Monday Trivia #38

Will Truman 36 Comments

The top thirteen states on this ranking are, in order: Hawaii, Arizona, Delaware, Rhode Island, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Idaho, Indiana, Colorado, Wyoming, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and then North Dakota.

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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36 Comments

  2. Lowest percentage of adult population enrolled in social welfare programs aimed at alleviating the economic effects of unemployment?

  4. It is just occurring to me that all the guesses so far assume that people live in North Dakota. Has anyone googled to confirm that?

    • Congress keeps on getting people who show up claiming to have been elected to public office from there and demanding paychecks and voting privileges. Granted that Congress acquiesing to these requests is not evidence that these people are being truthful. However, these people seem to have no apparent homes in Minnesota, Nebraska, or other places containing climatic regions suitable for human habitation, so the “residents of North Dakota” hypothesis seems to have at least some supporting evidence.

  5. Tuesday Hint: Starting from the bottom, the bottom 14 are: Pennsylvania, New York, Kentucky, Maryland, Washington, Missouri, Florida, New Jersey, Michigan, Vermont, California, Maine, Illinois, and then South Dakota.

    • This has to be a non-standard sort of demographic. South Dakota is at the bottom of the list and North Dakota is relatively near the top. The Dakotas are so demographically similar in almost every major respect that this is the standout hint for me.

      • Hint alert (though I don’t know how helpful this will be)! What you say about North Dakota and South Dakota is true. However, though they are not close to one another, North Dakota is closer to South Dakota than it is to Hawaii or Arizona, statistically speaking.

  6. Percentage of high school students dropping out before graduation?
    Percentage of college-going students electing to attend out-of-state schools?

    I’ve got this feeling education is implicated here, in part because Texas doesn’t appear at either end of the scale.

  7. Wednesday Hints: You don’t likely need to look anything up to answer this. Before I even started, I knew that Hawaii and Arizona would be near the top and New York and Pennsylvania would be near the bottom, even though I have never lived in any of those states. And in the states I have lived, there were no really surprising results.

    To add more states into the mix, starting at #14 and moving down: Ohio, Utah, Iowa, Arkansas, Mississippi.

    Starting at #36 and moving up: Nevada, Virginia, West Virginia, South Carolina, and Montana.

  8. Capital city’s population as a percentage of the state’s population?

  9. Randy Harris is the three-time reigning champion. Wow.

    Almost half a million, or 1.2% of Californians live in Sacramento proper. That’s enough to keep it from the bottom. All of the Bottom 14 have populations below 2%, which is why I chose that particular cut-off. I chose the cut-off from the top because the top 13 were above 8%.

    Here are the stats:

    Hawaii 27.4%
    Arizona 22.5%
    Delaware 4% (Ooops!)
    Rhode Island 16.9%
    Oklahoma 15.4%
    Nebraska 14.1%
    Idaho 13.1%
    Indiana 12.9%
    Colorado 11.9%
    Wyoming 10.5%
    Tennessee 9.5%
    Massachusetts 9.4%
    North Dakota 9.1%
    Ohio 6.8%
    Utah 6.7%
    Iowa 6.7%
    Arkansas 6.6%
    Mississippi 5.8%
    Minnesota 5.4%
    Louisiana 5.0%
    Kansas 4.5%
    Alaska 4.3%
    Georgia 4.3%
    Alabama 4.3%
    North Carolina 4.2%
    Wisconsin 4.1%
    Oregon 4.0%
    Connecticut 3.5%
    New Mexico 3.3%
    New Hampshire 3.2%
    Texas 3.1%
    Montana 2.8%
    South Carolina 2.8%
    West Virginia 2.8%
    Virginia 2.5%
    Nevada 2.0%
    South Dakota 1.7%
    Illinois 1.6%
    Maine 1.4%
    California 1.2%
    Vermont 1.2%
    Michigan 1.2%
    New Jersey 1.0%
    Florida 1.0%
    Missouri 0.7%
    Washington 0.7%
    Maryland 0.7%
    Kentucky 0.6%
    New York 0.5%
    Pennsylvania 0.4%

  10. The percentage for Delaware appears to be incorrect. Dover’s population is only 36,047 or 4.0% of the state’s total. The Dover MSA has a population 152,255 or 16.9%.

