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We're a pretty literate city...
By david_yamada on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 4:00pm
...at least when we're not obsessing over tabloid murder dramas:
A university president has maintained on ongoing research project, attempting to rank America's Most Literate Cities:
This study attempts to capture one critical index of our nation’s social health—the literacy of its major cities (population of 250,000 and above). This study focuses on six key indicators of literacy: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources.
Boston currently ranks 8th. Some might quarrel that it's not higher, and the absence of cities such as NYC lead one to question the statistical measures used, but it's fun to peruse: http://www.ccsu.edu/amlc08/ [link corrected]
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Comments
Such rankings...
...are usually used to sell magazines.
If you're talking about the U.S. News rankings...
...of just about anything that moves (or doesn't), I'd agree.
But you're making a casually dismissive point that obviously doesn't apply here. Check out the website: This guy isn't hawking a magazine, and it's an interesting set of measures.
Broken Link?
n/t
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Link corrected...
...computer literate I'm not.
Thanks, David
It is interesting.
I see that Boston holds 8th rank in four categories, but doesn't appear in the top 10 in two others, yet earned 8th overall. I'll study the data further, but it seems slightly odd, statistically, that non-ranking in two categories wouldn't drop us below 8th.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Oh, My Mistake!
I was looking at the overall ranking column, and thinking it was the singular ranking for whatever specific category.
So much for my own literacy.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
usnews mag isn't the only one
But to look at this study... On the Web site, I see little rationale for the criteria used, no description of the presumed relative weighting used for ranking, nor even a explicit definition of "literate."
Ranking things sells magazines (and gets your work plugged by all the people who rank highly), but I don't see the public good when the ranking is so sloppy as to be useless or even counterproductive.
It may be that there is more substance to the work than they communicate on the Web site. But I really don't think serious researchers should toss out rankings in this manner.
Which, Of Course...
... are usually only sold to those who are literate :-)
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Duh
I'm sure we lost a lot of points because we have The Herald.
statistically ignorant study ranks boston 8th for literacy
Nice take at www.cwunbound.org/2009/04/statistically-ignorant-s...
good critique
A different survey might cluster natural metro areas instead of solely by city lines. E.g., Boston-Cambridge, Manhattan standing alone. But if you're going to do that, then does that mean San Francisco gets Berkeley, but also less-bookish Oakland? Which is why rankings are less "objective" than one might think...
Still, if I was picking a place to live, I'd give the survey a respectful look. Boston's relatively high ranking comes as no surprise to me. I've experienced the other end of the spectrum: Having grown up and gone to college in Northwest Indiana, the best bookstores around were the tiny mall-based Waldenbooks and B.Dalton's. A road trip to the Chicago bookstores in Hyde Park and downtown was quite a treat.
Man, do I sound like a geek or what???!!!