The article that I read summarized a research that
investigated the level of happiness in different states of America. Turns out,
Hawaiians are the happiest people in the United States. The results were based
on personal life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical
health, healthy behavior and basic access to necessary services. Hawaii came in
at 71.1% out of 100%. The next state on the list is Colorado, with on 69.7%.
The research also included what exactly made people happy. Most things, such as
income, vehicles, housing, etc… had to do with money. Sex was also at the top of
the list.
This article opened my eyes to the fact that in certain
states, such as West Virginia, many people suffer from the same problems.
Depression was most common in the lower-rated states. Not surprisingly, the
states with the lowest ratings had the highest suicide rates. New York took the
30th spot right under Pennsylvania and above New Jersey with 66.2%.
This study can help people decide where they want to move in the future and
also account for some occurrences that happened in those states. For example,
states with a higher happiness level have lower crime rates. This information
can help the government make better investments into public services such as
parks, hospitals, recreational events and even the police in that area.
Overall, I thought this was a decent article. I thought
the research was conducted and executed very well. However, I do believe that
the information is limited. I don’t think that many conclusions can be made
from such a new project (started in 2008).
posted for M. Izotov
3 comments:
Matt James
I thought Maxime did a pretty good job in his summary of this article about happiness per state. I really liked his use of the statistics from the article to give us a true feel of where each state stands. Another thing that I liked about max's review was his summary of how the author calculated personal happiness, as that is obviously a big factor in the standings of each state. Finally, I liked how he related the article to the real world as he showed how this data could be used to help government officials and future projects. There were a few things that I thought Max could have done better. I thought he could have gone into more depth about why he thought each state ranked where it did, for example the two highest being states with great natural beaty versus the big cities. I also think he could have given us a better picture of the data, and if it certain states lined up to be able to make generalizations about large portions of the country, either way there were a few questions left unanswered. After reading this I learned that Hawaii has the most happy people in the US.
I thought Max did a decent job reviewing this article. He did a nice job simplifying the information. He also did a nice job listing all the variables and factors involved in determining which State is happiest. There were lots of different factors that went into the study which makes it a little more legitimate. Finally Max did a nice job giving an overview about the states that were at the bottom of the list, so the review encompassed the whole spectrum of happy and sad states.
To improve his review, Max could have mentioned more scientific finding in the article. The article didn’t seem closely tied to science so he might have been better off choosing a different article. He could have also mentioned more about the health variables and environment since those are scientifically related.
One thing that I learned was Hawaii is the happiest state. This isn’t much of a surprise though.
I read Max’s article review of The Happiest US State is… and thought it was generally good. Max did a good job of briefly writing what the article was about and how the article measured the happiness of each state. I felt like he included a lot of information in a few sentences. I also thought he did a very good job of analyzing the impact of this article. I personally would not have thought of the implications he thought of: future living conditions. I also thought Max did a very good job in communicating the point of the article across to his readers. As I kept reading through the article, I found that there were clear links from one paragraph to the other, which makes the reader understand the information better.
I thought Max’s review had some flaws that could have easily been fixed, that would have made his review more comprehendible, and generally better. I think it is very important to include a bibliography. I feel that a link of the article does not suffice as a way of citing the article. This misses the author and the source where it was published, two very important pieces of information. I thought Max could have also made a clearer introduction that introduces the article, rather than just go into the meat of the information with no background to it.
I thought this article was very interesting. I thought it was clever in the way that it measured each state’s happiness. There are so many factors that can affect general happiness, but the authors of the article decided on a few key points, like health, personal life events. I would be very interested to learn the process of gathering this data, since it seems like a complicated endeavor.
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