Doug -I asked the same question about the criteria. Someone from MoneySense replied, stating that "Each category has a different weighting. Unemployment is worth 10, population is 10, transit is 5, universities, colleges and hospitals are 1, etc. So if a city ranks # 5 in transit, it gets less points than ranking 5 in population"

To contend that a city with a large population is 10 times more desirable than one with good health care or a low crime rate, does not make sense –MoneySense or common sense.

I live in Vancouver, and do not think the fact that it is a big city should be worth anything. I believe that it is the lifestyle characteristics that should be judged. Bigness can be both desirable and undesirable, and definitely should not be considered to be tied as the most important evaluation criteria.

Thank you for explaining the scoring methodology. What is the basis of the chosen methodology? It does not seem logically or conceptually sound, nor do the priorities seem to match the needs of our current and aging demographic.

For example, to have a debateable item like population to be worth 10 times as much as hospital, seems problematic. I would contend that some people like small towns, and some people like big cities, but all people want good health care and a low crime rate.

You may want to reassess your methodology, and re-run the analysis.

This was an interesting article, both for the subject matter, and being another example that “if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything”.

It would have been nice if the methodology of the ranking conversion were defined. I downloaded the dataset, and the top ten rankings based on the data are different than the article. Perhaps the writer should have paid a bit more attention in stats class.

Top 10 -by weighted average rank of the 24 individual items is:
Burlington
Repentigny
Ottawa-Gatineau
Kingston
Newmarket
Oakville
Levis
Calgary
Mississauga
Laval

while the top 10 by weighted average rank of the 4 categories is:
Repentigny
Fredericton
Thunder Bay
Brandon
Windsor
Burlington
Moncton
Winnipeg
Kingston
Clarington