So I had this dream last night where I had to come up with something to statistically analyze within thirty seconds or this group of guys would murder me. It was like the Statistics Mafia or something.

Anyway.

My idea in the dream was to go to the Sporcle quiz of “50 states in 10 minutes” and see whether or not there were any correlations between the percentage of times a state name is remembered and:
     a)      Geographical location
     b)      State population
     c)      Number of syllables in the state name

My dreams: scary stuff. So guess what I did today?

Part I: Percentage of times a state name is remembered vs. geographical location
States were categorized by geographic location and those locations were numbered from northwest to southeast:
Northwest: 1
Southwest: 2
North central: 3
South central: 4
Northeast: 5
Southeast: 6
The average percent of times the state name is remembered was averaged within each geographic location, and these mean percentages were plotted against the location numbers. Here is said plot:

As you can see, the mean percentage of times that the state name is remembered is lowest for the two central regions and the Northeast. This could be due to lower populations in the central areas and the sheer number of itty bitty states in the Northeast. Or something else, who knows.

Part II: Percentage of times a state name is remembered vs. state population
This was a bit easier. This is just a plot of the percentage versus the state population. Ignore that x-axis; I can’t remember how to quickly fix it in R and it’s late.

Here you’ve got those few outlier states like California and Texas with mega populations that also appear to be at the top of the percentage remembered axis. Other than that, though, there doesn’t appear to be any sort of trend going on here. At least, in my opinion.

Part III: Percentage of times a state name is remembered vs. number of syllables in the state name
The average percent of times the state name is remembered was averaged within each number of syllables (1 through 5), and these mean percentages were plotted against the location numbers.

Haha, I don’t really know what this says. There aren’t that many 2- and 5- syllable states anyway. And Maine is the only 1-syllable. I don’t think this is the best of the three graphs to look at.

Anyway.

Fun times.

Today’s song: Thinking About You by Radiohead