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This past fall, the Playboy Advisor received a letter asking which U.S. city had the most single women. Using census data, the Advisor calculated that the best city overall is Hattiesburg, Mississippi; the best midsize metro area is Springfield, Massachusetts, and the best major city is New York, which, at last count, had 531,403 more single women than men. The Advisor's methods are admittedly unscientific, so the rankings can be taken as a guideline rather than a directive. No census data exists that separates the population of single women in any particular city by age group. So, using data provided by the research firm Claritas, the Advisor ranked each of the country's 318 metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) by its percentage of excess single women of all ages -- that is, he compared the number of single women to the number of single men and determined what percentage of the single females would still be available if everyone paired up. Next, he weighted the results by ranking each MSA by its number of excess women, single or married, aged 18-40. He further weighted the rankings by the percentage of each MSA's total population made up of women aged 18-40 (this last calculation had not been used in the rankings prepared for the Advisor's response in the magazine, so the top cities listed there differ somewhat). Finally, he added the three rankings together. Thus, an MSA that ranked second in the first list, 15th in the second list and 10th in the third list ranked 27th overall. |