      • Damn, I feel cheated!! No, not because of you, Will, because I didn’t get it. At least I was close with my “most fatal snake bites” and “scurvy” answer. Of course, thanks to Jaybird, we now know the Dakotas are one big leper colony and, unless you’re Jesus, to be avoided at all costs. Still, wasn’t the jury still out regarding whether or not any living humans actually in North Dakota?

        So the Trivia questions arew made up by a moderator? That makes it potentially a much more difficult task to solve since the paramaters grow exponentially solely determined by whatever strikes the moderator’s fancy. The possibilities are infinite and it would be relativity easy to make up trivia questions that no one could ever answer. Just off the top of my head, I could, as an example, say, Crete, Canaan, and Cairo triangulate to connect graph theory, Trafalger Square and a “I’m too old for this shit” actor and unifying all of this is a most solemn shade of tears depicting the deep, profound, inconsolable suffering of Christ. Take a crack at it, sir.

        • Kris, I can easily come up with questions that nobody can answer, but doing so would be a failure on my part and not on the part of those failing to answer the questions. I am trying to come up with questions that are answerable, but that require some thought or work or knowledge that is not too esoteric.

          • Will, I’m certainly glad for that! You could be a sadist and have the whole lot of us in ERs with severe lumps on our heads from banging our skulls through dry walls! I liked your last one very much, but I just wasn’t getting anywhere with it with my fixation on medical issues. When will you be doing your next one?

            By the way, the one I just did wasn’t me being a sadist but rather, just trying to get an idea of the thought processes involved in creating these kinds of puzzles.
            Thanks for doing this.

      • Heh, MSA vs. city population gap probably makes for a very, very different ranking. Georgia would be over 50% by MSA but is way down with 4% because Atlanta proper is actually really small. I think Minnesota would be over 60%.

        • 68%, actually. I actually collected both sets of statistics (which is probably how I got turned around on Delaware). I went with the city pop to keep it more simple and because of the Rhode Island problem (Providence’s MSA population exceeds Rhode Island’s population) and I didn’t want to go back and see if any of the other states had MSA’s spilling over.

  11. Damn, I feel cheated!! No, not because of you, Will, because I didn’t get it. At least I was close with my “most fatal snake bites” and “scurvy” answer. Of course, thanks to Jaybird, we now know the Dakotas are one big leper colony and, unless you’re Jesus, to be avoided at all costs. Still, wasn’t the jury still out regarding whether or not any living humans actually in North Dakota?

    So the Trivia questions arew made up by a moderator? That makes it potentially a much more difficult task to solve since the paramaters grow exponentially solely determined by whatever strikes the moderator’s fancy. The possibilities are infinite and it would be relativity easy to make up trivia questions that no one could ever answer. Just off the top of my head, I could, as an example, say, Crete, Canaan, and Cairo triangulate to connect graph theory, Trafalger Square and a “I’m too old for this shit” actor and unifying all of this is a most solemn shade of tears depicting the deep, profound, inconsolable suffering of Christ. Take a crack at it, sir.

    • Sorry–I have no idea why this posted twice. If anyone solves my trivia/brainteaser you win the car of our choice. And Will, not trying to steal your job—you’re doing a great job with this fun subject. I was just trying to provide an example of how difficult these can be–of course, you’ll probably get right away, but the key to these kinds of problems is to make them very multi-layered. To answer to the one I just made up, the answer must include ALL the connections and not just one. A clue: each layer has three subsets that all connect to the next layer. One other thing: I have done nothing to mislead you or lead you astray. Also, getting one part correctly is not enough–you have to connect every single element of this puzzle. Hey, you think I’m going to be easy on you if you want a Bentley? Ha!

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