What Are America's Smartest Cities?

Richard Florida examines a new type of metric that ranks cities according to their residents' cognitive performances. Lumos Labs analyzed the results of more than one million users who played cognitive training games using the company's Lumosity Software that focuses on improving memory, attention, problem solving, speed, and flexibility. This method, which is a departure from standard evaluations comparing education levels, is potentially a "more direct way" to evaluate "brain performance."

Rounding out the top five are:

1. Charlottesville, Virginia
2. Lafayette, Indiana
3. Anchorage Alaska
4. Madison, Wisconsin
5. San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose

"The result is not driven principally by college students, according to Daniel Sternberg, the Lumosity data scientist who developed the metro brain performance measure. 'Since our analysis controlled for age, the reason they score well is not simply that they have a lot of young people,' said Sternberg. 'Instead, our analysis seems to show that users living in university communities tend to perform better than users of the same age in other locations.'"

Thanks to Akemi Leung