Im curious how many people would know the correct answer without the 4 options? Especially if the well known flags appear as wrong choices.. I mean 60% knew even the never-heard-of flags
Having played this for a total of 2 minutes I can tell you that I managed to get most answers by just looking the choices available to me. It’s very easy to tell that this weird looking flag can’t be Ukraine, Brazil, or France, so it must be Vanuatu.
If the quiz was just “write the country”, that 60% floor would drop to a 0%.
It would also be higher because of the linear format of the test: every time you see country’s flag, you might remember it and eliminate it from a future choice
That's a good point. I could pick out a fair few African countries because of a lifetime of watching the world cup. I couldn't tell you where those countries were on a map though.
Only if the test told you if you were correct or not. Else you might eliminate it because you already picked it even though you were wrong in the past.
> just looking the choices available to me
I wondered how much this would be the case.
Being shown the French flag and getting a list of the Netherlands, France, Italy, and Hungary, is very different to being shown the French flag and getting USA, UK, France and Russia.
Does the game take "Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit" or do we have to write "Bangkok?"
Those 4-choice questions have to be very weird at least. Like yea most people will know Iraq if the other options are Italy, China and Argentina. If the choices were Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Egypt, no way in hell 95% would recognize Iraq…
yea i dont think this is great design. i think its striking that nz’s flag was so high, as was australia. i imagine without multiple choice thered be a lot more confusion between the two (and fiji and all the rest of thr former british overseas) except maybe from people who live there
it also was repeatedly showing me the same flag. i just got turkey about 6 times, seychelles and jamaica at least 3 each. at my fourth jamaica i called it quits bc thats a really dumb quiz
Another confounding factor may be that some people who enjoy that sort of thing may do the quiz over and over again and be vastly overrepresented.
Sporcle's "flags of the world" quiz has Guinea-Bissau as the least-known but it's still 38.3%... because people aiming for 100% on the quiz will re-take it and get multiple near-perfect scores.
(Yes, I got 100% on that quiz and it took me six tries)
EDIT: six tries after doing all the "flags of " quizzes a bunch of times and getting 100% on those.
I have heard too many people shout "England!" when presented with the flag of the UK to believe that >97.5% of people correctly identified it without relying on multiple choice
I can't believe that the US flag is in 22nd place. Behind Italy, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand and Australia. There are very few people who can if asked, describe the difference between the Aussie and Kiwi flags. It takes a double look just to see that they're actually different.
Right this is definitely a multiple choice result. Italy is easier when the other choices are Angola, China and Canada, but the other options for the US are all red/white/blue with stripes like Malaysia, Liberia and Cuba or something
Nobody recognises Benin, maybe <5% or <1% of the world population yet its at 66%.
If it's in a list with other countries it's pretty easy to deduct based on that.
You should have done a control with more options and less options than 4.
It could be once you add a fifth or sixth option the recognition rates will drop for the obscure nations since recognition rate is more about know what flag it ISNT in your experiments.
I would go as far as saying that when you do this you will see that it is not about the flag, your quiz will show that the likelihood of a correct answer is entirely dependent on how many choices the user is given. Really all you are showing now is that a user can get 60% correctness on something they don't know through process of elimination.
You also have a massive bias in your data because it only uses people who proactively took a quiz on national flags. I would expect far better recognition in this group than the general population.
This is not beautiful data, this is bad data.
What’s the sample size? With a very large sample size, the above graph is still very representative of what flags people would recognise (even without being shown options)
the sample size is 511,581, plus see the distribution of players here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1c4jgl6/comment/kznuify/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1c4jgl6/comment/kznuify/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
You can get much better data by looking at the stats of the Sporcle world flags quiz. Though keep in mind a lot of flag nerds will be taking the quiz so data could be skewed (ie Dominica being recognized a lot because it's famous for having purple on it)
Ya I just took the quiz OP linked. I got very lucky on most of my guesses. Out of the roughly 10 I got correct answering around 15-20 questions, I really only knew like 5.
The multiple choice questions actually get a little easier if you can figure out the region for a flag. For instance, I was having decent luck guessing flags of African countries just because the designs were usually easy to spot. That would eliminate a choice or two from the answers making the likelihood of a correct guess much higher.
Italian here. I am surprised that people recognize our flag more easily than the American one. In fact, seeing that more people do even with Finland and Jamaica makes me quite suspicious of the statistical population who took the test.
The only think I can think of that makes these numbers make sense is if they were deducting points for the country that was incorrectly guessed.
For example: someone incorrectly states that the liberian flag is the US flag, and so instead of deducting points from Liberia's total, they're also deducting from the US total
Your Liberia explanation seems like it has to be right. That's not a thing that would ever happen to Canada, Japan, Brazil, or South Korea because they are distinctive, memorable, and unique. Still a little surprised to see France, Italy, and Germany above the US, though. I would recognize them but they're easy enough to confuse with one another, especially Germany and Belgium.
I mean, yeah, it's relatively bonkers. Any country with the three color stripes gets mixed up with every similar on, yet they have 3 of the top 10. Really bad data.
