ali_nahm.txt

> 3-2-15

Today I had to teach first-graders about the states within the Midwest. Why the first-graders are learning about the Midwest states specifically? I have no idea. More importantly, what exactly are the states within the Midwest? My co-teacher and I found a wide variety of sets of states that were categorized within the Midwest. Apparently, Nate Silver, et al. did a study on this analyzing percentage of survey respondents who believe which states are within the Midwest. Crazy to believe that there are no states in the visualization that 100% of the population believe are in the Midwest. The study uses a SurveyMonkey audience that mostly targets people within the U.S. I wonder how responses would differ if the survey respondent population was a global one. What is the minimum percentage of respondents required such that the general consensus of the U.S. population is that the specific state is within the Midwest?

Link to study: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-states-are-in-the-midwest/