The Density of Smart People | Hacker News Reader

The Density of Smart People

creativeclass.com

58 pointschanux34 comments

I would like to see normalized versions of these nuumbers, eg density-of-smart-people / population-density. Of course new york city is going to be more dense than oklahoma city, but TFA tells us nothing about the relative densities of smart people.

The article he pulled the graph from has those numbers

http://blog.robpitingolo.org/2010/05/where-smart-people-live...

the specific graphs being:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_UnYG5zOkgEY/S_bRIxhp8CI/AAAAAAAABn...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_UnYG5zOkgEY/S_bRVVyNVmI/AAAAAAAABn...

They look like you'd expect.

That is a much more interesting article; I particularly like the graphs of predicted densities.

I don't think that's very interesting:

(smart/area) / (population/area) = (smart/population)

I don't really care if the population is more educated if they're really spread out. Assuming I have some way of selecting people who are smart—which I definitely do in NYC—I'm going to get to see a lot more of them in a place with a higher smart density.

What you're missing is that density is meaningless in a Western city. Consider a city like Tucson, which is really spread out. However, within 30 minutes I can reach 500,000 people. In Phoenix, you are 30 minutes away from at approximately 1,500,000 people.

Does that compete with NYC and SF? No. However, density undervalues western cities and overvalues dense ones. Unfortunately, there's no statistics for "people with whom you can have coffee within 20 minutes of travel."

What do undervalue and overvalue mean here? Undervalue car travel? I travel by walking or cycling so the number of people I could reach in a period of time is almost exclusively a function of how dense the area I'm in is.

Like all benchmarks, the simplification afforded by the benchmark distorts the results. We really should use a weighting function between (smart/area) and (smart/population) to identify both where smart people congregate and where there is a minimum "smartness" density.

That's just regular density (smart/total). The article says that's what most economists use, but it's not automatically better - and density is a bit loose of a concept anyway.

I'd say it comes down to whether you're interested in a bounded product (infrastructure) or an unbounded one (innovation). A good argument could be made for spreading degrees around geographically, focusing on area instead of population, but it couldn't be stated with any accuracy without a good model of the likely nonlinear effects of degree densities on both types of goals.

I already knew that many 'smart people' were in fact dense, but it's useful to know where they congregate.

It should really be called "The Density of Degree Holders"

I agree. It is flattering to a sense of those who live in those top-ranked areas. But how about "The Density of Feasible Networks That Could Guarantee Better Livelihood"

Cause or effect?

The first thing I thought when I saw the graph was that the cities with the most college graduates per capita were also the most expensive. Could it be that college graduates are the only ones who have earned enough to afford these places?

Also the idea that (CollegeEducation = SmartPeople) is really played out. Many of the smartest people I know have achieved great things in spite of or instead of college. Finishing college is as much a matter of determination as "smartness", whatever that means.

I was wondering if here or elsewhere you could relate some of the things that these successful, non-college graduates did to become successful. I'm often in the position of giving career advice to undergrads, and some of them major in things so academic that as far as the workforce is concerned, they are degree-less. It would be nice to have a picture in my mind of what some people in similar situations have done.

it's more that level of educational achievement correlates pretty well with IQ.

Not really. Anyone that's a hard worker can get an undergraduate degree, while there are many brilliant people who, for whatever reason, don't. Undergraduate degrees better correlate with family income than they do with IQ.

One of the two of you should link to an actual study before I'll believe claims like that.

Family income vs SAT scores: 95% http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-...

SAT vs IQ: 81% http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...

I couldn't find information on correlation between IQ and college degrees, though. My Google-fu is weak.

Edit: a bunch more cool stuff (and sources) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Positive_...

Thanks for the links, though I don't think the numbers are really comparable since the studies refer to two wholly disjoint populations (US and UK.)

Not sure if this counts, but: http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Publications/cta/Pages/chapter6.asp...

"Two other factors, family in receipt of state benefit and IQ categorisation, also have significant predictive powers, but are somewhat less important than a deviant classification. Respondents with below average IQ are less likely than those with above average IQ to pursue third level education. Those groups in receipt of state benefit are more likely to leave the educational system without completing second level. However, those in receipt of state benefit with above average IQ present a similar pattern of educational attainment as those with a below average IQ but with families not in receipt of state benefit. This finding indicates that socio-economic advantage can benefit individuals educationally. A similar pattern is evident for both the deviant and non-deviant groups but the deviant group is less likely to complete second level and go on to third level education."