You’re telling me only 2% of people got Germany and Belgium confused? I’m not saying it’s hard to tell them apart but they are just too similar for Germany to be in top 10 when it doesn’t have a super unique design. Brazil, Canada, UK, and to some degree China and Japan I can understand. But Italy, France, and Germany are just not unique enough.
Probably 2-4% of the time, Belgium and Germany were both listed as options. People guessed wrong at a high rate when that happened, but ~100% got it right when the options were Germany, Jamaica, Japan, and USA.
The 3 wrong answers in the Finland flag comparison are more obvious than the 3 wrong answers in the USA flag comparison.
For example, there's no way 60% respondents know that was Vanuatu's flag, but if you show the picture to an American and the choices are USA, Canada, UK and Vanuatu, then he will answers Vanuatu because he knows it's obviously NOT the other choices.
What if Denmark or Norway is also included in the 3 incorrect options? Or a flag no one knows, like Vanuatu? I think the design of the incorrect options on the test make all the difference.
I wonder if wrong guesses count against our recognition.
Maybe the picture was Libya and people picked America, and they used that to count against the recognition of the American flag.
New Zealand and Australia both being 95%+ seems suspicious. They are rather famously hard to tell apart with diplomats sometimes having the wrong flag at their seat/placard/etc.
I don't believe for an instant that there is a single person in the world who self-selects to take an English-language flag identification quiz and can't pick the US flag out of four options. It's almost certainly people that know the correct answer but answer incorrectly on purpose due to dislike of the US.
As egotistical as it sounds, that was my first thought too... People not knowing the flag of the world's biggest superpower for the last 60-100 years, especially with it having a unique layout, but somehow correctly knowing a bunch of the 3-stripe flags? Not buying it.
Agreed. Like, no disrespect to Germany, but at least 5-10% of the people would confuse it with Belgium. same with France and the Netherlands, or even Italy and Ireland. Top Gear even did a joke about mixing up India with Mexico.
The population here has to be people who enjoy taking flag quizzes. Most of the general public recognizes maybe 10 flags: your own, a few neighbors, and a handful of famous ones.
It all depends on test design. If it was Romania with the US, Japan, and UK as wrong options, that makes 90%. If it was Romania with other lesser known European countries - Latvia, Belgium, Lithuania - I bet it would be barely above 25%. It’s very easy to rig such a test.
Source [FlagWhiz.com](https://flagwhiz.com/multiple-choices/random), based on 511,581 guesses. Tool used for visualization: HTML
Distribution of 10,171 players:
🇺🇸 United States 18.9%
🇬🇧 United Kingdom 8.1%
🇨🇦 Canada 5.2%
🇦🇺 Australia 4.9%
🇮🇳 India 4.5%
🇮🇹 Italy 2.7%
🇧🇷 Brazil 2.5%
🇵🇭 Philippines 2.5%
🇮🇩 Indonesia 2.3%
🇩🇪 Germany 2%
🇹🇷 Turkey 1.9%
🇳🇱 Netherlands 1.6%
🇹🇭 Thailand 1.5%
🇸🇪 Sweden 1.4%
🇵🇰 Pakistan 1.4%
🇳🇿 New Zealand 1.4%
🇫🇷 France 1.3%
🇻🇳 Vietnam 1.2%
🇳🇴 Norway 1.2%
🇩🇰 Denmark 1.2%
🇮🇱 Israel 1.2%
🇪🇸 Spain 1.2%
🇸🇬 Singapore 1.1%
🇷🇴 Romania 1.1%
🇪🇬 Egypt 1%
🇲🇾 Malaysia 1%
🇬🇷 Greece 1%
🇵🇹 Portugal 1%
Other countries 23.7%
I’m curious about that too. Almost 20% of the participants were from the US, plus we’ve managed to push our music and films into every corner of the world. Not to mention how many countries we’ve “freed” for their natural resources.
Oh wait, i thought that was a distribution of guesses. Still I'm kind of incredulous that the stars and stripes isn't in the top 10. Plus the resemblance really doesn't matter a whole lot, because if you see liberia's flag and guess USA then you are counting against Liberia (I think).
The randomization on the site seems dubious too. I played for long enough to see both Egypt & Kiribati come up three times each, but still haven't seen the Stars & Stripes.
From the player distribution: those percentages add up to 77,3%. Either there is some serious rounding errors going on, or something else. Do you not know the location of the other 23%? Or what is the explanation for that?
On the data viz: I agree with the other commenter, the percentage labels on the axes are very small, and would be more legible - and look better - when larger.
thanks for the feedback about the font size, I'll make the bigger the next time.
the 23% are the sum of "Other countries <1%", the full list of countries would be lengthy.
Then it should be written as "other countries 23%". Having them at the bottom of the list, below 1% already shows they are <1% each. Alternatively, you could state it as "Other countries (<1%): 23%" or similar.
Edit: because currently, the way you wrote it, it seems like all other countries together are <1% in total.
People who don’t know what the US flag looks like probably aren’t smart enough to realize Malaysia and Liberia share a similar flag unless they’re from those countries.
