NeW! 'Stupid Measures' session: the Trick-or-Treat Index

(picture by Melissa M'Lou)

Ok. I'm now officialy creating a new session here at Urban Demographics Blog. It's called Stupid Measures*. The idea is to highlight measures and indexes constructed in a stupid way or that are simply worthless.

This is the case of the Trick-or-Treat Index developed by the controversial Richard Florida. This is the index well explained by Lauren Kelley:

"The index is based on five criteria: the percentage of children ages 5 to 14, for obvious reasons; median household income, because more money = more candy; the share of people who walk to work, because it’s easier to trick-or-treat in neighborhoods that are walkable; population density, which tells you where there are the most people around to fork over candy corn; and the prevalence of artists, designers and other cultural creatives, since those types tend to get more into the Halloween spirit"

Interesting, right? But still (stupid) worthless.... More about the the Trick-or-Treat Index here. This map below shows the Trick-or-Treat Index calculated for every major U.S. metro area.

*The Stupid Measures session was unofficially inaugurated with the iPod Index on 18th August, 2010.

(hat tip to Tyler Cowen)