Cognitive Software Identifies America's Brainiest Cities

Hugh Pickens writes "We are often told that the smartest cities and nations do the best and 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. Now Richard Florida writes that a new metric developed by Lumos Labs based on their cognitive training and tracking software Lumosity seeks to track "brain performance" or cognitive capacity of cities in a more direct way by measuring the cognitive performance of more than one million users in the United States who use their games against their location using IP geolocation software. Lumosity's website offers forty games designed to sharpen a wide range of cognitive skills. 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. The results are shown on a map from Zara Matheson of the Martin Prosperity Institute that shows the brainy metro index across US metro areas with the top five brainy clusters in Charlottesville Virginia, Lafayette Indiana, Anchorage Alaska, Madison Wisconsin, and the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose area. The result is not driven principally by college students, according to Daniel Sternberg, the Lumosity data scientist who developed the metro brain performance measure. 'Since our analysis controlled for age, the reason they score well is not simply that they have a lot of young people,' says Sternberg. 'Instead, our analysis seems to show that users living in university communities tend to perform better than users of the same age in other locations.'"

Self Selected groups

[frnic]

'Since our analysis controlled for age, the reason they score well is not simply that they have a lot of young people,' says Sternberg. 'Instead, our analysis seems to show that users living in university communities tend to perform better than users of the same age in other locations.'"

Since the groups were self selected, ie. they decided to participate, maybe people living in college towns have more time or are more interested in playing.

Uni students tend to stick around

[sandytaru]

Even controlling for age, college towns and research institutions also have a lot of older, well-educated folks hanging around, living and working in the community. My husband finished his PhD at the local Research I, but liked the town so much he accepted a job at a smaller state university one town over so we could continue to live in our old college town. Big biotech companies are always around the big research institutes as well; they don't call it Research Triangle up in NC for nothing.

False Assumption

[ibpooks]

And all of this based on the false assumption that Lumosity's pseudoscience click-on-the-shiny-colors games are any good at measuring "brain performance".

Re:The results disprove the study

[Stele]

The place with the highest concentration of iPhones and iPads is located between Baltimore and D.C. That's where I would expect to find the most intelligent people.

You mean douchiest right?

Well duh, it's college.

[HeckRuler]

users living in university communities tend to perform better than users of the same age in other locations.

Ok, that makes sense. You know, COLLEGE.

The result is not driven principally by college students,

Uh...... wut?

'Since our analysis controlled for age, the reason they score well is not simply that they have a lot of young people,'

uh huh. So they discovered that smart people go to college?

I'm sorry, could someone explain to me how they come to the conclusion that their results aren't driven by college students?
"Controlled for age" doesn't mean much to me, but sure, ok, it takes into account the age discrepancy. But... you know, it doesn't take into account that THEY'RE GOING INTO HIGHER EDUCATION. I really don't see how this isn't driven by college students.

Re:False Assumption

[dubbayu_d_40]

Like crossword puzzles? What do you base your comment on?

Personally, I find their map correlates well with low effort thinkers: http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/04/09/the-thinking-liberal/ [freakonomics.com]

IP Geolocation is horribly wrong at times

[locketine]

If people are playing these games at work then the geolocation might be where the company's datacenter is, not where the people are.

Re:Self Selected groups

[LifesABeach]

It kind of sounded like the author of this study dranks the same Kool-aid that Face Book Share Holders drink.

Re:Self Selected groups

[arth1]

This is the group of "smart" people with too much time on their hands.

The smart, employed, people are too busy with their lives to play on-line games.

I'd think that one marker for being smart would be having spare time.