**update: the “solution” is in the comments here. see also here. (^_^) **
or an easterner (east asian)?
in which group does the flower at the bottom belong: group a or group b?
feel free to leave your answer in the comments and — only if you like — the reason(s) for your choice and/or your ethnic background. (^_^) (you don’t have to be specific — you can say “eastern” or “southern” european, etc., if you prefer.)
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this little test was lifted from the documentary below (thanks, gottlieb!). i haven’t watched the entire thing yet, but it looks to be good!
.
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see also t. greer’s excellent post: “West and East and How We Think.” (btw, t. greer has a really neat blog in general!)
(note: comments do not require an email. wild westerner?)
hbd chick 
I chose ‘A’. I am of mostly a Northern European back with a side order of Mediterranean and, a surprise to me, a dash of Chinese.
A. I’m Scottish/Irish/Scots Irish!
‘A’. I am Chinese
Funny. I will be completely sincere here.
Intuitively my first decission, my “rapid” intention, was to put the flower in the group A. Why? Because of the stamen and the petals, the most “visible” or “noteworthy” parts of the flowers. In the group A there are three flowers with the petals or the stamen of the same kind that the corresponding ones in the flower-to-be-assigned.
However I decided to truly reflect on the problem and then, some seconds after, I noticed the stems. The stem is the only characteristic that really separates both groups. It’s the classificatory aspect, I guess, because is the only one shared by all the four flowers in each group and, besides, the only one that is not shared between both groups. I mean: in both groups there are flowers with each type of petals, stamen and the optional presence of a leaf.
I believe the stem is the most useful trait. The one that gives sense to this classification. Considering everything, I will put the flower in the group B.
Where does that leave me? -_o
Full disclosure: I’m 100% hispan (iberian). Southwestern european.
Great game…
A. multiple Euro ethnicities. why would anyone choose B?
A.
It has the leaf and round petals and is a single circle.
Group A. has 3/4 leaf and 3/4 round petals and 3/4 single circles.
Group B. has 3/4 no leaf and 3/4 jagged petals and 3/4 double circles.
A mixture of a people from a group of islands where the people drink huge quantities of alcohol and tea and are famous for their tape.
“I noticed the stems”
I didn’t see that.
I picked “A”. Paternal line is Northern European haplogroup I1. Maternal line is Europe & near East haplogroup T2.
A, Irish-American. I never noticed the stem issue, in the absence of noticing that did notice there was otherwise no perceivable universal difference between the two groups, and so picked A because it would be “most at home” in that group, sharing the most traits with the most partners.
Actually, that probably applies even if I had noticed the stems. Not sure which way I would have gone then.
I said A. I’m an American who has been living in Japan for 10 years. Hmmm…
“to Easterners space is filled with Qi”
Luminiferous aether?
I thought A until someone mentioned the stems(didnt notice them before).
Happy to see Mr. Nisbett in there. Loved his book Geography of Thought.
Side note-Nisbett argues that Asian academic achievemnet is entirely cultural and argues against heritability of intelligence.
B. East Asian. I chose B due to the orientation of the stems… as if the wind were blowing. It’d look out of place with A.
B. It’s on the diagonal.
Khoisan/Aborigine.
B. The B flowers are standing up straight while the A flowers are being blown in the wind. From the USA.
I am entirely western; B because the stems stand out most in the overall shape of the diagrams, and therefore seem most important.
Group a because based on my count it had more characteristics of the a group. English euro ancestry.
A. N/W Euro
Funny, I live in South Korea and we took this test at a convention that had a mixed group of Koreans and Euros. The divide was pretty stark. Koreans focus more on roots and origin, so where you stem from is a more importand indication of which group you fall into. Westerners are more about individuality and outward expression, so A was the more common choice.
a. viking-american.
@Tomas – That leaves you behaving just like a Westerners are predicted to behave. The trick with the test is that Westerners have a tendency to break the flowers down into parts and analyze them to figure the answer – Easterners are much more likely to give an impressionistic answer.
