Number five most livable city!

[RecycleMichael]

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/01/cities-city-ten-lifestyle-real-estate-livable-cities.html

Fifth most livable city in America...not bad.

[cannon_fodder]

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/01/cities-city-ten-lifestyle-real-estate-livable-cities_slide_12.html?thisSpeed=15000 

1. Portland, ME (not OR)

2. Bethesda, Md

3. Des Moines, Ia.

4.Stamford, Conn

5. Tulsa, Okla.

    Metro Area: Tulsa
    Metro Population: 910,000
    Income Growth: 4.9% (No. 50 of 379)
    Cost of Living Index: 90.6 (No. 171 of 379)
    Culture Index: 72 (No. 105 of 379)
    Crime per 100,000: 4,462 (No. 250 of 379)
    Unemployment: 5.6% (No. 21 of 379)

6. Oklahoma City

. . .

Behind the Numbers
To form our list, we looked at quality of life measures in the nation's largest continental U.S. metropolitan statistical areas--geographic entities defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for use by federal agencies in collecting, tabulating and publishing federal statistics. We eliminated areas with populations smaller than 500,000 and assigned points to the remaining metro regions across five data sets: Five-year income growth per household and cost of living from Moody's Economy.com, crime data and leisure index from Sperling's Best Places, and annual unemployment statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[Oil Capital]

Cool for Tulsa.  Better to be ranked higher than lower, even in bogus reports. 

Man, those Forbes rankings are bogus.  (For  example, Bethesda Md, Peabody, Mass, and Cambridge, Mass are not even metro areas; and thus should not even be candidates for ranking.  And how they massage the numbers to get these rankings is anyone's guess.)

[cannon_fodder]

Oil Capital: 

They used a specific source for metro areas and have used it consistently:
http://www.census.gov/population/www/metroareas/lists/2007/List1.txt

They explain how they messaged the numbers and it is listed above.

If you are arguing that they made up areas and then created BS data to support their prearranged rankings, I'm still a fan.  It means someone at Forbes subjectively decided both major metro areas in Oklahoma should be in the top 10 and then setup the data to make that happen.  If people from the East Coast in the national media are stacking the deck to make Tulsa look good - I'm ok with it.

[Oil Capital]

Ummm, did you look at your "source" material?  It proves my point that Bethesda etc. are not metropolitan areas.  They are merely metropolitan divisions of their metropolitan areas.  They might be using that source consistently, but they are using it, or at least describing their use of it, incorrectly.

Maybe I'm missing something, but all I could find to "explain" how they massaged the numbers was a listing of where they got their five data sets.  I could find nothing on how they weighted the items.  And the quoted rankings within the factors are... confusing.  For example, for the top 5 cities, the unemployment rates are:

Portland:  5.9%
Bethesda:  4.2%
Des Moines:  5.0%
Stamford:  6.5%
Tulsa:      5.6%

But in the parenthetical rankings for the unemployment factor, where one would expect them to be ranked in the following relative order,

Bethesda  (4.2%)
Des Moines  (5.0%)
Tulsa        (5.6%)
Portland    (5.9%)
Stamford   (6.5%)

Instead they hold the following rankings:

Tulsa  (#21)
Portland  (#29)
Des Moines (#48)
Bethesda  (#66)
Stamford (#115)

With regard to your last paragraph, no conspiracy theories here.  I just think it's sloppy and, while entertaining, essentially worthless.

Oil Capital: 

They used a specific source for metro areas and have used it consistently:
http://www.census.gov/population/www/metroareas/lists/2007/List1.txt

They explain how they messaged the numbers and it is listed above.

If you are arguing that they made up areas and then created BS data to support their prearranged rankings, I'm still a fan.  It means someone at Forbes subjectively decided both major metro areas in Oklahoma should be in the top 10 and then setup the data to make that happen.  If people from the East Coast in the national media are stacking the deck to make Tulsa look good - I'm ok with it.

[Conan71]

Never fails, even when the news is good, the smile on Tulsa patrol shows up.

[Oil Capital]

Never fails, even when the news is good, the smile on Tulsa patrol shows up.

not at all.  It's great for Tulsa to be listed as #5.  We should accept the praise, but recognize it for what it is and not take it too seriously.   These things are entertaining, but are generally designed more to sell magazines than to produce anything to be taken very seriously.

[RecycleMichael]

Negative karma for Oil Capital.

You probably complain about the calories in Halloween candy.

[Johnboy976]

Believe me, news like this actually helps someone who is trying to convince their wife that Tulsa is a better place to live than Cincinnati. Even her parents think I'm nuts.