Utah has the most or largest. After that, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Texas, South Dakota, Georgia, Idaho, Maryland, Washington, Virginia, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, New Mexico, Minneosota, Vermont, Connecticut, Alabama, Delaware, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alaska, North Dakota, Louisiana, Kansas, Oregon, New Hampshire, New York, Arizona, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Indiana, New Jersey, Nebraska, West Virginia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Florida, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Maine, Missouri, Illinois, California, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan. Hawaii is the state with the least, fewest, or smallest. DC is lower still.
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Mormon population!
I imagine that Idaho would beat Georgia…
Unregistered cars.
Family size.
National monuments and/or parks.
No. Can’t be if DC is on the bottom.
But state parks and state monuments? DC can’t have any of those, by definition.
State highways.
Cost of living, low to high.
Lakes?
Since Utah has 12 and Wisconsin has ~15,000, this probably is not the answer.
Home-schooled children?
Nobody has it yet, but you guys are off to a good start.
Finally a question that doesn’t have Alabama, WVirginia or Mississippi in last place!
Jeez. I used to live in Michigan (one of the very least) and now live in Colorado (one of the very most), you’d think that I’d just have to put in those two states and ask “what does Colorado have a ton of that Michigan has precious few of?”
Reclamation projects?
Heck, *MINES*.
Wait, it’s a measurement.
Galt’s Gulch was in Colorado, giving it the world’s highest concentration of FYIG Mines.
What’s the current market value for a ton of FYIGM ore?
Prices dropped in the 80s due to oversupply, and have never really recovered.
So it’s a good time to buy?
Heavy bias to the West and a pretty strong one to the South. Makes me think I need to re-read Will’s South/West post for clues.
Percent of river flows covered by interstate or international compacts.
Largest % of population in small towns?
Nah, the West is pretty heavily urban/suburbanized (eg, California and New Jersey go back and forth as being the “least rural” states, depending on the Census Bureau’s current definition). Might get somewhere with a ratio of “most densely populated” to “least densely populated” counties in the state; most Western states have a few counties that are really empty.
Tuesday Hint: It’s not a percentage or ratio. There were some really good guesses today.
Runways, by length.
Wednesday Hint: It’s the measurement of a thing, or the average size of a thing.
Something to do with steeples or churches?
Measurement or average size of something, not a a percentage or ratio. Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana have the biggest/most, in that order. California and Iowa almost side-by-side down at the bottom of the list. An implication in the original post that the value for Hawaii is non-zero. I know I’m going to kick myself when I find out what it is.
You and Jaybird both.
There is no zero value. It’s not possible for there to be.
Something related to BMI?
Colorado has kabillions of skinny people compared to Michigan, I tell you what.
Average elevation?
I thought of that too, and other elevation-related things, but Delaware would be close to the bottom and Hawaii towards the top (having one big damn volcano in a small square mileage.)
Thursday Hint: When an individual has a large this, it’s a sign of wealth. So it’s ironic (albeit easily explained) that states that have a large average size of this are not perceived as wealthy.
As an individual with a large that, let me just say that it’s caused me no end of sleepless nights.
Average size of residential property.
Very close.
Average home size?
Correct. Half-credit to Mike, half-credit to James.
Yay, my first win. And all it took was Mike and Will hand-feeding me the answer. š
And now for the obligatory comment that we all know why Utah’s first on that list…
An interesting thing: Utah has the largest average household size, thus helping to propel it to #1. What has the second larges average household size? Hawaii, #50.
Possible reasons:
1a) Economics–folks in Hawai’i are that much poorer.
1b) Economics–land prices in Hawai’i are that much higher.
2) Culture
These are all non-exclusive, but I’d bet 1b and 2 are more highly correlated with the outcome than 1a.
Interestingly, my house in Michigan is almost exactly at the state average, which puts me well below the national average.
Fish it, I’ve still got mine, even if it ain’t as big as theirs.
Where do you get this information? I’m curious where mine ranks. Should I could the portion that I’m pretty sure will soon be populated by deer?
And my house in Colorado is almost exactly at the state median, so I’m above the national median. In the 25 years I’ve lived here, the size of new houses has increased dramatically. Now that the kids are grown and gone, we’ve thought about downsizing. Unfortunately, we have radically different ideas about what kind of home we would like to live in. The only thing we agree on is one-story, not two — old knees will do that to you.
