I Put Up The Top 30. Apparently, Chicago is Tied At #24 with St. Louis

The list created by dailybeast.com is causing some drama.

 #1, RALEIGH-DURHAM
Daily Beast IQ Score: 170

 #2, SAN FRANCISCO-OAKLAND-SAN JOSE
Daily Beast IQ Score: 165

 #3, BOSTON
Daily Beast IQ Score: 162

 #4, MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL
Daily Beast IQ Score: 159

 #5, DENVER
Daily Beast IQ Score: 158

 #6, HARTFORD-NEW HAVEN
Daily Beast IQ Score: 156

 #7 (tie), SEATTLE-TACOMA
Daily Beast IQ Score: 151

 #7 (tie), WASHINGTON, DC
Daily Beast IQ Score: 151

 #9, PORTLAND, OR
Daily Beast IQ Score: 143

 #10, BALTIMORE
Daily Beast IQ Score: 135

 #11, PHILADELPHIA
Daily Beast IQ Score: 130

 #12, AUSTIN
Daily Beast IQ Score: 129  

 #13, NEW YORK
Daily Beast IQ Score: 128

 #14, SALT LAKE CITY
Daily Beast IQ Score: 127

 #15, MILWAUKEE
Daily Beast IQ Score: 120

 #16, CHARLOTTE
Daily Beast IQ Score: 119  

 #17 (tie), KANSAS CITY
Daily Beast IQ Score: 116  

#17 (tie), COLUMBUS
Daily Beast IQ Score: 116

 #19, NASHVILLE
Daily Beast IQ Score: 113

 #20 (tie), SAN DIEGO
Daily Beast IQ Score: 112

 #20 (tie), INDIANAPOLIS
Daily Beast IQ Score: 112

 #22, PROVIDENCE
Daily Beast IQ Score: 110  

 #23, ATLANTA
Daily Beast IQ Score: 109

 #24 (tie), ST. LOUIS
Daily Beast IQ Score: 108

 #24 (tie), CHICAGO
Daily Beast IQ Score: 108

 #26, ROCHESTER, NY
Daily Beast IQ Score: 106  

 #27 (tie), PITTSBURGH
Daily Beast IQ Score: 100

#27 (tie), LOS ANGELES
Daily Beast IQ Score: 100

 #27 (tie), RICHMOND
Daily Beast IQ Score: 100

 #30, GRAND RAPIDS-KALAMAZOO-BATTLE CREEK
Daily Beast IQ Score: 99

See The Rest Here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-04/americas-smartest-cities
How Did They Come Up With This Formula?

THEDAILYBEAST.COM - First, some rules of the game. We only ranked metropolitan areas (the cities and their suburbs) of 1 million people or more, using Census data, with the definition of each greater metropolitan area defined by Nielsen. That gave us 55 in all. All data was then organized on a per-capita basis, so that a resident of Norfolk, Virginia, and New York, New York, had equal weight. We’re looking for the brainiest cities, not the biggest.

Then we divided the criteria into two halves: Half for education, and half for intellectual environment. The education half encompassed how many residents had bachelor’s degrees (35 percent weighting) and graduate degrees (15 percent). No credit was given for “some college,” or “some grad school”—we rewarded those who finished the race. The intellectual environmental half had three subparts. First, we looked at nonfiction book sales (25 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 focused on nonfiction as an imperfect proxy for intellectual vigor, because overall sales are dominated by fiction works that, while entertaining, aren’t always particularly thought-provoking. We also measured the ratio of institutions of higher education (15 percent), as defined by the federal government—different than just measuring college degrees, this acknowledges that universities don’t just churn out diplomas, but instead drive the intellectual vigor of cities. Finally, many studies link intelligence and political engagement, so we weighed this, too, as measured by the percentage of eligible voters who cast ballots in the last presidential election (10 percent). (Our relatively small weighting acknowledges that numerous other local factors can affect turnout.)

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 allocated between in 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.