New Mexico has the lowest number of this per-capita. Followed by: West Virginia, Connecticut, Idaho, South Carolina, New York, California, New Jersey, Arkansas, Maryland, Illinois, Georgia, Utah, Hawaii, North Carolina, Nevada, Washington, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Rhode Island, Missouri, Montana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Louisiana, Michigan, Delaware, South Dakota, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Alaska, Kansas, North Dakota, Vermont, Iowa, then Wyoming.
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My first reaction was “white people”. Obviously incorrect, but there we are.
I said “maybe” and then saw that #3 was Connecticut.
West Virginia’s actually considerably whiter than Connecticut. You didn’t even need to get past #2.
Wyoming’s last, so it’s going to be another unintuitive one.
New Mexico has the lowest number of this per-capita.
DEA agents whose brothers-in-law aren’t meth chemists.
You’ve been throwing out a lot of Breaking Bad allusions recently. Is the anticipatory tension getting to you?
I watched all of season 4 a few weekends ago, and still haven’t returned to what generally pases for normal..
State and local elected officials.
Acres of crop land? (I’m dubious about Wyoming, but I sure saw a lot of crops driving through the lower part of the state…)
(Though I would think California would screw that up. OTOH, California IS very densely populated…)
National Merit Scholars.
Energy use?
or health clubs?
Llamas?
Tuesday Hint: It was once projected that there would be more of these by now. A lot more.
Flying cars.No, seriously, how about “solar power plants”?
That’s a good guess! Particularly with New Mexico! But not correct.
bankruptcies? telecommunters? kirsten dunst movies?
Private aircraft.
Connecticut has the third-lowest? I’d expect a lot of private aircraft per capita there.
The top and bottom are states with small populations, so I am guessing it’s something very limited in number and a lot of these states only have one. New Mexico only has one with a couple million people, Wyoming only has one with very few people, and so one is at the top and the other the bottom.
FBI regional headquarters? US Attorneys?
It is not the FBI regional headquarters, nor US Attorneys.
And California has 25, to fit in the proper place in the list. Kansas has 4, Minnesota 7, Massachusetts 9, etc.. (I was going to make a complete list, but I lost patience.)
Windmills?
Decommisioned nuclear power plants. Union jobs.
Hint: Fourteen states (including New Mexico and Wyoming) have only one. Five states have more than ten. No states have more than 25.
Yeah, it’s pretty definitely not “white people” then.
MCs who are not suckers.
Abortion clinics?
Buildings with 50 or more stories
Gosh, every state has at least one and the the number of them probably tracks with population. That sure narrows it down.
Clean interstate rest stop bathrooms. Am I right, people?
Wrong!- New Mexico has zero.
Mormon temples?
It can’t be a coincidence that every state has one. It must be something to do with government. Universities subsidized by the land-grant act? State employee orientation centers?
Trauma Centers?
(1) New Mexico, West Virginia, Idaho, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming
(2) Connecticut, Arkansas, Utah, Nevada, Nebraska
(3) South Carolina, Oregon, Oklahoma, Mississippi
(4) Maryland, Colorado, Kentucky, Kansas
(5) Washington, Arizona, Alabama, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Iowa
(6) New Jersey, Indiana, Tennessee, Missouri
(7) Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Minnesota
(9) Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts
(10) Pennsylvania
(11) Michigan
(13) New York
(17) Florida
(21) Texas
(25) California
That seems about right. No answer, though.
For a bit more context, Maryland has twice Kansas’ population, Connecticut twice Nebraska’s, South Carolina 1.5 times Mississippi’s, and Washington more than double Iowa’s. (If you can call that context)
“It was once projected that there would be more of these by now.”
Is the shortfall due to bad predictions, the disappearance of need, or an alternate way of supplying the need? I hate these quizzes! Masochism!
Hint: Karl’s list is correct, though the data I pulled from is slightly incorrect: Maryland now has 5. I checked to make sure there weren’t any more recent additions, and it doesn’t appear that their were.
Prisons.
Or, rather, a specific kind of prison, say, maximum-security prisons for men.
Hint: It is not a physical structure of any kind. Many exist that are not actually located anywhere at all.
Or are located everywhere, depending on how you look at it I guess.
Oh, crap, I suck. I came across better list and this whole thing is screwed up. I’m so sorry guys. I blew it. The answer was telephone area codes. New Mexico actually has two, California has 30, and Texas has 25.
Killer question, tho, Will, even if you punted the execution.
Thanks. I use 50states.com with regularity on zip codes and (to a lesser extent) area codes and it’s never seemed outdated. Still, when I saw that New Mexico only had one, my response shouldn’t have been “Interesting!” but rather skepticism.
I also should have framed the question in a different manner to begin with. Sometimes least-to-most or vice-versa is useful, but in this case, more info (such as starting out with the numbers) would have been prudent. (Not that it matters when you’re using faulty data.)
Yeah I think this was a good one too. Area codes are so ubiquitous as to be at the threshold of awareness. It’s a great category because it’s a single object, and nicely set forth indexed to population (how many people have to share the code affects how long it is until there is a new one).
Yeah, it’s a good one, the kind that makes you kick yourself in retrospect for not getting it.