ausfoIey said: reading everything in the box relating to the question it seems to me that the pole is ridiculous to start with
sample size is tiny, a statement also relating to "weighting" in regards to a US census for gender and age?
most people in any country would not know the origin of the numeric system and numerals 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
in an English dominated country I would assume that the first thought of a number of people would be why do we or would we learn a foreign system?
for me the pole "makers" set it up with an outcome in mind that they wanted and posed it so they were confident to get the results they were after
and as such any "conclusions" made from the results are just as rubbish as the pole itself
sadly some people just want to set things up to prove themselves right or prove others wrong and truth has gone out the window
It's a "poll", not a pole, and yes it is a very small sample. I also questioned his conclusion that the 56% who answered No are necessarily bigoted. However, I think they probably fall into several categories: 1. As CG suggested, the No answer was given before really thinking about it. 2. people were ignorant of the fact that the numbers they are taught in school are in fact Arabic numbers. 3. In that second group there were indeed a significant number who heard only the word "Arabic" and said NO out of ignorance/bigotry.
Incidentally, I went to a small country bush town school in Australia and I was taught at a very young age that our numbers were Arabic in origin.