But Kimberly Nalder, a professor at California State University in Sacramento, discovered that in this instance the opposite was true.

Thus Ms Nalder found that the best-educated (those with more than a master's degree) were most likely to answer incorrectly that Proposition 13 applies only to residential property.

To get the full story, Nalder needed documents showing the number of life rafts on every ferry, the capacity of each raft, and the maximum number of passengers each ferry could carry.