The Huffington Post ran a story today about Birthers, based on Hunch data.

Here’s the background:

About 2,200 Hunch users answered the following question:

“Do you believe that President Obama was born in the US?”
> Yes, those trying to question that should get a life
> No, there’s a left wing conspiracy to hide the truth

** update: April 28, 2011: most of the questions below have now been answered by 10,000+ Hunch users

It turns out that 12% of Hunch users answering that question are “Birthers” and believe that left wingers are indeed covering up the truth about Obama’s citizenship or birth.

We thought it might be interesting to look at how these users, as an anonymous group, answered other THAY questions on Hunch.  Here’s what we found when comparing Birthers to Hunch users who think Obama’s birth creds are legit:

* Birthers are 63% more likely to have never had a passport, which explains why 43% of them have never traveled outside of their home country

* They’re 24% more likely to speak only a single language

* They’re less educated, watch more TV, and read fewer books

* They performed significantly worse in high school

* They are 94% more likely to say that cultural activities are not important to them

* They are 32% more likely to enjoy “looking at the pictures” in magazines rather than “reading the articles”

* They are 33% more likely to say that crossword puzzles are “painful”

* 1/3 of them didn’t vote in the last presidential election

* They are 115% more likely to think that human beings are naturally evil rather than good

* 44% of them believe that the Big Bang didn’t really happen and 47% believe that global warming is a bunch of hooey

* They are 19% more likely to believe in UFOs & alien visits to earth

* They are 50% more likely to believe in alien abductions

Given the above stats, it’s probably not too surprising that Birthers have passionately latched on to a birth conspiracy theory that by now has been generally dismissed as pretty far-fetched.

TV viewership is on the rise, driven by “time-shifting” technologies like DVRs and online programming availability, as well as multi-platform access driven by mobile devices.

Does watching lots of TV zap brain cells, or is it just that more educated people watch less TV? We’re not sure about the cause and effect relationship, but according to Hunch data the latter statement definitely seems true.

More than 66,000 Hunch users have answered both a THAY (“Teach Hunch About You”) question about their education level and how much TV they watch. We thought it would be interesting to explore the correlation among answers to each of those two questions.

It turns out that increasing educational level is almost perfectly inversely correlated with daily TV consumption.  Of the 22% of Hunchers who completed no more than a high school education, only about 12% of them watch no TV but a full 25% watch 4 hours or more each day.  On the other end of the spectrum, of the 26% of Hunchers who have completed at least a PhD, about 17% of them watch no TV and only about 16% watch 4 hours or more each day.

Here’s another way to look at the data.  For 3 the groups of Hunchers who completed no more than 2 years of college, about half of each group watches 2 hours or more of TV each day.  But that’s true of just 44% of those with a 4 year degree, 37% of those with a masters, and 35% of those with a PhD or higher.

There are more than 1,500 questions in Hunch’s THAY question pool, and more than 25 million THAYs have been answered since Hunch’s June launch.  So there are nearly limitless interesting correlations and insights just waiting to be mined.  We’ll frequently blog about these, and soon we’ll also publicly release the correlation tool to make it easy to explore some of these relationships yourself.

Today is a big day up in Redmond, as Windows 7 is launched to the world and set free upon the PCs of Earth.  The big MS has a lot riding on this OS.  Vista launched just 3 short years ago, so clearly a rush has been put behind 7 to make up for past missteps.  The press has been very good thus far with glowing reviews from some of the most respected names in tech (gizmodo, engadget).  But, if you’re still on the fence about upgrading, Hunch is here to help!  Try our Should I upgrade to Windows 7? topic to relieve your OS woes.  Even more broad, we’ve got a fun topic that includes all version of Windows ever — What version of Windows should I use? Great for sorting out what version is best even for older or specialized machines.

In true Microsoft fashion, there are, of course, many flavors of Windows from which you can choose (6!).  They’ve shrunk the list since Vista, but it’s a marginal improvement at best.  So, once you’ve set your mind on upgrading, give our Which version of Windows 7 should I upgrade to? topic a go to sort out which will work best for you.  Personally, I pre-ordered Home Premium as I only use my PC for home theater stuff and photo editing these days.  Windows 7′s Media Center really is spectacular.

Come and get it: we’ve just received a shipment of swell Hunch buttons and stickers, some of which are adorned with our logo and some of which celebrate the all-important banjo.  These are perfect for adding flair to your messenger bag, cork board, sweatshirt, or casual restaurant uniform.

Want to score some of these? Just send us a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope and your goodies will be on their way.

We're trying to make it look hard, but it's really not.

** Important: If you’re in the US, your SASE should include $.88 of postage (why? -> the odd shape of the buttons causes a “non-machine-readable” surcharge to be added to US first class mail rates)

If you’d like your stuff to be shipped to somewhere other than the US, this is your lucky day.  We’ll cover the postage for you. But we still need you to send us an envelope with your mailing address.

You should mail your SASE to:

Hunch Inc.
Attn: Gimme some SWAG!
54 W. 21st Street, Suite 1001
New York, New York  10010
USA