<p>
So…where’s the data? Where are the details of the statistical analysis? I don’t even know where to start evaluating this; there isn’t enough information.</p>
<p>What about NYC? Wall Street has arguably some of the smartest people in America and the world (brain drain).</p>
<p>Well, there you go, noimagination. That’s an excellent point. The full details are not available (or if they are none of us has located them). One response is to assume the study design was flawed and (as some people have done) guffaw and snort based on one’s own anecdotal sense of where smart people congregate … or not. Another response, mine, is to give the researchers the benefit of the doubt while not perhaps deciding to move the family based on the findings. Your approach, IMO, is the most reasonable given that the raw data don’t appear to be available. </p>
<p>Anyone know where to find the original data?</p>
<p>In the meantime, why don’t people just throw out the names of the cities and metro areas where they think the smart people live?</p>
<p>But you don’t need access to the original data to determine the validity of this study.</p>
<p>It only takes an extremely basic knowledge of statistical analysis to know that for results to be valid a significant sample needs to be taken from the population being studied.</p>
<p>Since only the people that chose to participate in the games were analyzed, the results CAN NOT be extrapolated to the entire populations of the city.</p>
<p>What this study does show is that the people who chose to participate in the games in these select regions performed the best, but it does not indicate that that subset of the populations is characteristic of the larger population.</p>
<p>I’m not certain where the ‘smartest’ people may be, but I’ll say they are probably where the greatest number of people don’t blindly buy into every ‘study’ that’s published.</p>
<p>The author of the article that launched this thread may implicitly suggest one can extrapolate from the study to the population at large. That, IMO, is sloppy journalism. It doesn’t mean the researchers purport that and, indeed, there’s no evidence they do. I certainly haven’t drawn that conclusion. But the results such as they are, measuring what they do, are interesting enough on their own.</p>
<p>
Just curious…what exactly is interesting about the results? How do you interpret them?</p>
<p>In defense of Lafayette, that MSA also probably includes Wabash and DePauw. Wabash alone is home to the Brainy Gamer-his blog is famous in the academic gaming world and his students would help increase the scores no doubt. West Lafayette has an incredible public school system and it is home to several small tech companies filled with alums that are lured to stick around by the low taxes. Since it is nothing but cornfields (as I grew up in the middle of those cornfields 25 miles away) surounding the school, those who are using those programs are not the ones that are working those corn and soy fields. It has the advantage of being a place where those that are smart are REALLY smart, and those that arent wouldn’t be fiddling with a computer program anyway.</p>
<p>LOL, Syracuse and Rochester? Why is upstate NY such a blighted mess, then?</p>
<p>It’s cute how many responses to this list are, “Wait! College X is in city X! Why isn’t it higher?” </p>
<p>Really captures the narrow thinking of so many on this forum, as well as their lack of real world experience. Maybe you just have to spend enough time working with people with PhDs from top universities to see firsthand that there’s a huge difference between being smart and being educated.</p>
<p>@MizzBee - EXACTLY! There are indeed some extremely intelligent people in Lafayette (I think it would be difficult to find any town or city where there aren’t at least a few exceptionally intelligent people) and with Purdue being a very STEM based school, there are going to be numerous students with the logical thought processes to excel on these games and that have the time and the interest in participating in them. However there are a lot of other people in Lafayette. This study shows that those people in Lafayette that chose to participate in the games were in the 2nd best metro area in the nation. The participants in Lafayette did indeed outperform those almost anywhere else.</p>
<p>However it can not be extrapolated to the population of Lafayette as a whole. You can not say Lafayette’s population is a ‘brainy’ area, only that those people from Lafayette who chose to partipate were a ‘brainy’ group.</p>
<p>I hate quoting Wiki, but I ran across this and do like the quote:</p>
<p>In statistics, self-selection bias arises in any situation in which individuals select themselves into a group, causing a biased sample with nonprobability sampling. It is commonly used to describe situations where the characteristics of the people which cause them to select themselves in the group create abnormal or undesirable conditions in the group.</p>
