In a highly scientific and not at all problematic study, a Cal Tech Ph.D. student named Virgil Griffith has mapped out what music smart and dumb people listen to. Griffith’s process involved getting data about the 10 most frequent artists that appeared in college students’ Facebook favorites, and mapping that against ACT and SAT scores for each college. According to his results, you might be stupid if you listen to Beyoncé (obviously incorrect) or Kenny Chesney (he probably has a point here), and you might be smart if you listen to Sufjan Stevens and really smart if you listen to Beethoven.


Griffith’s Ph.D. project is to make a machine that feels, so maybe he’ll create one that gets hurt feelings when its musical tastes and intelligence are insulted. You can see the whole graph on Griffith’s website, where he also describes his methods in more detail.


[via Reverb]

