[HN Gopher] Median Center of Population for the United States: 1...
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Median Center of Population for the United States: 1880 to 2020
(2020)
Author : LastNevadan
Score : 47 points
Date : 2023-08-10 19:01 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.census.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.census.gov)
| ummonk wrote:
| Technically the spot on the opposite side of the earth is also a
| median right?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Yes because it's the intersection of a meridian and a parallel,
| which is two points anywhere except the poles.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Nope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_median
| carapace wrote:
| Hmm... The "Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate
| and Defense Highways"? Started around 1956.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_highway
| paxys wrote:
| Westward expansion never stopped.
| narcindin wrote:
| Looks like the 2020 line is just east of Chicago and just north
| of the SFBA.
|
| The line can't move West or South too quickly as every additional
| minute represents so many people shifting from one side of the
| median to the other.
| Retric wrote:
| Not just movement east west or north south but also births,
| deaths, immigration, and emigration.
|
| Also of note, the quadrants aren't balanced. You could have 1x
| in the northwest, 2x in the northeast, 2x in the southwest, and
| 1x in the southeast.
| biomcgary wrote:
| I believe Washington DC was close to the median center at the
| founding of the US. I've often wondered about the effect on US
| government if the seat of the executive (white house),
| legislative (capitol), and judicial (supreme court) branches had
| to move to the median center after every census. We need
| something to reduce the influence of K street. Something to keep
| the lobbyists from getting too cozy would be nice.
| ke88y wrote:
| _> Something to keep the lobbyists from getting too cozy would
| be nice._
|
| That doesn't make much sense to me. The firms that rent office
| space on K Street don't have power because of the location of
| their office... it's the other way around: K Street real estate
| is rented out by those firms because of the street's proximity
| to power.
|
| Move the power center and the firms currently renting office
| space on K Street, DC, USA will instead rent out space on Blah
| Street, Middlepoint, USA.
|
| More-over, I don't know if moving the capital of the country to
| the median point as defined in this article makes any sense
| either. It's one of those "literally everyone loses"
| propositions because "median" isn't "modal". If anything, it
| could make sense for the capital to be located at the midpoint
| by travel time.
|
| But it's all wildly impractical if you stop and think about.
| The amount of infrastructure alone would require decades of
| work. And states would have to surrender sovereignty over a big
| chunk of their (settled!) land. Etc.
| kens wrote:
| There is a lot of speculation here on what this means, so I
| looked it up. The median center is the point through which a
| north-south and an east-west line each divides the total
| population of the country in half. This is different from the
| "center of population", which is the balance point if you took an
| imaginary flat surface and put an identical weight on it for each
| person. These are both different from the geometric median.
|
| This document explains how the census bureau computed the values
| and has equations. There are complications since the earth is a
| sphere (as far as the census bureau is concerned):
| https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2010/prog...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > which is the balance point if you took an imaginary flat
| surface and put an identical weight on it for each person.
|
| And with real weight for each person we'd see a center-point
| further south.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm not sure what median Center of population means. Mean would
| be the geographic center accounting for location. Is the median
| just the 50th percentile in latitude and longitude?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would guess it means 25% live in each quadrant of the map
| here:
|
| https://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/DC2020/PopCenter/CenterPop_...
| cschmid wrote:
| Not quite: half are on the left, and half are on the right of
| the vertical line; and half are on the bottom and half on the
| top of the horizontal line.
| bglazer wrote:
| Make a list of lat/long for every person, pick the middle
| entries?
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Someone else posted this link:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_median
|
| It's the point the that minimizes the distance to all the input
| points in Euclidean space.
| paxys wrote:
| I'm going to guess this isn't what they actually mean. It's
| more likely just the spot where an equal number of people
| live left and right as well as above and below it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| You might be right, but I was more curious about what a
| technically accurate reading of the statement would mean.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| OK, so it is basically/usually the a real data point closest
| to the mean location.
|
| For something like population, where there are few gaps in
| data points, you would expect them to be basically the same
| because there is probably someone within a few miles of the
| mean.
|
| This means that an extra person in Hawaii impact the "median
| center of population" more than an extra person in San
| Francisco because the mean is part of the calculation,
| opposed to just a stack ranking. Is this correct?
