America's Brainiest Cities

College Search & Selection
1

<p>"In a knowledge economy, we are often told the smartest cities and nations do the best. But economists typically measure smart cities by education level, calculating the cities or metros with the largest percentage of college grads or the largest shares of adults with advanced degrees. Others (like me) do it by charting the kinds of work people do and the occupations they hold, differentiating between knowledge or creative workers and others who do more routine manufacturing and service jobs.</p>

<p>But a new measure seeks to track the "brain performance" or cognitive capacity of metros in a different and potentially more direct way.</p>

<p>This metric, developed by Lumos Labs, is based on their cognitive training and tracking software, Lumosity. It covers some 20 million members (and 320 million individual game plays) who use the company's online games to assess and attempt to improve their cognitive performance. . . . </p>

<p>"To measure the smartest cities, Lumosity scientists tracked the cognitive performance of more than one million users in the United States on their games, mapping them across U.S. metros using IP geolocation software. Individual scores were recorded in five key cognitive areas: memory, processing speed, flexibility, attention, and problem solving.The data was normalized into a basic brain performance index controlling for age and gender. Only metros with more than 500 observations were included. The data cover 169 metros." . . .</p>

<p>Looking for a "smart" place to go to college? Check the list:</p>

<p>"Here are America's 25 brainiest metros, according to Lumosity's metrics:"</p>

<pre><code> 1. Charlottesville, Virginia
2. Lafayette, Indiana
3. Anchorage Alaska
4. Madison, Wisconsin
5. San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose
6. Cedar Rapids-Waterloo-Iowa City & Dubuque, Iowa
7. Honolulu
8. Johnstown-Altoona, Pennsylvania
9. Champaign & Springfield-Decatur, Illinois
10. Minneapolis-St. Paul
11. Boston-Manchester (Massachusetts/New Hampshire)
12. Austin
13. Rochester, New York
14. Gainesville, Florida
15. Fargo-Valley City North Dakota
16. Lansing, Michigan
17. Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-San Luis Obispo
18. Burlington-Plattsburgh (Vermont/New York)
19. Pittsburgh
20. Syracuse, New York
21. Baton Rouge, Louisiana
22. Columbia-Jefferson City, Missouri
23. La Crosse-Eau Claire, Wisconsin
24. Harrisburg-Lancaster-Lebanon-York Pennsylvania
25. Springfield-Holyoke, Massachusetts
</code></pre>

<p>America's</a> Brainiest Cities - Neighborhoods - The Atlantic Cities</p>

2

<p>Where Boston/Cambridge, Arlington, Raleigh-Durham, Atlanta Metro, and Ann Arbor? These list intuitively seems inaccurate.</p>

3

<p>Gainesville is only 3 spots under Boston? Not to insult UF but seriously?</p>

<p>And Syracuse is in the Top 20? They have a killer Journalism school apparently but c’mon man!</p>

4

<p>The results are partly reflective of how they aggregate “cities.” So for example, Madison is a stand-alone metro area, but Ann Arbor gets lumped in with blue collar Detroit. Cambridge gets no special recognition; it’s just part of metro Boston (which by the way does pretty well). Arlington is just part of metro Washington, and so on.</p>

5

<ol>
<li>Lansing, Michigan </li>
</ol>

<p>… It should be E. Lansing, Michigan. lol</p>

6

<p>Johnstown and Altoona are two small cities in Pennsylvania, not all that close together, with branch campuses of Pitt and Penn State, respectively.</p>

7

<p>these studies are always done with a big shovel and a pile of cow droppings!</p>

8

<p>This is one study, mind you, but to suggest that the findings are bogus because they do not confirm received wisdom is rather hasty. The Lumosity management team, its scientific advisory board and its collaborators have impressive academic bona fides; there is every reason to believe this research is serious and that it was conducted according to established scientific methods. It’s reasonable, if you have knowledge of the study’s design, to take issue with it. But to make judgments based on nothing other than the fact that the study does not confirm what you believe is anti-intellectual.</p>

9

<p>The article should read, “America’s brainiest MSAs.”</p>

10

<p>The article itself, as opposed to the headline, makes clear that the groupings are by metro area and describes roughly how the metro areas were defined (one assumes the actual study has more detail on this point).</p>

11

<p>Did I read that correctly? Measuring smart cities by gaming activity? Seriously? Geesh. What a crock of crapola. People who spend too much time on games are not the kind of people we need in government and business leading this nation out of our conundrum of social and financial mess.</p>

12

<p>Springfield and Urbana-Champaign are not in the same SMSA, and anyone who has ever driven from one to the other or spent any time in either would intuitively know that they’re very distinct from one another.</p>

<p>This study has about as much validity as a USNWR ranking - possibly less, though that is hard to imagine.</p>

13

<p>Did you read the article correctly, sovereigndebt? Not exactly, the way I’m looking at it. Yes, Lumosity did study how people performed on “games,” but these games are designed to measure and help improve “core cognitive functions,” including “memory, processing speed, flexibility, attention, and problem solving.” (This last quoted part is from the article online; it is consistent with how Lumosity describes the tool on its website.) I would urge anyone whose knee-jerk reaction is to pronounce the research worthless to consider taking a look at the Lumosity website and reading about the science behind the approach. </p>

