Where The Brains Are

Do you live in a "brainy" part of the country? I happen to live in a small community about 50 miles away from a gigantic Big 10 university. The overflow of brain power from that school has covered my region and I can see evidence of both intellectual and artistic traits manifesting here. When you look around your community, do you see signs of brilliance, or, as the old joke goes, is there no intelligent life sighted?

Our society is eager to rank everything from colleges and universities (the infamous U.S. News rankings, controversial as they may be), through best places to live, to which washing machine is a "best buy." I've often wondered about the aspect of "smartness." We have smart phones, smart cars, smart refrigerators, and smart meals. So, why not smart places to live? Well, my wondering has been satisfied by a relatively young -- and smart -- company in San Francisco: Lumosity. According to its Web site, Lumosity's "neuroscientists and game developers work hard to design entertainingexercises you'll want to play everyday. After all, the harder you train,the stronger your brain. We believe that Lumosity.com is a trulyenjoyable experience — and we're not the only ones who think this."

Well, their experience in this field of "gaming" has resulted in a very interesting look at the relative intellectual environment of various places in America. Using a unique formula, Lumosity has established a ranking of America's Brainiest Cities. In explaining this unusual ranking, Richard Florida, writing in The Atlantic, explains Lumosity's intent and rationale. Here are some excerpts from that article along with the Top 25 Brainiest Cities. Maybe you'll be lucky enough to live in one of them.

In a knowledge economy, we are often told the smartest cities andnations do the best. But economists typically measure smart cities byeducation level, calculating the cities or metros with the largestpercentage of college grads or the largest shares of adults withadvanced degrees. Others (like me) do it by charting the kinds of workpeople do and the occupations they hold, differentiating betweenknowledge or creative workers and others who do more routinemanufacturing and service jobs.

But a new measure seeks to track the "brain performance" or cognitivecapacity of metros in a different and potentially more direct way.

This metric, developed by Lumos Labs, is based on their cognitivetraining and tracking software, Lumosity. It covers some 20 millionmembers (and 320 million individual game plays) who use the company'sonline games to assess and attempt to improve their cognitiveperformance. . . .

. . . To measure the smartest cities, Lumosity scientists tracked thecognitive performance of more than one million users in the UnitedStates on their games, mapping them across U.S. metros using IPgeolocation software. Individual scores were recorded in five keycognitive areas: memory, processing speed, flexibility, attention, andproblem solving.The data was normalized into a basic brain performanceindex controlling for age and gender. Only metros with more than 500observations were included. The data cover 169 metros. . . .

Here are America's 25 brainiest metros, according to Lumosity's metrics:

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

There's a lot of college towns on the list. Charlottesville, Virginia,home to the University of Virginia, takes first place. Lafayette,Indiana, home to Purdue University, is second, while Madison, Wisconsin,home to the University of Madison-Wisconsin, is fourth. Iowa City(University of Iowa), Champaign, Illinois (University of Illinois),Austin (University of Texas), Gainesville (University of Florida),Lansing (Michigan State), Burlington (University of Vermont), andSyracuse (Syracuse University) all number among the top 25. . . .

. . . The result is not driven principally by college students, according toDaniel Sternberg, the Lumosity data scientist who developed the metrobrain performance measure. "Since our analysis controlled for age, thereason they score well is not simply that they have a lot of youngpeople," said Sternberg. "Instead, our analysis seems to show that usersliving in university communities tend to perform better than users ofthe same age in other locations." . . .

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So, how did your community do in the rankings? If it's on the list, do you see evidence of intellectual vitality in your area? If it's not on the list, can you challenge Lumosity regarding why not?

This article has inspired a lot of emotion on the College Confidential discussion forum. I started a thread there about these rankings, and some of the comments swing between insightful and resentful. Check it out and let us know here on Admit This! what your feeling are. I'd like to know.

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Be sure to check out all my college-related articles and book reviews at College Confidential.