According to the 2003 NAMM/Gallup poll, eighty percent of the US population believes playing a musical instrument makes you smarter.

( link )

When I used to teach at the local music school, I had an article I handed out. It showed how a University study found a direct connection between learning to play music and a person's English/math skills. Learning to play an instrument helped develop parts of the brain (ONE of them being an increases in a person's hippocampal volume).

So that means HALF of the country must be on our side!

Wait a minnitt... this just in... further polls show that while eighty percent of the population believes playing a musical instrument makes you smarter, eighty-six percent play a musical instrument... !



(For the record, off the record, I made that up... )

To paraphrase the great American, Tom Cullen:

Our "hippocampal volume" goes to 11.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc; correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation.

Well, that's easy for you to say...

Scott Fraser

I would not use Latin to argue that we may be less intelligent than people think.

Not arguing that at all; let me put it another way. Are we smart because we're musicians, or are we musicians because we're smart? (actually, I'm poor because I'm a musician, and I don't feel very smart.)

Boy, do we gotta 'em fooled....

Cogito ergo guitarus plectorii?

Caveat guitaror?
E pluribus pickum?

Facepalmicus maximus.

As a Roman Pete Townshend might have said near the end of his set: "Cithari delendum est!"