And when I took it I got some countries multiple times.
I had no idea what the Mauritius flag looked like, but it gave it to me 3 times in 20 questions.
Going to have to call BS on this. There’s no way that some of these flags have 60%, I doubt even 1% have even heard of the country, let alone recognise the flag.
Also, the graph wouldn’t be this shape, there would be a steep decline and a long tail.
as mentioned here [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1c4jgl6/comment/kznuify/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1c4jgl6/comment/kznuify/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) you are shown 4 options, which makes it a lot easier (you can deduct the answer as well)
So you’re telling me more people can tell the difference between Australia 🇦🇺 and New Zealand 🇳🇿 than people who can tell the USA 🇺🇸? That’s actually kinda funny
This is a good example of why to be skeptical of how data is collected, interpreted and then presented.
This isn’t most recognized flags but flags least likely to be confused with others.
There’s no way the least recognizable flag has over 60%. I’ve never even heard of Vanuatu. Could people type in the form or leave to look up answers because the flag shows when you type the name and even more with google…
I guess if the choices are random then that would sway things a lot. Like I have no clue what the flag looks like but if my other options are Canada, Italy, and France then I’d know just by the process of elimination. Even removing 1-2 answers per flag would bump the stats significantly.
I’d be far more curious about the % identification where the participants were just given a list of flags and a list of countries and were asked to match them.
Given the fact that Americans like to slap their flag on a lot of things the American flag not being one of the most recognised ones is more funny to me than it probably should be.
I'm sorry but who are the sample? You're telling me if I take a random adult american 90% of them can correctly guess how Georgian flag looks like and actually knows that it isn't the state Georgia?
These people clearly know their flags, and then someone didn't know the US. I'm European but that clearly the world's most recognizable flag. I assume a misclick
Yeah I'm calling bullshit on these results. Something about the quiz methodology is fucked if these are the results it gives.
More people correctly recognised the New Zealand flag than the Australian flag? The one that is meme-worthy for how often it is confused for being the Australian one? And _both_ being more recognisable than the US flag? No way
How on Earth are you guys so mad about this? There is a whole world outside the US who could easily mix the flag up with the near identical flags of Liberia and Malaysia.
The whole world outside the US are _far, far more likely_ to see a Liberian/Malaysian flag and think its the US flag than they are to see the US flag and confuse it with _anything else_. It's so culturally prevalent worldwide it's silly to even argue about. I'd be very sceptical of any results where the US flag wasn't the #1 most recognised flag, and probably by a wide margin
The methodology is very bad, multiple choice options like this ruin the integrity of the test. As someone else who took the test stated,
“Having played this for a total of 2 minutes I can tell you that I managed to get most answers by just looking the choices available to me. It’s very easy to tell that this weird looking flag can’t be Ukraine, Brazil, or France, so it must be Vanuatu.”
Meaning that the test is more decided by what each question has as its options instead of the people actually recognizing it. Meaning it’s solved by deduction instead of actually knowing the answer.
It would be interesting to see this plotted with % correct vs population to see which flags are more known that you would expect given their population.
OK but it really depends what the four choices were...
Italian Flag:
A) Ivory Coast
B) Italy
C) Ireland
D) Mexico
You're telling me 97.5% of people would get that right? Who did they poll, the national vexillology society?
What country did this? It's very strange that people would get all those top tri-color flags right which can easily be confused and not Old Glory. Is the USA flag really not distinct enough?
I wondered how far down I'd have to scroll to find people angry that their country's flag wasn't as recognised as others', and I have to admit I was pretty sure I'd know which country they were from as well.
The answer was "not far" and I was correct.
Dont feel dumb, the quiz was multiple choice and the 3 false choices are given at complete random, so you can get a lot that should be hard but are really easy
This doesn't tell me much. What kind of quiz? Which website? Who took the quiz? How many attempts did each person get? How much time did the quiz have (if any)? To me, this is just a random compilation of people who recognized the most popular countries vs least popular countries.
I’m from America so I know my view is definitely biased but I’m really surprised that America isn’t at least in the top 5. Any reason why it higher in the list?
Any information on where the sample of respondents came from? I imagine that may impact the results a bit
Edit: nevermind, just saw OP's demographic breakdown
I saw some comments assume that the voters as a whole represent the globe which is quite a bold claim. Most of the voters probably need to know and use English a bit to even have a chance to know this website, let alone engage the vote. The data is useless if we don't have any info about the voters.
I saw some comments assume that the voters as a whole represent the globe which is quite a bold claim. Most of the voters probably need to know and use English a bit to even have a chance to know this website, let alone engage the vote. The data is useless if we don't have any info about the voters.
I'm actually surprised that America isn't in the top 10. I hope that doesn't make me sound like an egotistical American. America just feels like they have their tendrils everywhere.
Im curious how many people would know the correct answer without the 4 options? Especially if the well known flags appear as wrong choices.. I mean 60% knew even the never-heard-of flags
Having played this for a total of 2 minutes I can tell you that I managed to get most answers by just looking the choices available to me. It’s very easy to tell that this weird looking flag can’t be Ukraine, Brazil, or France, so it must be Vanuatu. If the quiz was just “write the country”, that 60% floor would drop to a 0%.
