Thursday, October 08, 2009

How Smart Is Memphis?

Which metropolis has the most intelligent residents? The Daily Beast crunched the data on the brainpower of America’s 55 largest cities, from first-to-worst -- collective brainpower. "More than sports prowess or political leanings or wealth or cultural accomplishments, this is the quintessential list for bragging point of a metropolitan area, the civic version of a playground taunt: I’m smart, you’re not," said Daily Beast.

So in terms of sorting out which cities walk the walk, The Daily Beast said it's decided to play scorekeeper and specifically, it's ranked the relative intelligence of every major American population hub, from first-to-worst.

Spoiler alert: We're #51. Nashville is #19 if you are into regional rivalry.

PS: We know the unending rankings of cities often mean little, but we still enjoy seeing them.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

How did they get these rankings? What kind of data did they use? I think this is very interesting. (if it was TCAP scores of high schoolers, for example, you have to argue that so many kids attend private schools and they don't take TCAPs).

Unknown said...

The way the Daily Beast did the rankings was that they looked at the number of books purchased per number of people and the graduation rate of high school and college students.

While I find the rankings of our intelligence insulting, it presents a greater problem that has to be addressed, and that is the number of high school and college dropouts we have, particularly upon African Americans and other minorities.

Anonymous said...

Yeah but ya'll rank higher in the consumption of cold 40's and 9 mm.
I bet.

Anonymous said...

How about the number game boys purchased?

Midtowner said...

Well, well ... Consolidation didn't help Louisville on this list. They're below us.

Look at the people we elect ... And then you'll have no doubt about how smart we are.

Zippy the giver said...

Ha ha, while jford1983 is "busy" being insulted, the rest of the country has moved on and run over our dead city in the move.