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Does this include Puerto Rico?
| r00fus wrote:
| I'm guessing it doesn't - as PR is unincorporated. However,
| census is used in all sorts of things aside from
| voting/representation, so who knows.
| deciduously wrote:
| Puerto Rico's population is around 3 million, less than a
| percent of the 331 million population of the US. I wouldn't
| expect more than a slight change to the graph either way.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is quite far south so it would have a significant impact
| on the mean, although not the median
| kens wrote:
| The computation uses the 50 states (or 48 conterminous states
| for calculations made prior to 1960) and the District of
| Columbia.
|
| Source: https://www2.census.gov/programs-
| surveys/decennial/2010/prog...
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Follows the shape of the gulf coast from northwest FL to Mexico
| approximately which would track the southwesterly flow of people
| ks2048 wrote:
| I know there's a lot of reasons for this, but I think weather is
| one of the biggest. I wonder if that ever reverses from extreme
| heat. Is a full month of 110+ degrees having people reconsider
| Arizona?
| jiveturkey wrote:
| A recent Atlantic article says, no. The county where Phoenix
| is, is still the fastest growing county in the USA, for
| multiple years running.
|
| Most of the year the weather is good, apparently. Throw in air
| conditioning de rigeur, and cheap housing (due to no artificial
| supply restriction), and I guess you have the formula for
| population growth. Perhaps some politics are part of it too.
| Total taxes are half that of California. Probably not the #1
| tax friendly state, but certainly up there.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Dewpoint and relative humidity are huge factors in how
| temperature is felt. 110F in Arizona might still feel more
| comfortable than 90F in eastern regions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100th_meridian_west
|
| >In the United States, this meridian roughly marks the boundary
| between the semi-arid climate in the west and the humid
| continental and humid subtropical climates in the east and is
| used as shorthand to refer to that arid-humid boundary.
| jonah wrote:
| I don't know. I was just in Northwest Arkansas with 100degF
| and 99% humidity and then a day later in Phoenix Arizona with
| 100degF and [?]30% humidity (at midnight!) and it felt
| similarly oppressive...
| topspin wrote:
| I went the opposite direction of that line several years ago.
| It's been high 70's and low 80's all summer. Two low 90 days so
| far.
|
| Last winter was mild as well.
|
| So yeah, that could happen. Lots of water here as well.
| paxys wrote:
| Do we need a contemporary reason for it? People have been
| migrating away from the northeast since the early 1800s, and
| that is still going on today.
| psychlops wrote:
| Arizona is tax friendly to retirees allowing a more comfortable
| living on a fixed income. That can pay for a lot of air
| conditioning (or swamp coolers).
| bachmeier wrote:
| Air conditioning changed everything:
| https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-air-conditioning
|
| > Engineer Henry Galson went on to develop a more compact,
| inexpensive version of the window air conditioner and set up
| production lines for several manufacturers. By 1947, 43,000 of
| these systems were sold -- and, for the first time, homeowners
| could enjoy air conditioning without having to make expensive
| upgrades.
|
| > By the late 1960s, most new homes had central air
| conditioning, and window air conditioners were more affordable
| than ever, fueling population growth in hot-weather states like
| Arizona and Florida. Air conditioning is now in nearly 100
| million American homes, representing 87 percent of all
| households, according to the Energy Information Administration.
| Eumenes wrote:
| People are way more tolerant of extreme heat compared to cold
| bell-cot wrote:
| Yes...up to a point. And there's the similar/related issue of
| extreme drought. If the wells and pipes run dry, the local
| population density tends to plummet.
| digging wrote:
| Which is an artifact of a past age and foolish to bank on.
| Cold can be dangerous but we basically have what we need to
| survive at any low temperature in North America.
|
| However, heat can't be combatted when you're outside in it
| with the same effectiveness. It reaches a point where the air
| temperature is simply lethal. It reaches a point where the
| paved ground burns whatever touches it. It degrades our
| medicines and damages our tools. We've already begun to
| experience these effects and it will only ever get worse.
| People should be moving away from hot areas, but instead
| they're running their AC 24/7 so they can keep pretending
| they made a good choice a little longer.
| resolutebat wrote:
| Until you get to wet bulb saturation extremes, you can
| survive heat as long as you have a supply of water. Cold
| temperatures, on the other hand, will kill you straight up.
| ke88y wrote:
| Also, AC uses way less carbon than heat.
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(page generated 2023-08-10 23:00 UTC)