissions satisfied our addiction to recursive humor, like @hopedellon’s extremely useful two-parter: “Do you answer poll questions honestly? Follow-up question: How do I know you’re not lying now?” And some were, well, just plain weird, such as @Gen_ev_ieve’s “Do you think that as transportation improves there will be less need for social networking sites?” (It’s either a serious question, in which case it’s reading history backward in a particularly odd manner, or it’s a joke, in which case it’s sidesplitting.)
On to the runners-up. We applaud @FastLaugh for trying to get to the bottom of this year’s pop-porn sensation with this question: “Of the fifty, which is your favorite shade of grey?” We appreciate the simple curiosity of @mulesome’s “What are you wearing?” We thought long and hard about @mauriellom’s “Who would you rather have your life narrated by? Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones?”
In the end, though, we were swayed by recent debates in the media about the importance of numeracy, and for that reason we have selected @WheelhouseRev’s question, which is deadly serious, pertinent, lively, unserious, and impertinent, all at the same time: “On a scale of -1 to pi, how important is education in math and science?” As we promised, we will now ask this question of you, America.
On a scale of -1 to pi, how important is education in math and science?
Check back in Friday for the next Questioningly. Or browse the archives for recent contests: best new Olympic event, best food-movie-title mashup, best literary product, and more.
Illustration by Saul Steinberg.
