Carl Sandburg and Lincoln

[LincolnMan]

Yesterday on my lunch break at the hospital I decided to conduct an informal, unscientific poll. I asked 30 hospital employees some questions for the poll. The employees were comprised of both males and females with varying ethnic backgrounds and educational levels. There were two questions. If either of the two questions were answered in the affirmative-they were then asked a follow-up question. Here are the two first questions: 1) Do you know who Abraham Lincoln was? ;and 2) Do you know who Carl Sandburg was?
If they answered "yes" to either question, they were then asked: 3)What did he do?

Out of the 30 people asked (including doctors)-all said they knew who Lincoln was. Also, for the follow-up
question they all gave me satisfactory answers as pertaining to what Lincoln did. Most common
answer: "He freed the slaves."

As for Carl Sandburg, 10 out of 30 said they knew who he was. Out of the 10 only 8 really knew who he was. One person said he was "that guy who wrote about the stars." He then realized he was thinking of Carl Sagan. The other one who thought she knew who Sandburg was realized she meant "Karl Marx" -that "communist guy." The other 8 who said they knew who Sandburg was correctly gave an acceptable answer. Four of them
said he was a "poet" and four said he was a "writer." I gave them credit for the "writer" answer. This tells me that Lincoln is still a known figure among people. Frankly, I didn't expect 8 to know who Sandburg was. I also note that among those 8-none of them mentioned that Sandburg wrote about Lincoln. For what it's worth everyone. I usually don't take a lunch when I'm working at the hospital but I must say I enjoyed this little unscientific effort. I wonder if the same result would hold with a larger sample in the community?