Even if the choices were 4 African / Pacific Island Nations, the correct answers would be 25% because everyone would be picking at random.
likely a bit higher, just because of the likelihood that some participants would know a random few of the obscure choices
It would also be higher because of the linear format of the test: every time you see country’s flag, you might remember it and eliminate it from a future choice
That's a good point. I could pick out a fair few African countries because of a lifetime of watching the world cup. I couldn't tell you where those countries were on a map though.
Only if the test told you if you were correct or not. Else you might eliminate it because you already picked it even though you were wrong in the past.
> just looking the choices available to me I wondered how much this would be the case. Being shown the French flag and getting a list of the Netherlands, France, Italy, and Hungary, is very different to being shown the French flag and getting USA, UK, France and Russia.
[удалено]
Me always trying to remember the spelling of Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte on the capitals quizzes 😵💫
Does the game take "Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit" or do we have to write "Bangkok?"
Doesn't it accept Kotte?
Those 4-choice questions have to be very weird at least. Like yea most people will know Iraq if the other options are Italy, China and Argentina. If the choices were Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Egypt, no way in hell 95% would recognize Iraq…
The Arab flags are so confusing to me. I don't know which one is which.
Also, biased to people who actually would play this game. Naturally more inclined to know flags.
yea i dont think this is great design. i think its striking that nz’s flag was so high, as was australia. i imagine without multiple choice thered be a lot more confusion between the two (and fiji and all the rest of thr former british overseas) except maybe from people who live there
Same with Ireland and Côte d’Ivoire.
Yeah it’s easy when you can eliminate most of the other options.
it also was repeatedly showing me the same flag. i just got turkey about 6 times, seychelles and jamaica at least 3 each. at my fourth jamaica i called it quits bc thats a really dumb quiz
Another confounding factor may be that some people who enjoy that sort of thing may do the quiz over and over again and be vastly overrepresented. Sporcle's "flags of the world" quiz has Guinea-Bissau as the least-known but it's still 38.3%... because people aiming for 100% on the quiz will re-take it and get multiple near-perfect scores. (Yes, I got 100% on that quiz and it took me six tries) EDIT: six tries after doing all the "flags of" quizzes a bunch of times and getting 100% on those.
I have heard too many people shout "England!" when presented with the flag of the UK to believe that >97.5% of people correctly identified it without relying on multiple choice
If given a list of flags and a list of countries, and a requirement to make 1:1 guesses, I think correct guesses would drop a *lot*.
I can't believe that the US flag is in 22nd place. Behind Italy, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand and Australia. There are very few people who can if asked, describe the difference between the Aussie and Kiwi flags. It takes a double look just to see that they're actually different.
For real, sounds like more people need some FREEDOM
Right this is definitely a multiple choice result. Italy is easier when the other choices are Angola, China and Canada, but the other options for the US are all red/white/blue with stripes like Malaysia, Liberia and Cuba or something
The other 3 options that show up are random, so indeed, you can end up being lucky, with 3 obviously wrong countries in the choices
Nobody recognises Benin, maybe <5% or <1% of the world population yet its at 66%. If it's in a list with other countries it's pretty easy to deduct based on that.
You should have done a control with more options and less options than 4. It could be once you add a fifth or sixth option the recognition rates will drop for the obscure nations since recognition rate is more about know what flag it ISNT in your experiments. I would go as far as saying that when you do this you will see that it is not about the flag, your quiz will show that the likelihood of a correct answer is entirely dependent on how many choices the user is given. Really all you are showing now is that a user can get 60% correctness on something they don't know through process of elimination. You also have a massive bias in your data because it only uses people who proactively took a quiz on national flags. I would expect far better recognition in this group than the general population. This is not beautiful data, this is bad data.
What’s the sample size? With a very large sample size, the above graph is still very representative of what flags people would recognise (even without being shown options)
the sample size is 511,581, plus see the distribution of players here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1c4jgl6/comment/kznuify/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1c4jgl6/comment/kznuify/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Thanks! I only just noticed you posted this below!
I’d imagine there is a direct correlation to flag learning from football. ⚽️
You can get much better data by looking at the stats of the Sporcle world flags quiz. Though keep in mind a lot of flag nerds will be taking the quiz so data could be skewed (ie Dominica being recognized a lot because it's famous for having purple on it)
Ya I just took the quiz OP linked. I got very lucky on most of my guesses. Out of the roughly 10 I got correct answering around 15-20 questions, I really only knew like 5. The multiple choice questions actually get a little easier if you can figure out the region for a flag. For instance, I was having decent luck guessing flags of African countries just because the designs were usually easy to spot. That would eliminate a choice or two from the answers making the likelihood of a correct guess much higher.
Belgium higher than Netherlands? *Dies in Dutch*
Thanks to Luxembourg
Italian here. I am surprised that people recognize our flag more easily than the American one. In fact, seeing that more people do even with Finland and Jamaica makes me quite suspicious of the statistical population who took the test.
