Not true (last paragraph of the first section).
There’s an amazing amount of statistics out there, you know. Acres of parkland per capita, acres of parkland as a per cent of total, miles of waterways, crime rates per the DoJ, per cent change in population in a particular year, movie rentals per person per (time period), state song titles in alphabetical order…
Heh. Guess I know what I’m doing this weekend 
I’d read somewhere that New Mexico was 13, and this was a reliable source, so no dice.
There’s a lot of consecutive bordering states:
-Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island
-Illinois, Wisconsin
-Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana
-Indiana, Ohio
-Alabama, Mississippi, (Florida) (note: Florida does NOT border Mississippi)
-West Viriginia, Maryland
Don’t ask me what it means, it just seemed to stick out.
-States ranked by percentage of people whose primary source of income is out of state (Texas at #8 is troubling, but lots of the early states act as suburbs for nearby metropoli).
-States ranked by amounts in their treasuries.
That’s all I can think of right now.
Nah, Connecticut’s treasury is bone-dry. We, like most states had a budget crisis this year. I’d think that at least one more state would have more dough than us.
It seems more likely to me that it is a word puzzle, although I have no ideas right off hand, we may want to try to concentrate on the state names as words instead of trying to find a statistical list.
More leads I haven’t been able to discount:
I thought “greatest number of credit card issuing banks” could have been it, but South Dakota (I think … looked it up yesterday) is number 2.
WAG:
Ranked by the number of presidents from that state? hm. probably not, given there haven’t been that many presidents total.
But maybe some other position. Cabinet member, etc.
Nope Nerd. No.1 would be Virginia, followed by Ohio. Several 0’s
The presidents thing is a very standard trivia question, and Ohio and Virginia is by birth. By home state at time of election, it’s actually New York and Ohio.
For any type of national official which there has been a large enough sample to have gotten some from all states, I would expect the distribution to roughly match a “people-years” measurement of population times duration as a state. The absence of NY or PA would make me suspect that this isn’t the sort of thing we’re after here.
Remember, that Delaware is not only physically tiny, it has a small population (as opposed to MA, say, which contains Boston).
Hmmm. I was basing that statement on the chart at the bottom of this page:
http://www.homeofheroes.com/presidents/
Looking at the actual data, I think their chart is in error - it looks like NY - 7, OH - 6, VA - 6, not 2 states with 7 as indicated on their chart. And NY = 7 counts Grover Cleveland twice, which may be viewed as legitimate if we are counting presidential administrations rather than actual men - Cleveland is designated as both 22nd and 24th president.
The order of states with patents issued is tantalizingly similar, but has far too many exceptions to even be an outdated list.
Number of banking associations incorporated?
It’s not states in order by their high points
Does anyone know of a list of golf courses per capita?
Does anyone know of a list showing number of golf courses per capita?
The degree of geographic clustering in the first 20 states makes it unlikely that this is some sort of word or letter puzzle, which would produce a geographically random sequence. Only one of the 13 states west of Texas made the Top 20, and only two of the 19 states west of Minnesota.
The eastern states making the Top 20 are mostly flat, low-lying states without any high mountains. Until the recent inclusion of Maryland and West Virginia, the states lying along the spine of the Appalachians from Maine to Georgia were entirely excluded. This seems unlikely to happen by coincidence.
Of course, there are exceptions. Michigan and Missouri still haven’t made the list, but Arizona has, as well as Texas which contains a mountainous area in its far west. So this may provide some clues–in what way are Michigan and Missouri atypical of low-lying eastern and midwestern states? Is there some activity which takes place in those states, but not in their neighbors? (Or vice versa?) In what ways is Arizona atypical of mountainous and/or higher elevation states? Note that the Great Plains states, from North Dakota through Oklahoma, are high elevation but flat and they also have not yet been included.
It seems to me that if it’s a puzzle, I don’t think it would have to do with trite or meaningless statistics (ie number of golf courses, etc.) I have been racking my brain for 3 days now on this, and the longer I think about it, the more it seems that it’s gotta be something very basic that we’re all missing. Y’know those tests they give executives that only 1 in 10 can answer correctly, but 9 out of 10 kindegarteners get all right? Why does it seem like this puzzle is one of those?
Most visits by a sitting President (probably not since NY isn’t on there yet)?
Most college sports national championships?
South Carolina would probably be 1st
When’s the last time the Fighting Hens won anything.
I think tomndebb may have something with the banks. Delaware has so many “Delaware corporations” there’s no doubt it would be first, while my home state has that great financial history. The rest of the list would make sense since finance is so East Coast-centric.
As a Delawarean (yea, we are a few-but-not-proud bunch), I’ll provide a little info about the state that’s number one on this list that may or may not assist in finding the solution. We’re probably best known for being the first state, but that doesn’t pan out for the rest of the list.
I liked the chickens idea, though, 'cause we’ve got a lot of chicken houses and Purdue. However, the most likely thing is something that has to do with either average elevation (I think Delaware’s is like 20 feet above sea level) or number of incorporated companies (per capita, maybe, or just in general). Another possibility is something military-related because, for such a small state, we have a rather important base in Dover Air Force Base. It’s also got the largest morgue in the country, if that’s any (morbid) help.
Now, I’m off to Google to see what I can see…