<p>I would imagine, annasdad, with regard to the Illinois cluster you mention, that this has to do with the researchers going wider geographically in less populated areas. I didn’t see any claim that these towns were all in the same SMSA. I expect the original study describes the reasoning behind the various groupings, with assorted caveats and footnotes. </p>

<p>I don’t see why that particular point about Illinois geography makes the research invalid for what it purports to show. Mind you, it’s not the researchers but news media outlets promulgating this “brainiest cities” label; I would not be surprised if the researchers themselves were a bit more measured and precise in their conclusions.</p>

14

<p>Lafayette, Indiana??? #??? 2??? LOL!!!</p>

<p>As someone who’s spent nearly my entire life in Indiana, they REALLY missed the mark on that one! Sure there’s Purdue, but 5 steps off campus in ANY direction and you’re in the cornfields.</p>

<p>I have several relatives that live in Lafayette and they are wonderful, caring, people, but even they wouldn’t classify themselves as brainy. When last visiting my aunt, my son and I were channel surfing and stopped on something like Myth Busters or maybe it was Rocket City Rednecks to which she commented, “Do you always watch ‘smart people’ shows?”</p>

<p>Lafayette??? They’re kidding right???</p>

<p>I am one of less than 8% of the population with a graduate degree in the state that ranks 47th! for education level of the population ([Bachelor’s</a> degree or higher, by percentage statistics - States compared - StateMaster](<a href=“http://www.statemaster.com/graph/edu_bac_deg_or_hig_by_per-bachelor-s-degree-higher-percentage]Bachelor’s”>http://www.statemaster.com/graph/edu_bac_deg_or_hig_by_per-bachelor-s-degree-higher-percentage))</p>

<p>Lafayette???</p>

<p>I’m still laughing</p>

15

<p>Did someone ask where Raleigh/Durham is? Ha. Raleigh might be “smart”, maybe, but the amount of stupid people in Durham kill whatever Raleigh brings to the table.</p>

16

<p>And as noted above this is most definitely not a valid finding because it isn’t a random sample. </p>

<p>They are only measuring the population that self selects to play their ‘games’, which is going to be the subset of the population that is ‘entertained’ by that variety of games + has the free time to spend on the activities, so in a population such as Lafayette, you’re only looking at a handful of bored college students and not taking a random sample of the whole population.</p>

<p>Taking a sample of 500 in a population of 50,000+ might be a valid sample size if it’s a random sample, but when only looking at the participants that choose to participate, the results are incredibly skewed.</p>

<p>So, yes, it’s a worthless study, but I was entertained by the results none the less.</p>

17

<p>Hmm . . . Here’s an unmeasured and imprecise conclusion: if you look at the map, it’s striking that almost everyplace in the North (i.e., Northeast and Midwest, as far west as MN & IA) is above average, and almost everyplace in the South is . . . not. In the West, the coast is “brainier” than the interior.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>But doing well on those games could also be partly a function of prior experience in doing precisely those games, or other games that require similar kinds of “memory, processing speed, flexibility, attention, and problem solving.” The whole point of the company is that if you do their games, you’re supposed to become better at doing those games, and (they claim) the particular skills you exercise and develop in that process are supposed to translatable into other life contexts. Fine; nothing wrong with that. </p>

<p>They say in their “study” they controlled for age and gender, but they didn’t say they controlled for prior gaming experience. If they didn’t, I’m inclined to regard it as a pile of hooey that probably tells us mainly which cities have the most people spending the most time doing certain kinds of gaming. Is that a good thing, or not? Color me skeptical.</p>

<p>Or maybe it tells us which cities are places where residents really feel they have nothing better to do. Certainly I’d put Lafayette in that categogy.</p>

18

<p>I’m inclined to agree with you, bclintonk, about what playing the games may (or may not) measure. I’ve not played any of the games myself so I have no first-hand anecdotal experience of their efficacy. Also, clearly, the study is part of the company’s marketing and PR efforts. </p>

<p>Notwithstanding the marketing and PR agenda of the study, the guy who designed it is a published (peer-reviewed, PubMed indexed pubs) author with a PhD in cognitive science from Stanford. I’m inclined to give the young man a teensy benefit of the doubt and assume that he exercised some intellectual integrity in designing the study, whatever the limits of its significance. (And, again, it’s the online source that came up with the catchy “brainiest cities” label, not the Lumosity researchers themselves.)</p>

<p>Now, I’m not going to move from the Chicago area to Springfield in response to the findings, but they’re mildly provocative and certainly not worthy of contempt. Questioning, sure. But contempt? To guffaw at the findings as if they’re complete nonsense seems a bit presumptuous. I don’t really understand why it’s so hard for people to be skeptical and respectful at the same time. </p>

<p>BTW, I’m not a big game player myself. However, by dint of obsessive repetition I have become a pretty awesome Tetris player. This, sadly, appears to have no real-world benefits.</p>

19

<p>The list was a good chuckle. Worth the 15 seconds for the laugh.</p>

20

<p>Wasn’t Ann Arbor voted America’s smartest city by Forbes or some other trustworthy source? So why isn’t it on the list…? And what about Ithaca and Princeton…</p>