>Anyone that's a hard worker can get an undergraduate degree

I'd find this rather sad if it were really true.

If a degree is not mentally challenging then why not, why are Universities offering degrees that aren't focussed on higher learning (that would naturally exclude the less intellectually able)?

Anyone? Not sure about that. But most people, probably, yeah. The ex-government over here (UK) had a target for 50% of high-school graduates going to university (and, presumably, receiving a degree) -- it hasn't been met, yet, but substantial 'progress' has been made towards that. Naturally, this has resulted in substantial deteriorations in standards in many instances.

An awful lot of subjects, even the more academic ones, are mostly about remembering things -- understanding is optional. This correlates heavily with determination, time spent, repetition, etc. Intelligence? Useful, usually, but optional.

(Oh, and why? I dunno, the money?)

It's easy to get a degree. It's mentally challenging (in most cases) to get a good degree with a good GPA.

To be even remotely interesting, these numbers need to be ratios of degree density over population density. Of course the city with the densest population in the country (NYC) scores highly. I'd be interested to see the normalized numbers.

I thought this too but there are some things of interest since this list isn't the same as a list of just population density (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by...).

We can infer the percent of the general population of LA and Miami with a degree is slightly below average, Seattle's above average, etc. You're basically right though: this list is stupid.

> ratios of degree density over population density

A simpler way of stating it would be what percent of the population has a degree.

Interesting; his results pretty accurately follow the startup activity in cities. San Francisco, New York, Boston. The startup activity difference is about the square of the spread in his graph, though.

Really? I don't see much correlation.

Top 5 by degree density: SF, NY, Boston, Washington, Seattle

Top 5 by startup density: SF, Boston, Seattle, NY, Washington

The latter list is from http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/06/startup-centers.ht...

So, yeah, it's the same 5, but not the same order. I did find it interesting that those 5 cities all popped out on the first graph of Degree and Population Density (by City) on the original blog post - http://blog.robpitingolo.org/2010/05/where-smart-people-live...

So if you have a city over a certain size with a higher percentage of college grads than would be expected based on population size, then it's likely to be a startup hub. And the more unexpected the difference, the more significant the startup activity. Except NY has less than expected college grads, so I guess at some point overall size still matters.

The underlying link was originally submitted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1380721

I don't think this blog post adds much, honestly, but this submission seems to have mysteriously caught fire while the other thread languished.

I'm not sure that this is true, that you really need density, because density is not the way humans interact. We interact with networks of social contacts, now if you virtualize contacts or if you have a higher network density, that means less people but they are better connected you might be able to compensate a lower overall density.

There's also going to be an interesting section of the data around college towns or major research centers, e.g., Los Alamos or Niskayuna. (I realize the original author only looked at the top 50 cities.) Does Wolfram Alpha have the data to do more of this style analysis?

New York City scores second highest here, but in actuality only ~27% of people have a college degree (US average: ~24%). In San Francisco (the highest score here) a whopping ~43% have a college degree!

World Average is 51 http://esa.un.org/unpp/

Thank you for posting this. As a recent transplant to SF this warms my heart.

People have a bizarre sense of price vs value. This guy's self-serving article on human capital and economic growth is perverted because:

- America isn't the world, and it is becoming less important in the world as time goes on. A country with 100% debt:GDP is the last place I'd look for insight into the relationship between intelligence and economics. I'd be more inclined to look for valid relationships between intelligence and economics on a global scale. Better sample size. Less systemic errors.

- "Smart people of the highly educated sort" wouldn't have the resources to participate in the Information Society without cheap Microsoft Optical mice made on the backs of near-slave labour in other countries.

- Equating the density of human capital solely to educational attainment density is weak. Do all those MBAs on the walls belonging to High Frequency Traders on Wall Street really prove they're creating wealth? How about if they're just promoting and profiting from an economic system that reinforces the "value" they create until the next bubble bursts?

- Sustainable growth is more important than growth. You know what else I think of when I read "San Francisco, NYC, Boston"? Bubbles. Check out the unsustainable home price appreciation levels in those areas from 198*-2006. Yeah. Smart/educated.

High frequency traders do not have MBAs.

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