What if one asks: "Did the American revolution influence the French revolution?" Given the order in time is right, the answer could be yes, but the extent of it is open to debate. If this extent is supposed to be implied by "influence" the answer could even be argued to be no.

Why? The two revolutions certainly had a different emphasis on the values they advanced (freedom vs. equality) and no one can argue they ran similar courses or had the same effect. So, the significance of the wrong answers is not simply that people don't know the history; that is not a big deal. It's not even that those respondents were confident in something they actually didn't know. It is that this confidence is due to and contributes to an intellectual environment that considers the French revolution, the great French revolution, as the bigger, even the biggest, event.

It is then not surprising that a big chunk thinks the "bigger event" influenced the "lesser event", despite the logical impossibility. The same goes for the other poll.

-- Cyrus Ferdowsi, http://libiran.blogspot.com