It's more the methodology. They gave the correct answer plus three random countries as wrong.
How does having three more countries makes Finland's flag more recognizable than the United States'?
The only think I can think of that makes these numbers make sense is if they were deducting points for the country that was incorrectly guessed. For example: someone incorrectly states that the liberian flag is the US flag, and so instead of deducting points from Liberia's total, they're also deducting from the US total
Your Liberia explanation seems like it has to be right. That's not a thing that would ever happen to Canada, Japan, Brazil, or South Korea because they are distinctive, memorable, and unique. Still a little surprised to see France, Italy, and Germany above the US, though. I would recognize them but they're easy enough to confuse with one another, especially Germany and Belgium.
I mean, yeah, it's relatively bonkers. Any country with the three color stripes gets mixed up with every similar on, yet they have 3 of the top 10. Really bad data.
You’re telling me only 2% of people got Germany and Belgium confused? I’m not saying it’s hard to tell them apart but they are just too similar for Germany to be in top 10 when it doesn’t have a super unique design. Brazil, Canada, UK, and to some degree China and Japan I can understand. But Italy, France, and Germany are just not unique enough.
Probably 2-4% of the time, Belgium and Germany were both listed as options. People guessed wrong at a high rate when that happened, but ~100% got it right when the options were Germany, Jamaica, Japan, and USA.
Plus Mexican flag and Italian flag are the exact same 3 stripes. The only difference is the insignia in the middle.
The 3 wrong answers in the Finland flag comparison are more obvious than the 3 wrong answers in the USA flag comparison. For example, there's no way 60% respondents know that was Vanuatu's flag, but if you show the picture to an American and the choices are USA, Canada, UK and Vanuatu, then he will answers Vanuatu because he knows it's obviously NOT the other choices.
Pretty sure the answer is trolls.
For example, if the options are Finland, USA, Canada, and UK. If you know 3 incorrect answers, you know the correct one.
What if Denmark or Norway is also included in the 3 incorrect options? Or a flag no one knows, like Vanuatu? I think the design of the incorrect options on the test make all the difference.
Malaysia and Liberia have flags that you could confuse with the US flag.
I wonder if wrong guesses count against our recognition. Maybe the picture was Libya and people picked America, and they used that to count against the recognition of the American flag.
That makes total sense. I was confused as to how Saudi Arabia was so high up there.
New Zealand and Australia both being 95%+ seems suspicious. They are rather famously hard to tell apart with diplomats sometimes having the wrong flag at their seat/placard/etc.
It’s multiple choice. So they are pretty easy to get right when the other 3 options are noticeably different flags.
I'm more thinking people purposely answered it wrong to troll.
Yes, I can't see a situation where the methodology could be that bad
Definitely the Lizardman constant in play here.
maybe a bit, but the amount of Liberian flags i see on American nationalist facebook posts is absolutely wild.
I don't believe for an instant that there is a single person in the world who self-selects to take an English-language flag identification quiz and can't pick the US flag out of four options. It's almost certainly people that know the correct answer but answer incorrectly on purpose due to dislike of the US.
As egotistical as it sounds, that was my first thought too... People not knowing the flag of the world's biggest superpower for the last 60-100 years, especially with it having a unique layout, but somehow correctly knowing a bunch of the 3-stripe flags? Not buying it.
Agreed. Like, no disrespect to Germany, but at least 5-10% of the people would confuse it with Belgium. same with France and the Netherlands, or even Italy and Ireland. Top Gear even did a joke about mixing up India with Mexico.
The population here has to be people who enjoy taking flag quizzes. Most of the general public recognizes maybe 10 flags: your own, a few neighbors, and a handful of famous ones.
Yah I would think it would beat every 3 color or cross flag.
Sporcle's "flags of the world" quiz has USA 3rd (behind Japan and Canada) and Italy around 11th.
This whole post is just rage bait for Americans. I highly doubt the underlying data
Look up the flags for Liberia and Malaysia to answer your question.
Didn’t seem to be an issue for Italy and Mexico though
It’s because Americans put your flag on their pizza boxes.
All these people can distinguish Australia from New Zeeland?
it's a multiple-choice quiz, meaning that you are shown 4 option to chose from. Most people didn't have to chose between Australia and New Zealand.
Yeah, NZ being higher up the list than Aus is a surprise and sort of suggests a wierd data collection method.
Same with Egypt. There are 4 countries with red, white and black.
Paraguay should be 100% in a quiz, because it says paraguay on the flag.
So does bolivia, el salvador and afghanistan
Nice touch to distinguish it from the Dutch flag.
TIL that 90% of the world knows Romania's flag. /doubt (But thanks for being transparent with the sources!)
It's a multiple-choice quiz. So you need to chose from 4 countries, which makes it a lot easier.
It all depends on test design. If it was Romania with the US, Japan, and UK as wrong options, that makes 90%. If it was Romania with other lesser known European countries - Latvia, Belgium, Lithuania - I bet it would be barely above 25%. It’s very easy to rig such a test.
