Are South Dakotans Dumber Than Minnesotans? New Survey Tells Us.
If you live in South Dakota do you feel dumber than our neighbors to the east? According to a new survey Minnesotans are smarter than South Dakotans. But it turns out everyone is smarter than Hawaiians.
The Washington Post did some ciphering and came up with a list of the smartest states in the United States.
Here are the Top-11 Smartest States:
- Massachusetts
- Minnesota
- New Hampshire
- Connecticut
- Wisconsin
- Kansas
- Vermont
- Iowa
- New Jersey
- Colorado
- South Dakota
Here are the Dumbest States:
50. Hawaii
49. Nevada
48. Mississippi
47. Alabama
46. Florida
In order to figure out how smart each state was, they looked at objective measures they had at their disposal. Specifically:
- IQ, as estimated by Virginia Commonwealth's Michael McDaniel in 2006
- 2015 SAT scores, compiled by The Post
- 2015 ACT scores, via the company that administers the tests
- The percentage of college graduates in the state, compiled by the Census Bureau
To create an intelligence score, they determined the percentage-point difference between a state's score and the national median score. Then, since IQ seemed to be the most on-the-nose metric, they doubled that value and then added it all up.