as far as happiest state, it depends on what you mean by “happier.” utah actually has more occurrences of the highest happiness rating in this study and kentucky has the most.

utah is happier than idaho, from what i can tell (i THINK utah is a trapezoid tilted to the right from horizontal while idaho is a triangle with concave upper-left and upper-right sides and a convex bottom). the number of times a level of happiness occurs, by state, going from highest to lowest happiness levels, follows. two weighting regimens were also used, the first gives the highest rating an 8 and the lowest rating a 1 while the second goes from positive to negative 4.

using the first regimen, utah is happiest, with a score of 163, followed by kentucky (151), florida (149), and idaho (145). under the second regimen, utah and kentucky tie (with 51) followed, again, by florida (49) and idaho (47).

this coincides with other studies i’ve read on the subject – at least as far as utah being happiest. strangely, this flies in the face of other research showing kentucky to be one of the least happiest. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/the-happiest-states-of-america/

Florida
G3: 5 (*8=40) (*4=20)
G2: 7 (*7=49) (*3=21)
G1: 4 (*6=24) (*2=8)
W: 4 (*5=20) (*1=4)
Y: 4 (*4=16) (*-1=-4)
R1:
R2:
R3:
+________________
149 49

Idaho
G3: 3 (*8=24) (*4=12)
G2: 9 (*7=63) (*3=27)
G1: 5 (*6=30) (*2=10)
W: 5 (*5=25) (*1=5)
Y:
R1:
R2: 1 (*2=2) (*-3=-3)
R3: 1 (*1=1) (*-4=-4)
+________________
145 47

Kentucky
G3: 6 (*8=48) (*4=24)
G2: 8 (*7=56) (*3=24)
G1: 4 (*6=24) (*2=8)
W: 2 (*5=10) (*1=2)
Y: 1 (*4=4) (*-1=-1)
R1: 3 (*3=9) (*-2=-6)
R2:
R3:
+________________
151 51

Utah
G3: 4 (*8=32) (*4=16)
G2: 6 (*7=56) (*3=18)
G1: 8 (*6=48) (*2=16)
W: 4 (*5=20) (*1=4)
Y: 1 (*4=4) (*-1=-1)
R1: 1 (*3=3) (*-2=-2)
R2:
R3:
+________________
163 51

just sayin’.

i wonder how true to life this experiment really is…

and apparently we hate the night, except at twelve. ha ha.

Oh wait, causation does not imply correlation.