I'd say it's more likely that most of the people taking this quiz have already taken plenty of "biggest cities" type quizes and already have a pretty good idea of which cities will be on here.
For my part, I don't know every location and exact population number for all the cities - especially in China and India - but after I get a few of the regular offenders, I can pretty much guess the less common ones.
The more specialised the quiz, the higher the average for a specific item. Pennsylvania will probably be higher guessed on the 13 Colonies Quiz than the 50 States Quiz and Morrocco on the Africa Quiz than COTW
I find people are quite good at rote memorization of largest cities/capital cities and so on. When it comes to quizzes that require other knowledge, the scores are much more reasonable.
The scores aren't that high anymore, only a few above 80% (about 1/3 and they are the quite well know ones) currently most are under it. So things look pretty normal now.
And while it is true what mrbubbles said, only the first attempt is used for the stats, whenever a quiz gets reset it counts like it is your first attempt again. So people that have done it before, will probably do better with the next reset. (Though sometimes when you do a quiz years later, you have forgotten more than you have learned haha)
Only 34? Am I missing something or was there a lot more? I checked Wikipedia, and it seemed to confirm this. Not sure what the reason for the discrepancy in the two sites is, but I destinctly remembered Harbin, Lima, Bogota, Xi'an, and a that there were more.
I just assume the people doing this know them already the cities. Many wouldn't dare without knowing what to type, I know all of them just from practice on the one with the map
It says something about the people taking these quizzes when 55.4% get 100%. I doubt that most people (outside China) can name cities like Xiamen and Tianjin. Also, some of the Indian/Japanese cities are probably unknown to most people.
Please remove Seoul. Its population dropped under ten million. I've seen that Seoul has 25 million population in some quizzes but I cannot understand. It only has 9 million.
For my part, I don't know every location and exact population number for all the cities - especially in China and India - but after I get a few of the regular offenders, I can pretty much guess the less common ones.
And while it is true what mrbubbles said, only the first attempt is used for the stats, whenever a quiz gets reset it counts like it is your first attempt again. So people that have done it before, will probably do better with the next reset. (Though sometimes when you do a quiz years later, you have forgotten more than you have learned haha)
... Crap, good job guys
Both are big cities
Both are somewhat well known
Neither are the capital