The best and worst things about Minnesota [GRAPHIC]

Something seems fishy about all these lists.

​It seems like there's another "city superlative list" every week (the latest making the odd claim that we're the "13th most lesbianish"), so we decided to try to put them all together into one comparative infographic.

These studies are popular with readers, hence their proliferation. Many of them were one-time studies. Some corroborate each other, as with Forbes' assertion that we are the most relaxed metropolitan area, while Portfolio.com asserts that the Twin Cities are the 3rd least stressful.

This graphic arranges our local ratings by organizing them into "bad" and "good" categories, and showing the categories in which we rank highest (or just so-so). Long yellow and short red bars are good things. Being 2nd among 50 states is different than being 2nd of 100 cities, so the rankings were compared using a percentile number instead of the numeric rank.

Most of these studies were conducted since 2006, and some statistics were added based upon census data. 

Click to enlarge

It's good to be these:

MN, Best State to Grow Old (AARP) • 1st

TC, Best for volunteerism (Corporation for National and Community Service) • 1st

MPLS, Best bike city (Bicycling Magazine) • 1st

MN, Best for hipsters (BuzzFeed) • 1st

MN, Highest voter turnout, tied (US Elections Project) • 1st

MPLS, Gayest city in America (The Advocate) • 1st

MPLS, Best city for finding employment (Forbes) • 1st

MPLS, Most fit city (Map My Fitness) • 1st

TC, Most relaxed (Forbes) • 1st

MPLS, Most literate city (Connecticut State University) • 3rd

TC, Safest for pedestrians (Transportation for America)• 4th

MPLS, Safest city for children (Underwriters Laboratories) • 4th

MPLS, Best city for recent college grads (Apartments.com and CareerRookie.com) • 5th

TC, Most romantic city (Alice.com) • 15th

MN, Best state in America (Gawker) • 6th

MPLS, Best city for men (Men's Health) • 13th

MPLS, Most college degrees (US Census) • 7th

Circle Pines, 3rd most perfect suburb (CNBC) • 3rd

MN, Best state for business (Forbes) • 15th

MPLS, Best City (Scientific American) • 6th

MPLS, Best job market (Monster) • 6th

MPLS, Best city for trick-or-treating (Zillow) • 11th

Things that are bad to be (but in some cases, we're not so bad):

MPLS, Hardest city to hack (AVG Technologies) • 1st

MPLS, Least stressful big city in America (Portfolio) • 48th

STP Least sad city in America (Men's Health) • 8th, Minneapolis 14th

MN, Obesity Rate, leanest (Gallup) • 41st

TC, Most insecure (LivingSocial) • 5th

Some fun sites that graph national statistics:

Statemaster.com: Charts all sorts of data across states.

U.S. Census Bureau

StateHealthFacts.org

USA Life Expectancy: Sexy animated graphs