Books That Make You Dumb
by Ryan Sproull
Get a friend of yours to download, using Facebook, the ten most popular books at every college (manually — as not to violate Facebook’s ToS). These ten books are indicative of the overall intellectual milieu of that college. Download the average SAT/ACT score for students attending every college. Presto! We have a correlation between books and dumbitude (smartitude too)!
Books <=> Colleges <=> Average SAT Scores
Plot the average SAT of each book, discarding books with too few samples to have a reliable average. Post the results on your website, pondering what the Internet will think of it.
Holy shit I own Catch22, Freakanomics and Atlas Shrugged!
I’m guessing books like “The Things they carried” score in the middle of the pack because they are pretty much universal to colleges in the states if you take literature?
The Holy Bible != The Bible, yet John Grisham is bundled together?
Lolita is erotica?
Cat’s Cradle is more popular than Slaughterhouse Five?
I was somewhat disappointed.