Miami One of the Dumbest Cities (sales, buy, universities)

[BlueBlueBlue]

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local-b...105721293.html

Is this really a surprise to anyone? Quite frankly, i thought Miami would be city #55.

[ace587]

Not surprised at all.

[flyers29]

Nope, no surprise based on that methodology.

[jasper12]

Nope. Just drive around here...you can rate intelligence based on that alone.

[MiamiRob]

Well your post isn't providing the link. What does the article or report say?

[WINTERFRONT]

What kind methodology did they use to rate Miami as the dumbest city?

[chopchop0]

Originally Posted by WINTERFRONT

What kind methodology did they use to rate Miami as the dumbest city?

First, a few ground rules. We only ranked metropolitan areas (major cities and their suburbs) of 1 million people or more, using Census data, with the definition of each greater metropolitan area defined by Nielsen’s Designated Market Area. In a few cases, using Nielsen’s DMA definitions meant combining data from two or more Metropolitan Statistical Areas. That gave us 55 cities. All data was organized on a per-capita basis so that a resident of Nashville Tennessee, and Los Angeles, California, had equal weight.

This year’s methodology is similar to last year’s inaugural list, with a couple weighting refinements, and one major change: as our civic engagement quotient—a proxy of a city’s willingness, and ability, to invest in intellectual culture—we dropped voter turnout in favor of libraries per capita. Overall, we divided the criteria into two parts: Half for education, and half for intellectual environment. The education half encompassed the percentage of residents over age 25 who had bachelor’s degrees (25 percent weighting) and graduate degrees (25 percent), compared to the overall population over age 25. The intellectual environmental half had three subparts. First, we looked at year-to-date nonfiction book sales (16.7 percent), as tracked by Nielsen BookScan, the nation’s leading provider of accurate point-of-sale data, which tracks roughly 300,000 titles each week. We also measured the ratio of institutions of higher education (16.7 percent), as defined by the federal government—different than just measuring college degrees, this acknowledges that universities as driver of intellectual vigor of cities and rewards cities with college populations. Finally, libraries per capita (16.7 percent) measures how willing and able a city is to educate the general public, as well as the no-cost opportunities for the public to educate itself.

Once we had all these comparable, per-capita figures, we ranked the cities in each category, assigning 10 points to those near the very top, and 0 to the bottom, with scores in between dropped into a broad bell curve. We then added the totals and multiplied by two, which made for a perfect score of 200, a wash-out score of 0, and an average score right at 100—close to the exact parameters of a classic IQ test.

Ranking America

Wonder if it is coincidental that Miami seems to top the worst road-rage in the country too

Miami drivers have worst road rage - Health - Mental health - msnbc.com

[♥♥PRINC3Ss♥♥]

The formula is pretty dumb itself. Most people don't go to libraries anymore and nonfiction books can include the dumbest subjects like Sarah Palins or Paris Hilton biographies. Just because you buy a book it doesn't mean you are going to read it either. # of colleges? Beyond dumb. And who told these people that a degree makes you smarter?, (50%)

This is worthless. If you want know how dumb people are ask them questions directly, test their knowledge and critical thinking skills. Whoever came up with this index was not very smart himself.

[WINTERFRONT]

^^^ Troo. Adding to it, foreign degrees aren't recognized in the US.

[NamedUser]

Not surprised.

Miami is the dumbest city in America IMO. Just look at how people conduct themselves in public and in the workplace, or how retarded they drive. People in Miami wouldn't know culture if it came up and bit them on the ......