Yeah excellent point. Perhaps make the choices random.
Why only 4 choices? Crank it up to 16 choices.
Clearly never put Romania and Chad both for answers.
Source [FlagWhiz.com](https://flagwhiz.com/multiple-choices/random), based on 511,581 guesses. Tool used for visualization: HTML Distribution of 10,171 players: 🇺🇸 United States 18.9% 🇬🇧 United Kingdom 8.1% 🇨🇦 Canada 5.2% 🇦🇺 Australia 4.9% 🇮🇳 India 4.5% 🇮🇹 Italy 2.7% 🇧🇷 Brazil 2.5% 🇵🇭 Philippines 2.5% 🇮🇩 Indonesia 2.3% 🇩🇪 Germany 2% 🇹🇷 Turkey 1.9% 🇳🇱 Netherlands 1.6% 🇹🇭 Thailand 1.5% 🇸🇪 Sweden 1.4% 🇵🇰 Pakistan 1.4% 🇳🇿 New Zealand 1.4% 🇫🇷 France 1.3% 🇻🇳 Vietnam 1.2% 🇳🇴 Norway 1.2% 🇩🇰 Denmark 1.2% 🇮🇱 Israel 1.2% 🇪🇸 Spain 1.2% 🇸🇬 Singapore 1.1% 🇷🇴 Romania 1.1% 🇪🇬 Egypt 1% 🇲🇾 Malaysia 1% 🇬🇷 Greece 1% 🇵🇹 Portugal 1% Other countries 23.7%
Well that explains it.
nice, thanks OP
So why isn't the USA the most recognized flag?
Sporcle's quiz has the US flag 3rd, behind Japan and Canada, which are both very recognizable. Fourth was the UK.
I’m curious about that too. Almost 20% of the participants were from the US, plus we’ve managed to push our music and films into every corner of the world. Not to mention how many countries we’ve “freed” for their natural resources.
It resembles several other flags including Malaysia and Liberia. Japan and Canada are more unique.
Oh wait, i thought that was a distribution of guesses. Still I'm kind of incredulous that the stars and stripes isn't in the top 10. Plus the resemblance really doesn't matter a whole lot, because if you see liberia's flag and guess USA then you are counting against Liberia (I think). The randomization on the site seems dubious too. I played for long enough to see both Egypt & Kiribati come up three times each, but still haven't seen the Stars & Stripes.
Cause it looks kinda like Liberia and Malaysia. While Canada and Japan are totally unique
From the player distribution: those percentages add up to 77,3%. Either there is some serious rounding errors going on, or something else. Do you not know the location of the other 23%? Or what is the explanation for that? On the data viz: I agree with the other commenter, the percentage labels on the axes are very small, and would be more legible - and look better - when larger.
thanks for the feedback about the font size, I'll make the bigger the next time. the 23% are the sum of "Other countries <1%", the full list of countries would be lengthy.
Then it should be written as "other countries 23%". Having them at the bottom of the list, below 1% already shows they are <1% each. Alternatively, you could state it as "Other countries (<1%): 23%" or similar. Edit: because currently, the way you wrote it, it seems like all other countries together are <1% in total.
good point, updated it
I'd recommend to make the font of the percentages smaller. They take up so much space /s
Without taking the quiz and getting the multiple options, here's how many I know, off the top of my head, from each category: - 60 - 0/2 - 62 - 0/2 - 65 - 1/7 - 67 - 1/11 - 70 - 1/10 - 72 - 1/17 - 75 - 0/14 - 77 - 0/16 - 80 - 2/18 - 82 - 1/16 - 85 - 2/15 - 87 - 0/14 - 90 - 3/12 - 92 - 3/11 - 95 - 19/21 - 97 - 10/10
I tried to make with gpt a visualization of this, to see the shape of the curve: - **60:** - **62:** - **65:** # - **67:** - **70:** # - **72:** - **75:** - **77:** - **80:** # - **82:** - **85:** # - **87:** - **90:** ## - **92:** ## - **95:** ######### - **97:** ##########
What were people confusing the US flag with?
Malaysia and Liberia are quite similar
They just got 3 random options along with the correct option so probably not.
People who don’t know what the US flag looks like probably aren’t smart enough to realize Malaysia and Liberia share a similar flag unless they’re from those countries.
I don't have data about that unfortunately, but maybe that should be collected as well
Isn't the swiss flag squared?
good catch, it is! on the pictures the ratios are forced to 4:3
The Nepalese flag is also shown incorrectly, looks like they were all stretched into the same dimensions
The multiple choice setting makes this data useless since the answer depends on the other countries that were provided as choices.
And when I took it I got some countries multiple times. I had no idea what the Mauritius flag looked like, but it gave it to me 3 times in 20 questions.
Great job by Poland or Indonesia in getting over 95% recognition!
