MICHAEL SWAN: DAILY BEAST RANKS US SEVENTH >>>

Are you smarter than a New Yorker? According to The Daily Beast, you are if you’re a Tacoman.

The online news aggregator's study ranked 55 metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people by criteria such as how many residents had bachelor’s and graduate degrees and the number of higher education institutions. Other criteria included the sales of nonfiction books and the percentage of eligible people to vote in the last presidential election.

Seattle/Tacoma ranked as the seventh smartest American city with an IQ score of 151 (tied with Washington, D.C.), while Raleigh-Durham, N.C., was at the top of the list with the highest score of 170. However, the Daily Beast’s reasoning centers on Seattle:

#7 (tie), SEATTLE-TACOMA
Metro Area Population: 3,344,813
Daily Beast IQ Score: 151

Gray skies and wet weather tend to lead to indoor pursuits: While the Seattle area has relatively few educational institutions, this city devours nonfiction at a rate  near the very top nationally. “It’s dark a lot of the time out of the year here, it’s rainy a lot of the time out of the year here, so book reading is taken pretty seriously,” says Alex Fryer, a spokesman for Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.

The dumbest city? Fresno, Calif., with an IQ score of 3. Ah-ha.