What I hate about (population) statistics

You can, too, in a few easy steps:

1. Go to Wikipedia's list of urban areas.
2. Click on the Density column in the table so that urban areas are listed in decreasing order of density.
3. Scan the table to find that Los Angeles, at 2,570 people/km^2, is the most densely populated "urban area" in the U.S.
4. Hate population statistics.

To be fair, Wikipedia warns us about the dangers of trying to rank the world's largest cities, but it's one thing to read the article and quite another to see that, by certain criteria, the U.S. model for urban sprawl and poor city planning could be considered space-efficient.  

Looking at the list of cities proper, you can see that NYC's population density was being severely dragged down by the inclusion of its suburbs, while the city of Los Angeles is barely more dense than its suburbs.