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Games Science Travel

Are you smart? Maybe it all depends on where you live…

Do you consider yourself a smart person?

If you’re reading this (or anything on the Internet), one would assume that the answer is “yes”. Only smart people bother to use the Internet — and only the smartest of the smart will read Web Watch.

So “hi!” to all of our smart readers out there.

But seriously, studiest have shown that sometimes what your intelligence level is can be dictated by the environment you surround yourself with.  In other words – generally speaking – if you hang out with smart people (or dumb people), then you will eventually become smarter (or dumber) through association.

At the very least, just to keep up with those you hang out with.

But a new study proves this even better…

Brainiac
Brainiac

According to information provided by LUMOS LABS, there are CLUMPS OF SMARTNESS all around the country.  These so-called “brainiest cities in America” were determined by how well people did playing games.

Game play as an indicator of how smart someone is?  Yes – it’s definitely true.  All the more reason why families should always have plenty of games lying around the house for kids to play when growing up.  But we digress…

Based on gameplay, Lumos determined five areas of brainy success:

  • memory
  • how quick a response was given
  • flexibility
  • attention
  • problem solving

All key aspects that the smartypants in the room always seem to have.

Then they mapped these traits to a map, which gives us the BRAINIEST CITIES IN AMERICA:

  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

Their full list contains a lot more entries, but Web Watch wanted to give you a sampling.

Here’s the problem that we have with this analysis:  their entire philosophy is based only on those people who were using their software.

And their software is all about game play (they equate the games to Mindsweeper, or other games you may play in the office).   Granted the games are not strictly “games for fun sake”, but games to help build-up areas of the brain that some folks may need help with – like memory improvement.

But a game is a game is a game.  And they’re only tracking those who’ve bothered to play these specific games.

So don’t feel bad if your location isn’t on the list. It’s possible that you’re the brainiest of the brainiest, and didn’t need to use the software that these statistics are based on.