Finally! An OBJECTIVE ranking of the "smartest" colleges

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:37, I don't think you get what Lumosity is.

It's not really a game site. It's a "brain training" site with games designed to improve memory, cognition, etc. Assumptions that might apply to actual video games (more males than females, more STEM than humanities) don't necessarily apply to Lumosity.

I think 08:36 summed up the problems with this the best, and I personally think this has about as much credence as an IQ test.

Why would college students even be playing these games? 70 year-olds who are worried about dementia, I can understand. I would be interested in a break down by age group of who visits the site.

College students play electronic games all the time. Even in class.

[Anonymous]

This list may be "objective"?? but it is also clearly not very useful. Note that the rankings essentially completely reshuffle every year.

One school goes from 39->3, 36->11, 3->12, 49->15, 56->2, etc. I didn't calculate, but the average change seems to be by 10 places or so on the list.

I don't believe that the student body in these places changes that much from year to year, since in reality, only 25% of it should, and if you include alumni, things should change less than that.

So this list is just statistical noise and garbage. How amazing people love ranks.

My own school is ranked very highly here, I have no dog in this fight, although I did not go to it for the rankings (of any kind, except in my own major).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:37, I don't think you get what Lumosity is.

It's not really a game site. It's a "brain training" site with games designed to improve memory, cognition, etc. Assumptions that might apply to actual video games (more males than females, more STEM than humanities) don't necessarily apply to Lumosity.

I think 08:36 summed up the problems with this the best, and I personally think this has about as much credence as an IQ test.

Why would college students even be playing these games? 70 year-olds who are worried about dementia, I can understand. I would be interested in a break down by age group of who visits the site.

College students play electronic games all the time. Even in class.

College students play plenty of iPhone games, but not Luminosity. I know, I have a college student. Teenagers who have just been through SATs have no interest in further "brain building." The "brain building" market is the AARP crowd, which is worried about losing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:37, I don't think you get what Lumosity is.

It's not really a game site. It's a "brain training" site with games designed to improve memory, cognition, etc. Assumptions that might apply to actual video games (more males than females, more STEM than humanities) don't necessarily apply to Lumosity.

I think 08:36 summed up the problems with this the best, and I personally think this has about as much credence as an IQ test.

Why would college students even be playing these games? 70 year-olds who are worried about dementia, I can understand. I would be interested in a break down by age group of who visits the site.

College students play electronic games all the time. Even in class.

College students play plenty of iPhone games, but not Luminosity. I know, I have a college student. Teenagers who have just been through SATs have no interest in further "brain building." The "brain building" market is the AARP crowd, which is worried about losing it.

You realize that your sample size is "one" - not much of a basis to speak on behalf of all college students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a ranking of people who play this company's on-line games. You might ask yourself why college students would have the time or interest in playing these games and how that would affect the rankings.

Yet the results are highly correlated each school's SAT averages. Sorry your alma mater fared poorly.

My alma mater is Princeton. I didn't check to see how it fared because I don't care.

There are all sorts of reasons to wonder if these are skewed. Wouldn't more males than females play on-line games? Wouldn't more STEM students than humanities students?

But hey if you want your child to select a school based on this silliness (I think all rankings are silly, but this one takes the cake) go at it.

So you didn't read the article, didn't review the research, and don't know what Luminosity is, yet still feel qualified to criticize the findings? Wow. That's regressing critical thinking to a new level.

I find the whole project rather ingenious and the results interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:37, I don't think you get what Lumosity is.

It's not really a game site. It's a "brain training" site with games designed to improve memory, cognition, etc. Assumptions that might apply to actual video games (more males than females, more STEM than humanities) don't necessarily apply to Lumosity.

I think 08:36 summed up the problems with this the best, and I personally think this has about as much credence as an IQ test.

Why would college students even be playing these games? 70 year-olds who are worried about dementia, I can understand. I would be interested in a break down by age group of who visits the site.

College students play electronic games all the time. Even in class.

College students play plenty of iPhone games, but not Luminosity. I know, I have a college student. Teenagers who have just been through SATs have no interest in further "brain building." The "brain building" market is the AARP crowd, which is worried about losing it.

You realize that your sample size is "one" - not much of a basis to speak on behalf of all college students.

Except... I work for AARP and happen to know a little bit about this market. (You didn't see that one coming, did you? ). And your sample size is zero, so there's that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This list may be "objective"?? but it is also clearly not very useful. Note that the rankings essentially completely reshuffle every year.

One school goes from 39->3, 36->11, 3->12, 49->15, 56->2, etc. I didn't calculate, but the average change seems to be by 10 places or so on the list.

I don't believe that the student body in these places changes that much from year to year, since in reality, only 25% of it should, and if you include alumni, things should change less than that.

So this list is just statistical noise and garbage. How amazing people love ranks.

My own school is ranked very highly here, I have no dog in this fight, although I did not go to it for the rankings (of any kind, except in my own major).

I noticed that, too. That's a huge clue to tiny sample sizes in the Luminosity data. Or, there is something else going on, like they marketed to one college's alums one year and to another college's alums another year. Actually you say, that much statistical noise = garbage.