Comments on: Music That Makes You Dumb

By: Science Etcetera, Venusday 20090417 | ideonexus.com

Science Etcetera, Venusday 20090417 | ideonexus.com — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:01:39 +0000

[...] Graphic: SAT Scores and Music preferences. I love where Gospel falls on the [...]

By: Brush away the cobwebs from your daydreams » Blog Archive » My del.icio.us bookmarks for April 3rd through April 10th

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:14:32 +0000

[...] Music That Makes You Dumbtags: music [...]

By: Julian

Julian — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:33:31 +0000

Oh, dumb people listen to (predominantly) black artists and smart people listen to (predominantly) white artists. Well, I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with that

By: Zach Wise » Daily Digest for 2009-04-11

Zach Wise » Daily Digest for 2009-04-11 — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:11:35 +0000

[...] a link on Delicious. Music That Makes You Dumb | FlowingData Subscribe to comments Comment | Trackback | Post [...]

By: Do You Suffer From Low Intelligence? | learningIT

Do You Suffer From Low Intelligence? | learningIT — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 01:05:02 +0000

[...] Hey, don’t get angry at me! This is according to SAT scores. Have a look at how your favourite musical artists could get you labeled and stereotyped here. [...]

By: Garbage in, garbage ou…uh, actually, I guess in this case garbage stays. – Skirl | Dan Dickinson

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:50:56 +0000

[...] maybe try showing this graphically. FlowingData recently posted a chart titled “Music that makes you dumb” courtesy of a CalTech grad [...]

By: hello

hello — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:42:30 +0000

This is the stupidest ******* thing I’ve ever seen. So Jazz fans are “dumb”? In what universe? And apparantly you’re “smart” if you listen to pretentious music that appeals to peaky college students in fake glasses and skinny jeans.

By: Allison

Allison — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:19:21 +0000

scored a 1440 but apparently should have gotten a 1072 with my love of ben folds, kelly clarkson, pop, oldies, norah jones, maroon 5, jack johnson, green day, switchfoot, third eye blind and carrie underwood

interesting to see which artists have the widest range

By: Pam

Pam — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:43:35 +0000

It’s an interesting graphic but really begs a few questions (many already raised by others). I wondered where all the other classical composers, artists are… and then there’s the matter of not only what someone listens to… but how much? I would think a *smart* person would probably have a wider range of musical experience than a *dumber* person…. would be exposed to more and would probably like a variety of musical styles… I don’t think this chart accounts for that variable (one of it’s many failings). I’d be curious if those ranked could only list one musician/style or every one they listen to and if those were ranked from most listened to – to least.

By: Evan

Evan — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:40:06 +0000

Aside from the obvious problems with his methodology (he’s just correlating average college SAT scores with popularity among students at that college), it’s also a really misleading graphic. The vertical axis means nothing, and the width of the blobs is determined by the standard deviation of that particular musician/genre — which means the more people like that band/genre, the thinner the band you see. So if Country music is most popular at all sorts of colleges, it’ll just show up at a tiny blip in the middle; Beethoven, who is rarely listed, shows up as a big swath (presumably because only Harvard and Princeton students are pretentious enough to list him on Facebook — obviously, real smart people would list Bach instead).