A group of researchers from the University of Vermont have recently published a paper that ranks U.S. states and cities by their happiness. By the happiness of their tweets, to be exact.
Plos One took around 10,000 words and scored each one on a scale of 1 (sad) to 9 (happy), 'resulting in a measure of average happiness for each given word.'
The project then analyzed millions of tweets across the nation, revealing the 'happiest' five states, in order, as Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Utah and Vermont.
Researchers found the 'saddest' five states to be Louisiana, Mississippi, Maryland, Delaware and Georgia. This word study correlated with more traditional wellbeing measures.
Red and blue: The Twitter-based project found the 'happiest' five states as (red) Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Utah and Vermont and the 'saddest' states to be (blue) Louisiana, Mississippi, Maryland, Delaware and Georgia
Reasons to be cheerful: The happiest cities were mostly in California and Colorado
In terms of cities, the chirpiest places by tweet were concentrated in California and Colorado, while the gloomiest were found to be in Louisiana.
The study found Napa, California, as the happiest city in the US with a score of 6.26, and Beaumont, Texas, as the saddest city with a score of 5.83.
The body of 10,000 words collected for the study came equally from four different text sources: Google Books (English), music lyrics, the New York Times and Twitter.
Then each word was rated on the happiness scale. As the report states: ''Rainbow' is one of the happiest words in the list with a score of 8.1, while 'earthquake' is one of the saddest, with 1.9.
'Neutral words like 'the' or 'thereof' tend to score in the middle of the scale, with 4.98 and 5 respectively.'
Sadness: Jenny Hynum of Vicksburg, Mississippi, continues to live in a flooded house in near the Mississippi River. The family brings pet dog Bo to nearby dry land via boat around four times per day for walks.
Tweet the mood: The report said of this map 'We can clearly discern cities and the roads between them at this scale, and substantial variation in happiness across geographical regions'
In the map above, the researchers produced a 'tweet-generated happiness map of the entire contiguous United States.'
The report states: 'We can clearly discern cities and the roads between them at this scale, and substantial variation in happiness across geographical regions.
'There is already an indication that some cities will be significantly less happy than others, particularly those in the southeastern United States
'At a finer scale we can see that some coastal areas, particularly around the Florida peninsula and along the coast of North and South Carolina, are significantly happier than the regions immediately inland of them.'
Chin-up: The saddest places by tweet were found in Texas, Louisiana and the Southern states
Tropical paradise: Surfers carrying boards on Maui beach, Hawaii, in December
When compared to more established methods of measuring wellbeing like health, obesity and poverty the results of this study correlated closely.
For example, the lowered life expectancy in the poorer Southern states matches up with the findings of this Twitter word happiness project.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2384982/Twitter-updates-used-rank-happiest-saddest-US-states.html#ixzz2b8awfx9h
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