Beyonce Fans Stupider Than Pearl Jam Fans -- Study

Courtesy of Ben Greenman at the New Yorker, the Greatest Study Ever!! 113 musical artists ranked according to the intelligence of their fans. A CalTech Ph.D. student named Virgil Griffith prepared the survey, and he explains how he arrived at the rankings:

1. Get a friend of yours to download, using Facebook, the ten most frequent "favorite music" at every college via that college's Network Statistics page on Facebook (manually -- as not to violate Facebook's ToS). These ten "favorite musics" are perhaps indicative of the overall intellectual milieu of that college.

2. Download the average SAT/ACT score (from CollegeBoard) for students attending every college.

3. Presto! We have a correlation between musical tastes and dumbitude (smartitude too)!

Music <=> Colleges <=> Average SAT Scores

4. Plot the average SAT of each "favorite music", discarding those with too few samples to have a reliable average.

5. Post the results on your website, pondering what the Internet will think of it.

Unscientific? Almost certainly. Debate-provoking? Intensely. Some thoughts.

• Beethoven has far and away the smartest fans, but "classical music" buffs are among the dumbest, probably because those who are not discriminating enough to cite particular composers instead of saying "classical music" are probably not that bright.


• Norah Jones are way way smarter than "jazz" fans. Profoundly disturbing, though see above for possible explanation; also could be that the Kenny G. enthusiasts pull down the score.


• Beatles fans are smarter than those of Coldplay, but not by much, and Radiohead fans are more intelligent than those two others. Seems about right. Not so much the Foo Fighters being considerably outranked by the Dave Matthews Band.


• I'm surprised that Cake is only in the middle of the list, they have had this slightly nerdy, too hip for school cachet (though less so than TMBG, which is not among the ranked). Jack Johnson fans are supposedly smarter -- I guess the "sea breeze" does some good to the brain.


• I never thought I would ever say this, but Mr. Timberlake is a way more interesting artist than either Kelly Clarkson or Josh Groban, and at least somewhat more interesting than John Mayer. What gives?


• The hip-hop genre seems arranged just right, with Outkast and Kanye leading the pack, while Li'l Wayne dragging the rear.


• I have never heard of Sufjan Stevens, whose fans are the second smartest set. What I've checked out on YouTube is interesting enough.

The rankings are also arranged according to genre. Enjoy.