I have always liked the following question better:
Grass.
Chicken.
Cow.
Which does not belong?
(Better when you have pictures).
Answer:
Westerners usually say “Grass.” Why? Because it does not belong in the category of that chickens and cows are in – animals.
Easterners usually say “Chicken.” Why? Because cows eat the grass. Chickens are not a part of this relationship.
Westerners tend to see things as discrete objects best made sense of by categorizing; Easterners tend to see things as parts of an inter-connected whole or process, best made sense of by in terms of their relationship to each other.
A. I’m Italian.
@elijah – “Khoisan/Aborigine.”
no you’re not! heh. (^_^)
What makes you say I’m not? Are you a RACIST?
@elijah – “Are you a RACIST?”
no, no, no. i’m telling you for the last time. not racist. BAssist! (~_^) (no, not basest either.)
B.
You know my story… ;)
@jayman – “B.”
what was your reasoning for picking b? or was it just a gut thing? (you can go for “no comment” if you like. i’m just curious! (^_^) )
B
Group A has all curved stems, Group B has all straight stems.
The stems are the only distinct characteristic between A and B
Western European
group A on the left, because the flower’s leaf was on it’s right side like the other flowers with leaves in that group.
I would put it in A, based on the rounded petals and the small leaf on the stem.
Peter
My brain like this flower on Group B.
I’m latin american, brazilian, aparently octo a quinroon for the south deep americans here or predominant caucasoid like a MENA groups. I’m have italian, african subsaarian, amerindian, iberian and probably sephardic ancestry by mother and portuguese by father.
@HBD Chick:
“@jayman – ‘B.’
what was your reasoning for picking b? or was it just a gut thing? (you can go for “no comment” if you like. i’m just curious! (^_^) )”
Straight stems seems to have more in common with the B group, IMO. :)
There is an error in this example?
The group A have one type that is not fit with others…. The first column donw
B – all phenotypes contained within
Dutch/Italian
I went by the stems – B!!!
Northern European
A, Scandinavian. The type clearly does not belong to anything in B. Noticed the stems, of course, but they are completely incidental.
Group B, of course.
-All the flowers in group A have curved stems going in the same direction.
-All the flowers in group B have straight stems going in the same direction.
The flowers are sorted into groups by stem, not by any of these other characteristics:
Leaf/no leaf, two circles/one circle, pointy/rounded petals
Northern European
B
White People (I’m from the South and no one down here knows/cares about ancestry)
gut feeling – A
white male living in north america. my parents told me i’m swedish / norweigan, but my DNA says I’m R1a1a (paternal) and U5b2b (maternal)
(A) Irish/German
ps – hbdchick, now that i’ve shared my sensitive halpotypes, care to share yours? don’t bother emailing me, my listed email is fake.
My gut said “A” because group A had three quarters rounded petals but there was one exception in the group so I examined further.
I concluded “B” because the only feature that all the flowers in each group had in common with the one to be placed was the straight stem.
Ethnic origin? Mostly southern European with one Irish grandparent.
B. The segregation is by stems (mixed on other characteristics) so B. I’m half American with Russian Jewish ancestors and half American of English ancestry from before the War of Independence.
A – I’m POlish. This time I watched carefully both groups and finally I have noticed the stems, so I understand now the reasoning in putting flower in B group, but still my gut feeling is A.
B (the stem)
I’m so Western, I make John Wayne look like a City Slicker.
A) I’m mostly French with some Scottish and Lebanese.
B – the stem is oriented the same way and is thicker. I am European, living in Asia for the last 3 years.
A) Middle Eastern (lower Egypt).
I say B and I am an evil white male of Hiberno-Catholic heritage. I can see more reasons to say A, but the straight stems are too powerful to resist. Is this phallocentrism?
B.
Austrian / English
I was drawn to the darker shading and orientation/alignment of the stem which correlated with those in B.
