Madison is Fourth Smartest City in America

A recent study by Lumos Labs used computer games and puzzles instead of education level to find the smartest cities in America, and Madison, WI is the fourth smartest!

"In a knowledge economy, we are often told the smartest cities and nations do the best. But 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. Others (like me) do it by charting the kinds of work people do and the occupations they hold, differentiating between knowledge or creative workers and others who do more routine manufacturing and service jobs. 

To measure the smartest cities, Lumosity scientists tracked the cognitive performance of more than one million users in the United States on their games, mapping them across U.S. metros using IP geolocation software. 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. Only metros with more than 500 observations were included. The data cover 169 metros."

You can see from this map that Milwaukee and Northeast Wisconsin are fairly "brainy," too.

Maybe the rest of Wisconsin should listen to Madison once in a while instead of decrying it so much. They do tend to know what they're talking about. If we let Walker enact laws like those in the South, we'll end up like them. In a knowledge economy, Wisconsin needs to be more like Madison to thrive.