Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, DC, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming have more of these per-capita than the nation as a whole. The six states with the fewest are all connected to one another.
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Predominantly western states, but including two midwestern and two southern states. Geographically, what’s missing from the more-per-capita list are the Great Lakes and northeastern states. The states listed are predominantly conservative, but it also includes Hawai’i, D.C., and California.
Cars. I don’t know – DC is throwing me off here.
Churches?
Could it be Pentacostal Churches?
Handguns?
I’m not all-knowing (obviously), but I’d expect Hawai’i to be below several more Midwestern and Southern states if that was the answer.
I’m guessing that “six states with the fewest are all connected to each other” probably means some grouping centering on New England, so some combination of six of MA, CT, RI, NH, VT, ME, NY, NJ, and PA.
Aircraft registrations?
I’m figuring that you’ve got a bunch of states on there with really big distances to cover and/or natural obstacles that make ground transportation difficult (ie, Hawaii), combined in a lot of cases with relatively small populations, making the per capita numbers easy to increase. Georgia would fit by virtue of it being Delta’s headquarters, DC by virtue of it presumably being the place of registration for any aircraft registered in the name of the federal government.
The problem with this guess is that Tennessee (Fedex’s HQ) and Kentucky (UPS’) are not on the list, so I think I’m wrong.
I’d think WI would be high on the list thanks to the EAA being based there, but I’ve been way more wrong than right on this game!
If you’d let me replace DC with Montana all my hunches would make a lot more sense.
Inexplicably, Montana is pretty low (#38) on this list.
Air conditioners.
Second guess: Mexican restaraunts.
Not Utah. At least, not good Mexican restaurants.
What, Taco Bell isn’t a Mexican restaurant all of a sudden? </sarcasm>
Acres of State Parks?
This could be in the vicinity. How about Federally-owned lands? Say, acres of Federal land in the sate per capita.
I was kind of thinking the same thing. My hangup was that DC’s high position is more or less what I would expect if that’s the answer.
It’s a good guess, but it’s not to do with parks & federal buildings.
Tuesday Hint: Mark Thompson is right: The “six states” are actually the six states of New England: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
Also, Karl is right: the list would make more sense (or at least be more intuitive) with DC (#5) and Montana (#38) switching places.
Wednesday Morning Hint:
The List: Utah, Alaska, Texas, Idaho, DC, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Wyoming, Georgia, New Mexico, California, Nevada, Arizona, North Dakota, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina, Minnesota, Washington, Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, Tennessee, New Jersey, New York, Montana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Oregon, Florida, Michigan, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont
I’ll be substituting today from 10-5 Mountain Time (7-2 Pacific) and will have a little difficulty responding today. However, I am counting on you guys to figure this one out today. I’ll be giving another hint this afternoon, if need be.
10-5 Eastern, I mean.
Mormons.
Not with Idaho and Arizona so far down. My other guess was children, but that’s wrong too. And it’s not consumption of white bread/mayonnaise/casseroles made with cream of mushroom soup with DC so high and Minnesota so low.
Oh, that’s so true — in the upper Midwest, the quality of food is measured by its whiteness. If ketchup were white, that’s what they’d prefer to put on french fries.
But the Pew Forum invalidates my guess. The top three Mormon states by percentage of overall population are, in order, Utah, Idaho, and Nevada.
I’ll go with births – although it seems too simple.
Well, Utah has the highest birth rate of all the states, so it’s not an unreasonable guess at all.
Since I now know it isn’t Mormonism, I’ll try again — this time, I’ll go with autism, something else in which Utah is the national leader. If Rose’s theory that availability of special education money drives such diagnoses is correct, then that might explain why D.C. and Montana are outliers — there may be a trend in the western states to give special ed money for this diagnosis, but if there are fewer incentives to diagnose autism because of quirks in the laws in those jurisdictions, maybe the diagnoses are made less.
sometimes simple is right… This trivia question is actually a setup for todays post.
I assume the specific answer is live births?
I’m blown away that Alaska tops the list.