Monday, June 15, 2009

It's Geography Fact Week!

Geography Fact Week: More than half of all Americans live within an hour's drive of the seashore.

Source: This is from perhaps the most reputable Geography tome you could possibly have in your library. I'm speaking, of course, about Bite Size Geography - 150 Facts You Won't Believe!


Explanation: Over the course of her teaching career, my wife has accumulated numerous kids books through Scholastic's bonus program. This one appeared in our house shortly after her last day of school. Yes, all of my facts this week are based on a book for third-graders. Are these facts true? The book claims they are. That's good enough for me.

Let's look a little more deeply at this one. Here is a map of the population density of the United States as of the 2000 census:


Note that the dark dark blue color can range from 250 to 66,000 persons per square mile. Therefore, while this map doesn't give us all the information we need, it certainly tells us where the people aren't, and that's in Wyoming. Wyoming is not even remotely close to the seashore, and therefore the fact must be true.

Special Bonus Fact: If Wyoming were an ocean, more than 50% of the people in Wyoming would be more than 50% underwater.

2 comments:

Jeremy said...

I PROTEST! At the very least, we still don't have enough information:

What are we driving for an hour? Is it the ThrustSSC, or a Winnebago? Are we allowed to break the posted speed limit? Will the one-hour fact change if Hillary Clinton changes the speed limit? Does that hour include potty breaks?

Also, It seems a lot of the dark blue boxes are near the Great Lakes. Those aren't exactly "Seas." As the name implies...they're lakes.

Willie Y said...

The name of the book should be "Facts that cannot be true."