Most Logical Countries in the World

For your amusement: a list of all countries with at least 5 members of the Association for Symbolic Logic, rank-ordered by number of logicians per 10,000,000 inhabitants. Bonus info: percentage of women logicians in these countries.

Country # ASL members % Women per 10,000,000
New Zealand 17 0% 39.5
Switzerland 25 4% 32.5
Israel 22 18% 29.7
Norway 13 0% 27.1
USA 806 12% 26.3
Netherlands 43 21% 26.1
Canada 85 11% 25.2
Belgium 23 4% 21.5
Finland 10 10% 18.9
United Kingdom 100 10% 16.4
Denmark 9 0% 16.4
Sweden 15 20% 16.3
Singapore 7 17% 14.6
Greece 16 25% 14.3
Austria 11 9% 13.3
Croatia 5 0% 11.4
Germany 87 8% 10.6
Portugal 9 33% 8.5
Australia 17 6% 7.8
Spain 35 11% 7.6
Italy 42 24% 7.0
France 40 11% 6.2
Japan 63 12% 5.0
Czech Republic 5 0% 4.8
Poland 12 8% 3.1
Brazil 40 13% 2.1
Colombia 8 25% 1.8
Argentina 6 33% 1.5
South Africa 6 0% 1.2
Iran 5 0% 0.7
Russia 8 25% 0.6
Mexico 5 20% 0.5
China 14 0.1
India 8 20% 0.1

11 thoughts on “Most Logical Countries in the World

  1. I bet if you did the same for cities, Amsterdam would come up on top. You can’t really spit in Amsterdam without hitting a logician.

  2. Nah, Berkeley would come out on top. 23 logicians for 100,000 people; A’dam has 30 logicians but over 10 times as many people.

  3. Those numbers give Amsterdam 405 logicians per 10,000,000 while Berkeley has 2190. So Berkeley is nearly 100 times as logical as New Zealand. (I doubt the numbers would come out quite so good if you included San Francisco and Oakland though – or the rest of the towns where the Berkeley logicians actually live.)To beat Berkeley you need some town with more than one logician per 5,000 residents – if, say, Benacerraf and Burgess and one other person at Princeton are in the ASL then Princeton would win, I think.

  4. Of course, the data are interesting and informative, but one mustn’t forget that quite a few people who could qualify as ‘logicians’ (perhaps broadly construed) are not members of the ASL. I, for one, have been a member of the ASL at some point, but I canceled my subscription when I moved back to the Netherlands from the USA. As for the data on gender balance (thanks for that, Richard!): it confirmed an impression I had, namely that, generally, there seem to be more women logicians (proportionally) in ‘Latin’ countries. Italy is a particularly good example. What could be reasons for this phenomenon? I suspect that in roughly ‘matriarchal’ societies, where women are encouraged to be ‘strong’, there is less of a pressure to comply with the role model that ‘logic is for boys’. This being said, my native Brazil is not doing so well in terms of gender balance…

  5. Princeton wins if you take the population of only Princeton Borough, but not if you take Princeton Township.

  6. don’t be contemplated in self created well!!if you want to see the real picture go deep into the sea, only then u can appreciate the beauty of infinity!!india is the place of original philosophers, those mystical saints are not bothered wot funny list people are making on internet

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