August 30, 2006
The Dumbest? The Poorest? The Fattest?
Everyone loves rankings, and yesterday we learned which states were the fattest, dumbest and poorest. So we crunched the numbers, and put together this chart that lists each state's ranks in mean SAT score, obesity rate, and poverty rate. Please note that with each rating, the lower means more obese, less smart, or more poor.
(An editorial note: we're not actually calling anyone anywhere dumb or fat; we are aware of the objections to the SAT and of the scientific debates about obesity. That said, it's August. Lighten up a little.)
SAT Obesity Poverty Average
Alabama 37 2 8 15.67
Alaska 19 15 34 22.67
Arizona 26 43 16 28.33
Arkansas 39 7 7 17.67
California 17 30 21 22.67
Colorado 35 51 36 40.67
Connecticut 21 46 49 38.67
Delaware 7 29 3 13.00
DC 1 39 40 26.67
Florida 4 35 25 21.33
Georgia 6 12 14 10.67
Hawaii 2 50 45 32.33
Idaho 30 31 18 26.33
Illinois 49 23 29 33.67
Indiana 12 8 28 16.00
Iowa 50 21 38 36.33
Kansas 44 26 32 34.00
Kentucky 36 5 9 16.67
Louisiana 40 4 2 15.33
Maine 13 34 26 24.33
Maryland 16 24 50 30.00
Massachusetts 23 49 41 37.67
Michigan 38 11 23 24.00
Minnesota 46 27 47 40.00
Mississippi 33 1 1 11.67
Missouri 45 14 22 27.00
Montana 29 45 15 29.67
Nebraska 43 20 39 34.00
Nevada 10 42 37 29.67
New Hampshire 24 36 51 37.00
New Jersey 15 40 48 34.33
New Mexico 32 40 4 25.33
New York 9 36 19 21.33
North Carolina 14 17 13 14.67
North Dakota 51 18 35 34.67
Ohio 28 15 24 22.33
Oklahoma 41 13 10 21.33
Oregon 25 33 17 25.00
Pennsylvania 5 19 30 18.00
Rhode Island 11 47 27 28.33
South Carolina 3 8 11 7.33
South Dakota 48 22 20 30.00
Tennessee 42 6 12 20.00
Texas 8 10 6 8.00
Utah 34 43 42 39.67
Vermont 20 47 33 33.33
Virginia 18 25 44 29.00
Washington 27 31 31 29.67
West Virginia 22 3 5 10.00
Wisconsin 47 28 43 39.33
Wyoming 31 36 46 37.67
Best Worst CO 40.67 SC 7.33 MN 40.00 TX 8.00 UT 39.67 WV 10.00 WI 39.33 GA 10.67 CT 38.67 MS 11.67
- SC has the worst average ranking of SAT score, obesity rate and poverty rate (7.3). CO has the best (40.7).
- NH and IA are 8th and 9th best, respectively, when you average the three rankings (37.0 and 36.33).
- Attention Joe Biden: DE is the blue state with the lowest average ranking (13), and the only one in the bottom 10. We guess DE does have more in common with southern states, afterall.
- TX is the only state to be in the bottom 10 for each category.
- MS comes in at number one in obesity and poverty
Posted at 12:17 PM
Comments
Your averaging is off. You should invert the SAT ranking number and then average that with the other two. Otherwise, you are rewarding states for low SAT rankings (high ranking numbers are bad) while punishing them for obesity and poverty (low ranking numbers are bad). Your method counts low SAT rankings as good.
Riley, Not O'Reilly | 08.30.06 02:16 PM
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By 2000 election standards (quick Wiki calculation):
For SAT scores,
Red State avg. = 28.4
Blue state avg. = 22.5
Andrew | 08.30.06 05:49 PM
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I knew my beloved Texas wouldn't be far behind - we rarely are.
KentF | 08.31.06 09:11 AM
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I would make an additional comment to the standardized test score ranking inversion mentioned above. I think you have to come up with some standardized measure for standardized tests (perhaps average percentiles) for states. Using either SAT or ACT alone is not a fair procedure because the overwhelming majority of students in some states take the SAT while the overwhelming majority of students in other states take the ACT. For example, in a state where the substantial majority of students take the ACT, there would be a self-selection bias of using the SAT as a measure because more elite students (those wishing to attend prestigious colleges in the East or West coasts) would be a heavy proportion of the minority of students taking the SAT.
paul | 08.30.07 12:40 AM
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You're not calling anyone dumb, poor or fat, but you are judging a collective group of people by their states' respective SAT scores, obesity and poverty rates. What's the difference?
joe c | 09.10.07 04:03 PM
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I'm sure most people know the ranking isn't perfect ... but it is an indicator. Furthermore, as a nation we rank poorly as well, especially when considering our economy. So rather than nursing our feelings or blindly following the trend to be politically correct, we should be appalled at the realities of this humorous piece. We're a nation whose problem is that too many voluntarily choose to be fat or dumb (the ignorance about the food we eat is also an indicator of ignorance, especially in the Internet age, because it indicates the lack of knowledge and desire to learn). Besides, few in America could really pass a real test of worthwhile knowledge (like our leaders) ... one that includes far more of the hard sciences like math (and understanding math as a language), science, english, writing skills, the fundamentals of physics (as well as the fundamentals of electronics), chemistry, biology and cosmology, a knowledge of the chronology of archeology, world history, philosophy and of scientific discoveries, not to mention the fundamentals of information systems, economics finance, investments and a few other key subjects.
Instead we're a land where the focus of the parents and our schools is on the extracurricular activities ... activities that take away from the learning processes that count far more than winning a "school" game or playing in a band. It's not that the heads of our fellow Americans are empty. As Hoffer said, "An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head."
Humorous or not, the piece is obviously written by someone who knows these things ... and who cares.
DS
Dan | 05.11.08 11:05 PM
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