There are many ways to estimate how similar two cities are — weather, demographics, taxes, etc. Jed Kolko from job site Indeed and Josh Katz for The Upshot used the distribution of job offerings. Just enter your city or a nearby metro, and you get something like this:

I punched in cities I’ve lived in or visited, and the results looked pretty good.
The analysis is based on job postings on Indeed, but I wonder if this would work with Census data. And can we apply this similarity index or some form of it to, say, individuals? Just think of the possibilities, Match.com.
Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics (2nd Edition)