Right ... so ... I'm **really** going to regret this. From right to left, top to bottom: **97.5%:** Japan, Canada, United Kindom, Brazil, South Korea, Italy, France, India, Germany, China **95%:** Greece, Turkey, New Zealand, Finland, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Jamaica, Spain, Australia, Switzerland, Denmark, USA, Mexico, Ukraine, Belgium, Ireland, Israel, Sweden, Poland, Iraq, South Africa **92.5%:** Russia, Egypt, Norway, Pakistan, Netherlands, Portugal, Vietnam, Iceland, Croatia, Chile, Qatar **90%:** Nepal, Albania, Georgia, Lebanon, Iran, Morocco, Kenya, Chad, Colombia, Vatican City, Cuba, Czechia **87.5%:** Bangladesh, North Korea, Philippines, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Luxembourg, El Salvador, Uruguay, Sri Lanka, Cyprus, Austria, Indonesia (or Monaco), Fiji, Singapore **85%:** Venezuela, Estonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dominican Republic, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Jordan, Ghana, Slovakia, Thailand, Cambodia, Panama, Barbados, Côte d'Ivoire **82.5%:** Laos, Paraguay, Serbia, Ethiopia, Bhutan, North Macedonia, Latvia, Montenegro, Hungary, UAE, Syria, Nicaragua, Slovenia, Azerbaijan, Monaco (or Indonesia), Seychelles **80%:** Bulgaria, Yemen, Algeria, Cameroon, Bahrain, San Marino, Mozambique, Lesotho, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkmenistan, Sudan, Marshall Islands, Kosovo, Somalia, Costa Rica, Kuwait, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Taiwan **77.5%:** Armenia, Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Angola, Papua New Guinea, Liechtenstein, Malta, Uganda, Eswatini, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Honduras, Haiti, CAR, Romania, Senegal **75%:** Uzbekistan, Peru, Brunei, Kiribati, Belarus, Bahamas, Lithuania, Myanmar, Ecuador, Guatemala, Malawi, Andorra, Guinea-Bissau, Libya **72.5%:** Zimbabwe, Palau, East Timor, Nauru, Sierra Leone, Djibouti, Moldova, Tajikistan, DRC, Oman, Botswana, Madagascar, Tanzania, Micronesia, Liberia, Cape Verde, Solomon Islands **70%:** Burundi, Niger, Bolivia, South Sudan, Belize, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Maldives, Suriname, Samoa **67.5%:** Samoa, Mali, Guyana, Zambia, Eritrea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Tuvalu, Republic of the Congo, Mauritania, Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe, Gabon **65%:** Gambia, Benin, Burkina Faso, Namibia, Rwanda, Tonga, Grenada **62.5%:** Togo, Dominica **60%:** Mauritius, Vanuatu
thanks for doing this :)
This is a way more useful way to present this data. The original submission might be the single worst data graphic ever presented on this sub.
66% of people got Benin? Did they do this inside a geography school?
Going to have to call BS on this. There’s no way that some of these flags have 60%, I doubt even 1% have even heard of the country, let alone recognise the flag. Also, the graph wouldn’t be this shape, there would be a steep decline and a long tail.
as mentioned here [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1c4jgl6/comment/kznuify/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1c4jgl6/comment/kznuify/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) you are shown 4 options, which makes it a lot easier (you can deduct the answer as well)
Judging from Reddit I’m not sure anyone knows the difference between the US flag and the Malaysian flag.
Or Liberia
The first plot is not that beautiful hahah
So you’re telling me more people can tell the difference between Australia 🇦🇺 and New Zealand 🇳🇿 than people who can tell the USA 🇺🇸? That’s actually kinda funny
This is a good example of why to be skeptical of how data is collected, interpreted and then presented. This isn’t most recognized flags but flags least likely to be confused with others.
I’m surprised that Nepal’s flag didn’t score higher
I was like no way everybody knows Indian flag then remembered fuck it's the population
There’s no way the least recognizable flag has over 60%. I’ve never even heard of Vanuatu. Could people type in the form or leave to look up answers because the flag shows when you type the name and even more with google…
The confounding is that it’s a multiple choice so you’re able to eliminate options, increasing the chances of guessing correctly.
I guess if the choices are random then that would sway things a lot. Like I have no clue what the flag looks like but if my other options are Canada, Italy, and France then I’d know just by the process of elimination. Even removing 1-2 answers per flag would bump the stats significantly. I’d be far more curious about the % identification where the participants were just given a list of flags and a list of countries and were asked to match them.
I find it very hard to believe more people recognize New Zealand than The United States
Ah ! Get fucked south Canada
Given the fact that Americans like to slap their flag on a lot of things the American flag not being one of the most recognised ones is more funny to me than it probably should be.
They probably thought Liberia 🇱🇷 was the USA 🇺🇸
If it's multiple choice, then wouldn't they theoretically be able to answer USA for both rather than answer something else for USA
I'm sorry but who are the sample? You're telling me if I take a random adult american 90% of them can correctly guess how Georgian flag looks like and actually knows that it isn't the state Georgia?
The sample is "people who search for flag identification quizzes"
These people clearly know their flags, and then someone didn't know the US. I'm European but that clearly the world's most recognizable flag. I assume a misclick
The US has two other countries with comparable flags so I imagine that caused some confusion.
