California Institute of Technology PhD student Virgil Griffith thinks you might be dumb. More specifically, a study that Griffith has published on his website states that fans of Justin Timberlake, Jay-Z, and Destiny's Child are a little dimmer than say, fans of classical music.
Griffith, who, in this recent New York Times profile, comes off as smugly as you imagine, gathered his impressively reductive data via social networking sites like Facebook. First, via network statistics, he gathered the top 10 artists preferred by college students with the idea that "these 'favorite musics' are perhaps indicative of the overall intellectual milieu of that college." He then gathered the average SAT scores from those institutions, and voila! You're stupid.
So what do smartypantses listen to, according to Griffith? Artists in the top 10 were Beethoven, Sufjan Stevens, Radiohead, Counting Crows, and Bob Dylan. Yep, Counting Crows.
Coming in at the bottom were Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Carrie Underwood, and Dashboard Confessional. In dead last was Lil' Wayne.
Facebook has apparently disabled network statistics since the study was done.
--Elizabeth Thompson
http://www.hollywoodlife.net/Article..._Might_Be_Dumb
