The View From Wisconsin

As an occasional browser of comic forums and such, I noticed a little thing from a website called Music That Makes You Dumb (http://musicthatmakesyoudumb.virgil.gr/music.php) about the correlation between average SAT scores of a college and the top 10 most popular musical artists or genres with people that attend that school.

The study is really unscientific, as the gentleman behind it admits that he just used data from Facebook for the music preferences, while he used the average SAT scores from College Boards, to create the info.

The top 10:

1. Beethoven (Average SAT score was far and away greater than anything else; standard error doesn't even touch the top end of the next closest entry)
   
2. Sufjan Stevens
3. Counting Crows
4. Guster
5. Radiohead
6. Ben Folds
7. U2
8. Bob Dylan
9. Norah Jones
10. The Shins

Interesting to note: the six bands right around the average SAT score in the US were Yellowcard, Jimmy Eat World, Linkin Park, David Crowder Band (a Christian group), Pearl Jam and Kutless (another Christian group). Down at the bottom of the heap was Lil' Wayne, the rather notorious rapper.

UW Madison's Top 10 (103 overall in SAT scores):

1. Jack Johnson
2. Coldplay
3. The Beatles
4. The Fray
5. Radiohead
6. Bob Dylan
7. Sublime
8. Red Hot Chili Peppers
9. U2
10. Green Day

(Someone at WIBA-FM will be memorizing that list, for certain.)

And as for my alma-mater (What? 704th in SAT scores? The outrage!):

1. Jack Johnson
2. Country (entire genre)
3. Green Day
4. Incubus
5. Sublime
6. Rap (entire genre)
7. Rascal Flatts
8. Tom Petty
9. Coldplay
10. Fall Out Boy