Being from Delaware there only one other thing that I can think of that we’re number 1 in:
Out of state students in our Universities.
USNews (a magazine with lots of pictures) does those rankings of colleges and grad schools. Aside from a top notch Chemical Engineering program (love that Dupont money!!), U. of Del was the only school with more out of state students than in state.
Just a guess but I couldn’t find the list on the web. It may have been removed though since the puzzle is over a year old and the review and web site have been redone.
Just read the thread and joined. My first observation is that, if it is an ordered quantitative list, it may be ordered either from most to least (which is what many have thus far tried) or from least to most (which may be less obvious). If the latter, then imagine the list in reserve order, which may have the larger or more Western or more populous states on top and will end with:
Rhode Island
Massachusetts
Connecticut
Deleware
I just did an exhaustive search of USA Today to no avail. There are SO MANY lists that have the names of all these states in them. My WAG is as follows: you will find the list in USA Today, but it won’t be in order, that is, you’ll have to order it yourself based upon one of the numbers.
For those interested in going this route: here is a preliminary search using the first four state names as starting points. There are only 70 in the list, but I have a feeling the search isn’t exhaustive.
If you read the thread on Google Answers, that will have my rationale for going to USA Today. Also, the puzzle creator said that there were some comments in the Google Answers thread on the right track.
The other publications that would be good to check would be Sports Illustrated and National Geographic.
Well what about a ranking of high low. For example #50, #1, #49,#2,#3,#48 and so forth.
What about rankings like that or anagrams of state names or state names that can spell particular features in that state. Or states where the publisher of US Today has offices or employees.
Me thinks the simplest solution is the correct. In other words don’t look hard. Maybe states that once contained the largest American city or states that say the population of state listed two could be contained in state one. Then state listed 3 could contain 1 plus 2 on the list
Well what about a ranking of high low. For example #50, #1, #49,#2,#3,#48 and so forth.
What about rankings like that or anagrams of state names or state names that can spell particular features in that state. Or states where the publisher of US Today has offices or employees.
Me thinks the simplest solution is the correct. In other words don’t look hard. Maybe states that once contained the largest American city or states that say the population of state listed two could be contained in state one. Then state listed 3 could contain 1 plus 2 on the list
I played around with the logic of the problem. It’s probably not an alphabetical list of, e.g., senators, because it’s too improbably weighted to the eastern and smaller states. On the other hand, it might be a list of , e.g., the spread of a disease or pest – and then it makes sense that the spread is not wholly contiguous or uniform. I picked four states from the list (Wisconsin Texas Arkansas Louisiana) and ran them forwards and backwards without success using Google and USA Today.
I have just wasted an hour of time trying to get to the bottom of this, and I’m still not certain. So, let me say it here and now – I think this has something to do with an ordered list of states with “the fewest acres of National Park Service land” or “fewest acres of National Parks, Monuments, and Historic Sites” or something like that.
Delaware has none. Connecticut has 68 acres on the Weir Farms Historic Site. Massachusetts has almost 28,000, but if you take away the 27,000 in the Cape Cod National Seashore, it’s pretty small once again. I also have the impression that Texas might be high on the list, despite its size. It’s Arizona (Grand Canyon) that is really troubling me.
The whole thing could be “tweaked” by something as silly as “National Park Service land that is deeded to private individuals”. That might explain how an Arizona gets on the list (if Grand Canyon has not been deeded away in large tracts).
I’m having trouble “proving” this, because it’s hard to find a good RANKING of NPS areas by state. The agency seem transfixed by listing by parks.
Anyway, that’s my guess – but I’m too tired tonight to try to figure it out for sure.
regardless of money or any other prize…i want to figure this out for myself, so if anyone figures out the answer, i would appreciate it if you dont post it, or post it on another site, then link to it, or at least put “WARNING: ANSWER FOLLOWS” in your message or something, ok??? that would be awesome!!!
joe, that article looked promising, but I did some number-crunching and, although my source data is different (I got mine from US Census), it doesn’t quite match up. It is close, but there are some differences that are likely to be deal-breakers, unless someone can tweak it somehow. Note especially the low showing of Arizona. Here are my results for Gross State Product per capita (we can ignore D.C., Alaska, Hawaii):
PS: I spent about an hour searching the governing.com article database with no luck, so if anyone can find the article that press release is referencing, that would obviously help tremendously.
I can’t find it either. I did find this list of sources for governing.com: http://www.governing.com/sbcite.htm
One really interesting site is: http://www.bea.doc.gov
It lets you query tons of stats including GSP. However, none of the data exactly matches the data quoted in the press release.