Reason to celebrate

Which Country Has Won the Most Nobel Prizes? Check This Map

If you're really looking for a great example of how to skew data to "prove" how great the U.S. is, check out that map and the accompanying article.  Then come back here and read the rest of the story.

According to this article, the U.S. has received by far the most Nobel Prizes of any country, 344, compared to number two United Kingdom, with only 119.  The article actually makes the claim that this should make us feel pretty good about "the state of things" in the U.S.

Now, I'm not going to go through the entire list, but I just want to point out a few problems with this data.  The first problem I noticed was that the 2013 Nobel Prize for Chemistry was shared by three people, so it's listed as three separate awards.  Then, I noticed something else: none of the three people was born in the U.S.  A little more looking revealed that only one of the three was educated in the U.S.  I'm not exactly sure why this should make me feel good about being American.  There are many more examples of the same bias in the list.

The second thing I realized is that the sheer size of the U.S. population probably also affected the number of prizes being won by U.S. citizens.  On a per capita basis, the U.S. has won fewer Nobel Prizes compared to the U.K.: The U.S. has won 1.09 awards per million population, while the U.K. has won 1.86 per million population.  Notably, one of the previously mentioned award winners for the 2013 Prize in Chemistry was educated in the U.K., but happens to live in the U.S. now.

And of course there are more problems with the list.  For example, Albert Einstein won an award, but again, he wasn't born or educated in the U.S.

Well, it's Friday, so let's all just get drunk and celebrate being American.  We're still pretty okay and as near as we can figure there's nothing to worry about.  Forget all those silly ratings that say our education system is declining.  Forget the fact that we pay more for health care but have lower life expectancy.  At least there is one good thing in all of this: that the supposed best and brightest of the world, born and educated in other countries, still apparently think there is some good reason to move to the U.S., and if that's not something to celebrate, then I don't know what is.