We Answer the Age Old Question: Are Panther Creek Students Smarter than a 5th Grader?
To answer a question widely asked in the world of game shows and other entertainment, Panther Creek students from all grades were asked to participate in a poll consisting of questions judging whether or not they are smarter than a fifth grader.
After watching an experimental video of Harvard students being asked questions from the popular game show “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader,” one thing was clear: even the best and brightest students can forget something they learned in elementary school. The Ivy League scholars were confident in their answers; however, their responses to the elementary-level questions ranged from accurate to extremely incorrect. This raised an intriguing question. If Harvard students could do so badly on a test comprised of “common knowledge” questions, how would students at PCHS do?
As it turns out, the answer is that they didn’t do very well, but they didn’t completely fail, either. On average, the most common score was approximately 62.2%. Thirty-seven randomly selected Panther Creek students were asked eight questions very similar to the ones used in the Harvard experiment. None of the questions were answered correctly by 100% of the students, with the average percentage of correct answers per question being 61.5%. The most missed question was correctly answered by only 9 out of 37 students. On the opposite end of the scale, the question that had the largest number of correct responses had a total of 32 of them.
Does this answer the question of whether or not students at Panther Creek High School are smarter than fifth graders? While there’s always more to consider than responses to an eight-question quiz, the data indicates that if they had to go back to fifth grade, they’d have some relearning to do before they could ace any tests!