@Kazzy, if Will doesn’t get to it here’s a list.
Michael C.,
But since you live in Colorado, the important question is not the size of your house but its elevation.
Wow! It turns out that my own home is above my state’s average! Not by much, to be sure, but nevertheless my Veblen-like envy of my immediate neighbors with larger homes has been substantially vitiated!
Half credit after Will’s hint made the answer bleedin’ obvious. I feel like Peter Cook.
Yes, I could have been a judge but I never had the Latin, never had the Latin for the judgin’, I never had it, so I’d had it, as far as bein’ a judge was concerned. I just never had sufficient of it to get through the rigourous judging exams. They’re noted for their rigour. People come out staggering and saying “My God, what a rigourous exam!” – and so I became a miner instead. A coal miner. I managed to get through the mining exams–they’re not rigourous, they only ask one question, they say, “Who are you”, and I got 75 per cent on that.
@Kazzy,
Should I could the portion that Iām pretty sure will soon be populated by deer?
Deer are moving into your house? I’ve met some pretty aggressive suburban deer in my day, but that’s bold even by their standards.
It’s been that way ever since he installed the salt lick in the living room.
But since you live in Colorado, the important question is not the size of your house but its elevation.
True. One of the interesting things about Denver weather forecasts are that in the spring and fall, when there’s precipitation in the forecast, there’s almost always an estimate of how high the snow line will be (eg, 5500 feet). People pay attention, too, especially those that live up one of the foothills canyons. 7500 feet may mean that you drive to the work in rain; 6500 feet that you have to get through a foot of snow.
Front Range Colorado has a very nice climate. We have all four seasons (sometimes three of them within a single week), but avoid most of the extreme weather. 60 miles to the east and you’re into Great Plains monster tornado country; 30 miles to the west and you’re a mile higher and regularly get many feet of winter snow. It’s getting kind of crowded here, though. Any time the Broncos have a September home game on Monday Night Football I hope for one of the early-season snow storms during the game. Let people think that’s “normal,” and not realize that by Wednesday it’ll be 75 and sunny again and the snow will be gone.
On September 10, 2001, Denver hosted the New York Giants on Monday Night Football. No one talked about the game the next day.
Dang, I always miss these trivia contests until I notice something on the sidebar.
One small quibble with the site sourced. Realtor.com is listing the average size of in Sept 2011, that doesn’t count the homes that for sale. The Biltmore isn’t for sale that I know of for instance. Not sure how much that would move the rankings, also not sure how easy figuring out that info would be. It is true that the biggest places are hardest to sell and don’t hit the market that often.
They say it’s a median, so a few big houses really can’t make a significant move. Not sure if it would make an impact if it were the mean instead, though. The Biltmore is, after all, only one of tens of thousands of homes for sale in North Carolina.
I bet what really moves the needle is how many condos are in the state – since those will likely tip the scales toward smaller home sizes. Multi-family rentals probably aren’t in the data at all.
I bet what really moves the needle is how many condos are in the state
That’s my guess for why California is so far down the list. On the other hand, there’s no way in hell it would begin to explain Iowa, which just has lots of fairly small houses; little pink ones if the minstrel is right.
Knowing the answer, I’m taken by South Dakota appearing high on the list, with both North Dakota and Nebraska much lower.
We’re always fascinated when the Dakota Twins are seem separate from one another.
If I were to speculate, I’d wonder if the issue in North Dakota might be related to a lot of mobile homes being put up around Bakken. Nebraska may be related to the fact that I think with Omaha and Lincoln it has a little more urban density? (I’d look into that, but the Internet here is weak and some sites – like Wikipedia – are completely inaccessible.)
hmm, I experimented with using brackets and it ate part of my comment. The missing component was “average size of houses for sale“. Since the Biltmore isn’t on the market (nor a lot of other large mansions) the numbers would be smaller although Plinko read through the error and figured it out as houses for sale and had the intelligent concept of adding in condos. That could sway the numbers especially on a median basis rather than mean. If you took 100 houses of 1000 sq feet and added in one 50,000 sq foot house you’d move the mean from 1000’^2 to almost 1500 square feet. The median on the other hand.. not so much.