[NU Sports] Uh Oh! BCS Poll Warnings

[Jonathan Michael Hawkins]

On 10/16/07, Roy Lamberton <rstetson at capps-assoc.com> wrote:
>
> Since the majority of people live on the East Coast,


While I'm not going to quibble with Coach Roy's overall point, his assertion
about the "majority of people" is just patently untrue.

Even using the most liberal estimates I could find (using projected 2006 U.S.
Census statistics), only 111 million people live on the East Coast.  To put
it another way, only 1/3, not over 1/2, of the population (appx. 300 million
as of 2006) lives in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, D.C., Rhode Island, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New
Hampshire, and Maine.

http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html
<http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html>

When you realize that usually "East Coast" means "if the East Coast stopped
at Northern Virginia", then the population drops to about 71 million, or
about as many as live in the Midwest - 66 million.  (knocking out Florida,
Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina).

You can verify this visually using a cartogram skewed by state for
population.  Equal area on this map equals equal population:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/statecartcollegelarge.png
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/statecartcollegelarge.png>

Jon