A. Scandinavian.
A. Dunno why. Anglo.
A Southerb Scotch Irish with a tendency toward irony. The only consistent observation is the stems, all curved on the left and all straight on the right. So it goes to the left because there aren’t any straight stems over there. Of coure that leaves no curved stems on the right, but you can only do what you can do.
I initially (perhaps impulsively) chose ‘A,’ given how similar the flowers in ‘A’ look relative to the flower in question. But being a top-to-bottom, left-to-right thinker vis-a-vis matrices (darn math! ;->), it appears ‘B’ is the better choice (represents logical conclusion of “growth” to me – plus there’s the matter of the straight stem).
So my final choice is group ‘B.’
Part Dominican, part Puerto Rican, as you know. ;-)
A. Northern European.
A. NW Europe
No, don’t exist an error here,LOL
Hbd Chicks@
These flower that i speak (first down( is proposital?? hmmmmm, interesting…
Group A aren’t there specifically identical, are ”diverse” but with two shared traits, while the group B are definitivelly more homogeneous than A.
B, because of stem. North of Scotland mother (family tree goes back to 12th century), south east English father. The fly in the bottle of milk that is my family tree is my great great great great great great great grandmother, a white South African named Sibella Pretorious, which if you know something about Afrikaners, makes it likely that I have a drop of Khoisan blood.
B – Slav with some Altaic genes
My experience was similar to that of Tomás. At first glance, I found A to be a more intuitive fit, but when I looked at the stems, I noticed that that was the only feature that was uniformly shared within a group, which would put the flower in group B.
I think that if this were a logic problem based on a single criterion (with the aim of figuring out what the criterion was), B would be the obvious correct answer, but there are no ground rules set forth and for all characteristics except the stem: the petals, the center, and the leaf, three out of four in group A share the attribute with only one out of four in group B sharing the attribute.
So, if you treat each attribute equally and assign a point for each member of a group that shares the attribute with the flower in question, the point totals are for group A 9 (3 petals, 3 centers, 3 leaves, 0 stems), group B 7 (1 petals, 1 centers, 1 leaves, 4 stems), which explains why A is the more intuitive choice (for me and some others)…though it’s hard to look away from the stems once you notice them.
I’m of northern European ancestry.
ok! well, here is “the answer”:
if you answered “b” — that the stray flower belongs to the group on the right — then you think like…
***drumroll please***
…a WESTERNER!! yaaaaaaaaaaaay! (^_^)
if you answered “a” — like me — then you think like an east asian. (^_^) (obviously, this is only one little test, but still … it’s interesting!)
apparently, the way westerners — and for “westerners” i think we have to read “mostly anglos” — reason is … well, some of you described it above:
@tomás – “The stem is the only characteristic that really separates both groups. It’s the classificatory aspect, I guess, because is the only one shared by all the four flowers in each group and, besides, the only one that is not shared between both groups. I mean: in both groups there are flowers with each type of petals, stamen and the optional presence of a leaf.”
@james – “The stems are the only distinct characteristic between A and B.”
@melykin – “The flowers are sorted into groups by stem, not by any of these other characteristics: Leaf/no leaf, two circles/one circle, pointy/rounded petals.”
@steve johnson – “I concluded “B” because the only feature that all the flowers in each group had in common with the one to be placed was the straight stem.”
@an admirer – “The segregation is by stems (mixed on other characteristics) so B.”
@nelson – “there’s the matter of the straight stem”
@rooinek – “B, because of stem.”
@the reluctant apostate – “My experience was similar to that of Tomás. At first glance, I found A to be a more intuitive fit, but when I looked at the stems, I noticed that that was the only feature that was uniformly shared within a group, which would put the flower in group B.”
