Forbes recently ran an article where they ranked the 25 smartest countries in the world. By looking at data such as the number of Nobel Prizes each nation has won to represent historic intelligence, ranking countries’ current average IQ and then looking at their education attainment to represent the potential future intelligence, the study’s authors developed a metric to rank each nation.

Interestingly while Canada, which has about 10% of the population of the US but affordable post-secondary education ranked 9th, the much larger US with far more expensive education came in 4th. This leads one to conclude that there may be a correlation between a smart populace and their affordable access to education.

In Asia Japan, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore all rated. These are countries where education is traditionally encouraged.

Top 25 Smartest Countries