Helenans have been talking recently about Colorado College's "State of the Rockies Report Card" - a ranking of the "livability" of all the counties in eight Rocky Mountain states. How cool that Lewis and Clark County got an A+, while, heh, heh, Cascade County, home to Great Falls, got an F-.

It's cool, that is, until you stop to think about it.

Come on - how do we get a top rating while only 90 miles up I-15 a very similar community ends up at the bottom of the heap? Does this really make sense?

Well, sure, it makes a certain kind of sense, but not so much that you'd want to hang too many hats on it. After all, with other criteria, such a survey could come out very differently.

The first thing to realize is that Lewis and Clark and Cascade aren't in the same group, so were not competing against each other. Cascade, containing an urban population of 50,000 or more, was competing with Phoenix, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Denver, and other "metro" counties. Lewis and Clark fell into the "micropolitan" category, meaning counties with urban communities of more than 2,500 population but fewer than 50,000.

Second, these letter-grade ratings are a relative, rather than absolute, measure of livability. In other words, the counties were graded on a curve. Those getting the most points automatically got an A+ and those with the lowest automatically were assigned an F-. As any schoolkid knows, grading on a curve means that if students in a class all trounced a test, with scores ranging between 100 percent and 95 percent correct, those poor kids who only scored a 95 would get an F.

Third, there are the actual criteria to consider. Colorado College picked nine basic measurements, including balanced income and employment distributions and growth rates, unemployment and poverty rates, growth in businesses with under 10 employees, percent of the population 25 and over with bachelor's degrees or higher, and something called "natural amenities rank," which considers things like climate, water, and neat scenery.

The report also separately graded such things as recreational hotspots, the number of non-profit organizations, health considerations, and other environmental, social and cultural factors.

In the end, the choice of criteria calls the shots. Lewis and Clark, with its state capital, naturally benefits from a balanced and well-educated workforce. If such things as the presence of a military base or service to a huge agricultural region were among the measurements, Cascade County would have faired better. Rankings such as these always are extremely subjective, no matter who is making them.

We happen to agree that an A+ sounds about right for our community. (Well, maybe a little low.) But it's worth keeping in mind that while a grading system may be well meaning and carefully devised, it never can capture more than a tiny fraction of a community's soul.