What I noticed right away was that many of the Devilish spots are simply the densely populated areas, and many of the Saintly regions are the "fly-over states" (well, the northern ones anyway). If I had the data, and was good at mapping software, I would make some sort of map that took into account population density. Instead, I just took a density map and made it alternate with the sinfulness map for each of the vices. (Please check the article first so you know how they define all their sins.)
- Greed - This one is probably the best correlated with density, which makes sense because cities generally have more poor and really rich people than the countryside or suburbs.
- Envy - Correlates pretty well with density, except that the Northeast gets off rather unscathed. And holy crap Pacific Northwest! Is everyone stealing each other's bikes, coffees, and chai teas?
- Wrath - Surprisingly uncorrelated. I was especially surprised at the saintlyness of LA / San Diego and Illinois / Indiana / Ohio.
- Sloth - This one doesn't really tell us much except that the western Montanas really like to go out and see shows.
- Gluttony - The extreme concentrations and lack of saintlyness makes this map kinda suspect. Could San Antonio and Odessa, TX, a select portion of Appalachia, and greater greater Virginia Beach really have so many more fast food restaurants that the differences in the rest of the country don't merit a green-to-white gradient?
- Lust - Another vice unrelated to density. The Deep South and Rapid City, SD have enough STD cases to mask any indication of metropolitan areas.
- Pride - It would be very interesting if some other form of "state pride" or "proudness of being American" could be mapped.
i only looked at a couple of these so far, but it's immediately more interesting comparing regular population density to the per-capita statistics they're using and then seeing where the discrepencies are between the two maps. Gluttony and Pride were both so suspicious looking... nice thinking!
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