_____
t. greer said above: “The trick with the test is that Westerners have a tendency to break the flowers down into parts and analyze them to figure the answer – Easterners are much more likely to give an impressionistic answer.”
i picked group a. the thing is, though, i did break down the flowers into their parts to analyze them, but i drew my conclusion for exactly the reason the reluctant apostate described above:
“So, if you treat each attribute equally and assign a point for each member of a group that shares the attribute with the flower in question, the point totals are for group A 9 (3 petals, 3 centers, 3 leaves, 0 stems), group B 7 (1 petals, 1 centers, 1 leaves, 4 stems), which explains why A is the more intuitive choice (for me and some others)…though it’s hard to look away from the stems once you notice them.”
that’s what i did — i decided that the flower belonged to group a because then more of the flowers would share more of the same total number of traits than if i put the stray flower in group b. i did notice the stems, but i discounted them after doing all the other calculations that r.a. described. (^_^)
what i did, i think, was to view all the flowers together as a group rather than to look at them each individually to see what trait(s) they absolutely had in common. guess i’m not so individualistic. (~_^)
i am, in case you don’t know, from one of what i call the peripheral populations of europe. iow, i am NOT anglo. to be a little more specific, my people are one of the piiggs. (oink.)
(p.s. – i totally would group the cow with the chicken and not the cow with the grass — although i can see that the latter does make a kind-of sense….)
A.
From Cameroon, grew up in Holland
A. 1/2 German, at least ~3/8 Scottish/English, ~1/8 Amerindian.
@ hbdchick – “The Vapors – “Turning Japanese” ”
Lol I take it you know what this song is really about?
@chris – “Lol I take it you know what this song is really about?”
yes, i have heard the theory out there! (~_^) but dave fenton has said that that’s not what the song is about. (^_^)
I guessed it was this.
B, because of the stems. NW European.
@anonymous – “I guessed it was this.”
(^_^) (^_^) (^_^)
thanks for the link! i’m gonna use that. its very useful! ( (~_^) )
(the only thing i hate more than it’s/its errors is … “would of.” boy do i HATE that!)
B, because of the stem.
I’m a Finn (Swedish-speaking).
I have not read others posts or the answers and I say group B because it is a duplicate of A’s top left and no duplicates exist in either group.
I looked again and saw that it was not an exact duplicate …. The answer justifying B is the straight stem.
Late to the party, but the flower looks the same as most of A, so it feels like that’s where it belongs.
I chose A – 1/2 german 1/4 south italian 1/4 native american. (Maybe it is all the anime I watch) I did notice the stems before reading the comments but my initial impression was A. 3 out of 4 in group A have a leaf on the stem, rounded petals, and a single circle.
I studied every part of the flowers, including the stems, decided it was a “trick” and that it didn’t really matter.
But my quick gut instinct said “A”. I am of European background but I love Asian video games. So there.
I choose B. Eastern.
Oh god I’ve shamed my family.
A. I’m half Indo-Guyanese, and half Tamil-Sri Lankan.
I’ve been a huge Pokemon fan for the last ~15 years, so the As looked like they were waving to me. They looked like they could be different seasonal Formes of the same Pokemon.
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Formes
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Kimawari
A, Northern European
Agree with James…B.
NW Euro, but Grandfather Finn
hbdchick
“that’s what i did — i decided that the flower belonged to group a because then more of the flowers would share more of the same total number of traits than if i put the stray flower in group b. i did notice the stems, but i discounted them after doing all the other calculations that r.a. described”
I wonder if there’s a context factor in this test i.e. i was thinking it was more of a gut-reaction test so aimed to decide as fast as possible without any thinking.
Interesting! I said “A” because it felt as if the flower at the bottom was part of the “A family.”
Group B because of the stems – and my opinion counts more than that of others because I’m a bona fide taxonomist.:)
Here we are all into diversity and everybody says the flower “belongs” where it will minimize diversity rather than maximize it. Hmm.
@linton – “Here we are all into diversity and everybody says the flower ‘belongs’ where it will minimize diversity rather than maximize it.”
well, i can’t speak for everyone here, of course, but many of us are interested in BIOdiversity, not just diversity. this includes me, obviously: human biodiversity chick. (~_^)
if you place the stray flower in with the group that it is not like, you may very well get some cross-pollination and, therefore, some new biodiversity, i.e. you will be changing the biodiversity by creating new sub-types of these flowers.
not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that — but you might want to first ask the existing flowers if that’s what they want. (~_^)
@hbd chick “you might want to first ask the existing flowers if that’s what they want.” Well said.
