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Looks like ~1% of US high school students had stats in 1990 and only ~11% in 2009. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=97

I'd be shocked if more than 5% (and even that's a stretch) of fresh high school graduates in the US knew what a Markov chain is.

So? General population is an abysmally low benchmark in any country. People from 5% of top high schools sounds about right for an article like this.

Anecdotally, they were at my high school in the US.