Saturday, March 03, 2012

1815 - Top and Bottom

I'm continuing with the charts and graphs theme. I found an article about the feelings of wellbeing in the different states. It's a Gallup poll. Nobody would lie to a Gallup pollster would they?

Let's start off with the overall map. There's a little bit of a trend for their three categories of high, middle, low. The Midwest seems to be loooowwww. As a matter of fact if you look at the charts with the numbers, in the lowest 10 states are Missouri (me), Arkansas (Jay), and Ohio (Matt-man).





So what does this mean? Besides not much. The article says some of it's based on - enough money for food, shelter, and medicine. Hawaii is number one? Isn't it one of the highest cost of living states there are? Maybe with gas prices going up we'll all get happier!

And then there are the numbers themselves. Hawaii 70.2, Nevada 65.0. A spread of 5 points? Lets see what the margin of error is...

For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point. The margin of sampling error for most states is ±1 to ±2 percentage points, but is as high as ±4 points for states with smaller population sizes...

So 95% of the survey is probably ± 1 to 4 percent accurate. So basically ..... EVERY STATE IS THE SAME!!!!!

 

5 comments:

eViL pOp TaRt said...

There is also the "Where I Want to Be or Live" factor, which is highly individual and not easily quantified. Still, Hawaii sounds nice. I could be a surfer girl!

Duckbutt said...

Still....I'd rather the state where I live as near the top, rather than the rock bottom. But not enough to live in some places.

Mike said...

EPT - I hear the Beach Boys singing 'Little Surfer Girl'.

D - I hear Johnny Horton singing 'North to Alaska'. Pack your long undies.

Dianne said...

NJ is so tiny on the map I couldn't tell what shade of happy it was and I'm too unhappy to look into it any further

Mike said...

D - NJ is in the middle. Neither happy nor sad. Just confused.