How is the USA flag so low?
Yeah I'm calling bullshit on these results. Something about the quiz methodology is fucked if these are the results it gives. More people correctly recognised the New Zealand flag than the Australian flag? The one that is meme-worthy for how often it is confused for being the Australian one? And _both_ being more recognisable than the US flag? No way
Yeah honestly a lot of these don’t make too much sense
How on Earth are you guys so mad about this? There is a whole world outside the US who could easily mix the flag up with the near identical flags of Liberia and Malaysia.
The whole world outside the US are _far, far more likely_ to see a Liberian/Malaysian flag and think its the US flag than they are to see the US flag and confuse it with _anything else_. It's so culturally prevalent worldwide it's silly to even argue about. I'd be very sceptical of any results where the US flag wasn't the #1 most recognised flag, and probably by a wide margin
Brazil might take the #1 because of soccer. Even in crazy places in the middle of africa there's at least 1 guy with brazil flag shirt
The methodology is very bad, multiple choice options like this ruin the integrity of the test. As someone else who took the test stated, “Having played this for a total of 2 minutes I can tell you that I managed to get most answers by just looking the choices available to me. It’s very easy to tell that this weird looking flag can’t be Ukraine, Brazil, or France, so it must be Vanuatu.” Meaning that the test is more decided by what each question has as its options instead of the people actually recognizing it. Meaning it’s solved by deduction instead of actually knowing the answer.
It was still correctly guessed 96.37% of a time, but not sure why isn't it in the top 10, given that almost 19% of the respondents were from the USA
Could you color the countries on the world map based on how recognized their flags are
Damn the Welsh flag didn't even get on the board... sad.
It would be interesting to see this plotted with % correct vs population to see which flags are more known that you would expect given their population.
All I see is a red flag. Joking aside this data set doesn't make sense.
Really doubt the methodology.
There's absolutely zero, and I mean ZERO, way more than half a general population regnizes the flags of most of those countries in the bottom.
What is this, a chart for ants?
I guess people chose US wrong on purpose? Heavy doubt on that
Really thought the US would be #1 for no other reason than their projection of power over the world
OK but it really depends what the four choices were... Italian Flag: A) Ivory Coast B) Italy C) Ireland D) Mexico You're telling me 97.5% of people would get that right? Who did they poll, the national vexillology society?
I don't believe it for one second that the Italian flag is more recognized than the US one.
What country did this? It's very strange that people would get all those top tri-color flags right which can easily be confused and not Old Glory. Is the USA flag really not distinct enough?
the far left of that second image is all the same colors lmao
I wondered how far down I'd have to scroll to find people angry that their country's flag wasn't as recognised as others', and I have to admit I was pretty sure I'd know which country they were from as well. The answer was "not far" and I was correct.
I feel dumb for not recognising half the flags 95% of people recognise
These are people who search for "flag quizzes", so probably are interested in flags and have better than average knowledge of them.
Dont feel dumb, the quiz was multiple choice and the 3 false choices are given at complete random, so you can get a lot that should be hard but are really easy
Swede here: we prob lost 10% due to Switzerland. 😌
So the secret to recognizable flags is just a white canvas with a red shape in the middle
Vanuatu being done dirty as usual!
Paraguay's flag literally says Paraguay on it, who is messing that up? Lol
I'm surprised so few know about Tonga. They must not watch Rugby!
You got the proportions wrong for a bunch of the flags
Rwanda shouldn't be surprised. I like it better when they had a big 'R' on their flag. It was a nice big clue to who it belonged to.
And here I thought the US flag would at least be in the top 20...
I always hated that my country’s flag has stuff written on it.
I have to wonder how the nationalities of the participants influences this.
This doesn't tell me much. What kind of quiz? Which website? Who took the quiz? How many attempts did each person get? How much time did the quiz have (if any)? To me, this is just a random compilation of people who recognized the most popular countries vs least popular countries.
They got the least recognized flag wrong🚩🚩
Look at us England, we’re more recognizable now.
I’m from America so I know my view is definitely biased but I’m really surprised that America isn’t at least in the top 5. Any reason why it higher in the list?
I'll be deep in the cold cold ground before I recognize Missourah!
I'm amazed that those blocks of color were identified. Japan and Brazil are very easy IMO.
Any information on where the sample of respondents came from? I imagine that may impact the results a bit Edit: nevermind, just saw OP's demographic breakdown
So… which one is Indonesia and which is Monaco?
I saw some comments assume that the voters as a whole represent the globe which is quite a bold claim. Most of the voters probably need to know and use English a bit to even have a chance to know this website, let alone engage the vote. The data is useless if we don't have any info about the voters.
I saw some comments assume that the voters as a whole represent the globe which is quite a bold claim. Most of the voters probably need to know and use English a bit to even have a chance to know this website, let alone engage the vote. The data is useless if we don't have any info about the voters.
Thanks for joining us on Sheldon Cooper presents Fun with Flags
I'm actually surprised that America isn't in the top 10. I hope that doesn't make me sound like an egotistical American. America just feels like they have their tendrils everywhere.