<p>Self-selection bias is a major problem in research in sociology, psychology, economics and many other social sciences.[1] In such fields, a poll suffering from such bias is termed a self-selecting opinion poll or “SLOP”.[2]</p>
<p>([Self-selection</a> bias - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection]Self-selection”>Self-selection bias - Wikipedia))</p>
<p>They list the Boston, MA to Manchester, NH metro area as a city? Those two cities are located over 50 miles from each other and there are two main routes to get there that have wildly different cities and towns along the way. Why not just pick Boston? Or Cambridge? Those are real cities and there are a lot of smart people there. Lawrence, MA is between Manchester and Boston and I would guess that there are not a lot of good puzzle solvers there.</p>
<p>Another metric on intelligence is the percentage of adults with college degrees. Now college degrees <> intelligence but it is an interesting measure - more interesting that the author of the article here. In a 2010 report, MA is first, CT is second and NH is third. Anyone surprised? I don’t have city stats available.</p>
<p>^ [About</a> Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas - People and Households - U.S. Census Bureau](<a href=“http://www.census.gov/population/metro/about/]About”>http://www.census.gov/population/metro/about/)</p>
<p>In answer to noimagination’s request about how I interpret the study; the way I see it is thus:</p>
<ol>
<li>There are millions of people who used the Lumosity games, which may or may not be useful in improving cognitive function.</li>
<li>Lumosity did a study of more than a million of these users across the country, mapping them across geographical areas defined in ways that have perplexed some posters in this forum (viz. “Johnstown-Altoona, Pennsylvania,” “Champaign & Springfield-Decatur, Illinois,” possibly others).</li>
<li>Based on these findings, the Lumosity people mapped the geographic areas with the greatest concentration of people with the highest cognitive powers according to their games.</li>
<li>Hence the list … Which The Atlantic Cities (blog or whatever it is; seems to be some part of The Atlantic media empire) published under a headline including the words “America’s Brainiest Cities.”</li>
</ol>
<p>As I’ve said repeatedly, the fact that the Atlantic Cities put the story under the label “brainiest cities” means only that they wanted to get people’s attention. There’s no indication the researchers think their results can be extrapolated beyond this large but limited, nonrandom sample. What evidence is there that they do? The headline? Whatever. It’s just a headline. The story itself suggests that these are America’s brainiest cities but so what? You don’t have to believe this is a literal list of America’s brainiest cities to be mildly interested in how the metro areas shook out. Again, it’s mildly interesting. That’s all. There’s no need to call the study crap or get all hot and bothered and talk about all the dumb people you know in Durham and all the smart people you know in Atlanta … </p>
<p>I have half a mind to send a message to the study developer on LinkedIn to get more deets.</p>
<p>Seattle and Portland didn’t make the list? This seems incorrect.</p>
<ol>
<li>San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose<br></li>
</ol>
<p>BAY AREA REPRESENTIN!</p>
<p>Re: Syracuse, Rochester and some other remote Northern MSA’s listed… wintertime gaming redirects our idle fantasies of putting irritating neighbors and coworkers through wood-chippers. When we get another 8" of snow in late April, you’d better hope there’s a game and that the power is up! </p>
<p>NYC has brains, but also runs public transportation 24/7 to all forms of live entertainment, at every price point, in four seasons. Gaming is just one option among many, even in winter.</p>
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</p>
<p>That was my first thought when I saw Anchorage at #3.</p>
<p>Bogus List. How could it be legit and leave out the Scottsbluff-Alliance-Gering metroplex? Probably the highest concentration of IQ in all of northwestern Nebraska</p>
<p>The list doesn’t look to me as wacky as some of you think, especially if one just steps back and looks at it at more high-level. I have read how Boston, Minneapolis, SF Bay Area, and Austin have some of the highest concentration of population with college degrees. That college towns make the list makes a lot of sense. </p>
<p>At the macro level, the map shows the Northeast, Upper-Midwest, & Pacific Northwest are doing better than the South and Southeast. That seems consistent to other lists I saw. </p>
<p>The odd one out is Washington DC metro, which is supposed to be the highest-educated and highest-income metro.</p>
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<p>Yes, but why would you dilute Boston with Boston through Manchester, New Hampshire?</p>