Smartest U.S. Cities: 8 Of Top 50 Are In Massachusetts

Eight of the top 50 “smartest” cities in the U.S. are in Massachusetts, according to a large scale study by Lumosity. But the smartest city in the U.S. is all the way across the country: Stanford, Calif., home of Stanford University.

This particular study did not rely on socioeconomic variables like income or education level to calculate the collective intelligence of different regions of the U.S., as some other “smartest” studies have done. Instead, Lumosity directly measured the cognitive performance of 3 million individuals from all over the country.

Not surprisingly, most of the cities that ranked in the top 50 are college towns, which means that those other, more-common methods of measuring collective intelligence -- like analyzing indicators such as overall level of education of the population -- are also quite effective.

Here are the top 50 cities plotted out on an interactive map. A darker color means that several plot points are overlapping, which indicates a higher concentration of “smartest” cities in that region. Click on any plot point to see the name of that city and its rank among the top 50.