According to Lumosity’s “Smartest Cities in America” survey, folks in the Kinston metropolitan area aren’t so bright.
Out of 478 metro areas ranked in the U.S., Kinston came in at 476. Only Laredo, Texas, and fellow North Carolina town Lumberton did worse.
“To be included in the analysis, a user must have played at least one game in each of the five Lumosity ‘Brain Areas’: Speed, Attention, Flexibility, Memory and Problem Solving,” according to the survey’s accompanying methodology details. “The user also must have provided their date of birth and gender, between 15 and 85 years of age, and must be located in the United States according to our geolocation procedure. These inclusion criteria resulted in an initial cohort of 3,385,648 users.”
The sample size ended up including 2,417,530 people.
Lumosity released several breakdowns of the rankings, with one being overall metro rankings based on the “core-based statistical area,” defined by the federal Office of Management and Budget and based on national census data, described as an urban center of at least 10,000 people. Kinston’s area included the entirety of Lenoir County.
Lenoir County Public Schools Superintendent Steve Mazingo didn’t give the report much weight.
“As someone who’s trained in how you do random sampling, and how you get valid and reliable results, I put absolutely no stock in it,” Mazingo said, chuckling.
He added, “I don’t think any of us in the community can draw conclusions from it, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m a little bit of a numbers person — math degree, and a lot of statistics and that kind of thing. So, I’m not sure I can say that it means anything.”
Kinston Mayor B.J. Murphy was unable to be reached about the report, but City Manager Tony Sears said he didn’t trust the numbers, either.
“If Reuters or Gallup or somebody does a poll or a survey, I’d put more faith into it,” Sears said. “I don’t know who these people are — I’ve never heard of them.”
Dr. Daniel Sternberg, a data scientist at Lumosity who prepared the report, acknowledged there could be some bias in the results, but said it correlates well to data about the level of formal education among an area’s residents.
“The data is based on people around the country who heard about Lumosity, came to our website, and tried at least a few games,” Sternberg said. “So in that sense, it is indeed self-selected, and is not a random sample from each community — it’s a sample of the kind of people in that city who were interested in Lumosity.”
Mazingo said not being able to compare types of people from place to place is one of the problems.
“You have no idea if the population here who went to the site has anything in common with the population in another city that went to the site and took it,” Mazingo said. “It’s impossible to draw any significant scientific conclusions from it.”
While Sternberg said the vast majority of the top-ranked cities contained research universities, and the rankings included some data to stoke water-cooler debate. Of the top 10 cities, six are the location of Big Ten schools.
North Carolina cities that are home to colleges and universities didn’t fare much better, other than Boone, the home of Appalachian State University (23rd overall) and Burlington, the home of Elon University (52nd overall). The cities of Durham-Chapel Hill, home to Duke, UNC and N.C. Central, was combined in the report and finished No. 265. Winston-Salem, home to Wake Forest and Winston-Salem State University, was No. 432.
Greenville, home to ECU, was No. 329. Raleigh, whose population is made up of much more than just students from N.C. State, Shaw University, Meredith College, St. Augustine’s and Peace University was No. 310.
“Neuroscience research has found that those who are engaged in learning and cognitive stimulating activities throughout the lifetime build up a ‘cognitive reserve’ that helps maintain and improve cognitive performance,” Sternberg said.
To view an interactive map of the results, go to asset1.lumosity.com/smartest-cities-2013.
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 and Wes.Wolfe@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.
NC metro rankings
Lumosity ranked 478 metro areas across the nation from data it collected from 2.4 million users.
Below are the North Carolina metro areas that made the list and their overall rank in parentheses:
1. Boone (23)
2. Burlington (52)
3. Wilmington (231)
4. Morehead City (237)
5. Asheville (260)
6. Durham-Chapel Hill (265)
7. Goldsboro (298)
8. Raleigh (310)
9. Greenville (329)
10. New Bern (337)
11. Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia (342)
12. Greensboro-High Point (362)
13. Sanford (372)
14. Pinehurst-Southern Pines (379)
15. Shelby (410)
16. Fayetteville (422)
17. Jacksonville (426)
18. Forest City (429)
19. Dunn (430)
20. Winston-Salem (432)
21. Morganton (462)
22. Albemarle (464)
23. Wilson (469)
24. Kinston (476)
25. Lumberton (478)
To view an interactive map of the results, go to asset1.lumosity.com/smartest-cities-2013