@mikep – “…and my opinion counts more than that of others because I’m a bona fide taxonomist. :)”
when i first read your comment, i misread it and thought: how possibly could taxidermy have anything to do with it?! (*^_^*)
i need to go get a cup of coffee….
and, yes, your opinion should/does count for more in this instance! (^_^)
@alex – “I said ‘A’ because it felt as if the flower at the bottom was part of the ‘A family.'”
uh oh! (^_^)
hbd chick is Portuguese, it’s the only one of those countries she never blogged about and she’s too modest to talk about her mother country. :)
@HBD Chick:
“if you place the stray flower in with the group that it is not like, you may very well get some cross-pollination and, therefore, some new biodiversity, i.e. you will be changing the biodiversity by creating new sub-types of these flowers.
not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that — but you might want to first ask the existing flowers if that’s what they want.”
Here you go (the whole thing is funny, but in this case, particularly from 1:07):
Bleach: ”hbd chick is Portuguese, it’s the only one of those countries she never blogged about and she’s too modest to talk about her mother country. :)”
Really???
Group A, because although the straight stem is a 4-0 match with the B group, the petals, center, and leaf are each a 3-1 match with the A group.
Scots-Irish-German.
@jayman – “Here you go (the whole thing is funny, but in this case, particularly from 1:07)….”
(^_^) (^_^) (^_^)
“i don wan no pollinaaation early in the mornin’.”
(^_^) (^_^) (^_^)
The flower in the middle belongs to Group A. Absolutely fascinating video. Thanks for sharing.
Irish/Norwegian
B. The petal pattern was found in B, and the heavy straight stem was more important than the leaf. Leaves come and go. So same petals with same stem was the closest match.
50% Irish. On the other side Scottish, French, Swiss, German. Computer programmer by trade (maybe why i don’t care which group offered the most close matches, just which offered the best — didn’t cross my mind that the groups weren’t enirely arbitrary). Big Spirograph fan as a child.
@matthew – “Big Spirograph fan as a child.”
you know you can play spirograph online, right? (^_^) (not that “play” is the right word — i KNOW that it’s a deadly serious activity! (~_^) )
@bob – “Absolutely fascinating video. Thanks for sharing.”
neat stuff, huh? (^_^) you’re welcome!
I am skeptical. Is there any validity data on this test?
@elijah – “I am skeptical. Is there any validity data on this test?”
dunno. i guess if it’s anywhere it would be in nesbitt’s book. maybe not this exact test, but something like it.
Sorry, late the to game I guess, but I chose A. Mexican-American.
My answer was entirely impressionistic, but as I’m prone to do, I like to re-examine my answers. Not to attempt changing them, but to understand why I answered as I did.
What I saw was a petaled flower that, if added to A, created a tsunami population disproportion. It’s now “4 to 1.” Sad for the non-petaled flower…or is it?
If the petaled flower is added to B, you create a “partner” for the sole petaled flower now. This is the socializing contribution of Western kindness and communal equality. Boring.
A. My race / culture? As Han Chinese as can be, tracing my sole ancestry to the lands where Confucius, Mencius and their associates once walked.
A, because the utility of a flower is its beauty and petals matter more for that than stems
Hungarian / Cuman, Hungarian, and Jewish roots
A. Frisian.
Also chose the Asian-answer for the block question too. However after that I chose the Western examples.
Looks like a lot of NWEuro people chose A. Even though the video has a point, honestly the test doesn’t really show that much.
A. Anyone growing flowers knows, light and fertility of soil would change stem thickness, leaf density.
So genetically they could be the same. :D
I went down in flames. I thought like an easterner every time.
B, Colombian (10% black, 30% aboriginal indian, 60% Caucasian)