Monday Trivia, No. 156 [Michael Cain wins!]

38 thoughts on “Monday Trivia, No. 156 [Michael Cain wins!]”

1. Is this a measure of the percentage of residents who have a bachelor’s degree or higher?Report

2. Percentage of residents who are full-time college students?Report

   1. Something along this path. I only know most of these places because of affiliated colleges/universities.

      Though Passaic, NJ is a curious one.Report

      1. I was going to guess start-up companies spun off from a nearby university. I notice that the western part of the country is heavily over-represented relative to population, and the southern states under-represented.Report

   2. Maybe it’s the percentage of residents who graduated from a university in the town.Report

   3. When I lived in Davis, jury duty was a hoot. Court is in Woodland, so everybody is either a Woodland local who knows everybody else in Woodland (teachers especially), a professor at UC Davis, or a student at UC Davis. Every time the judge asks the rest of the pool “does anybody know Juror X?” a half dozen hands go up.Report

3. Amost all are college towns except Miami Beach. Now the City of Miami at least has FIU, which is has a lot more students than people realize. But Miami Beach is a higher education waste land.Report

   1. Isn’t the University of Miami right across the causeway in Coral Gables?Report

4. Percent of residents employed by a university? Hmm, though I’d expect to see more small college towns like South Bend in there.Report

5. Could be immigrants with a college degree?Report

6. percent of residents who are lawyers?Report

   1. LOL! I wish; I’d move back to Santa Barbara!Report

      1. I know that the percentage of lawyers in SLO is rather high…Report

7. Tuesday hint: several comments have already been made noting the high percentage of college cities. This is definitely a related fact, but the list relates to a behavior. As with so many other lists, we are working with percentages of the population.Report

8. Most bicycle commuters.Report

   1. Local joke… How can you tell you’re in Boulder? When the $500 car next to you at the stop light has a $5,000 bicycle on the roof rack.Report

      1. Heh. I was down at the mall yesterday and commented on this dudes beautiful bike. It was one of those big tire jobbies. He told me to pick it up. Thing weighed like ten pounds. Carbon fiber this and that; single small chain ring up front with an eleven ring cluster in the back; ultra-light disc brakes…. Definitely the finest machine I’ve ever seen. He was the owner of the company that makes em and he came to Boulder from his home in Minnesota to suss out retailers to sell em. Retail price: $5850. I told him he came to the right place.Report

   2. Just now saw this guess, and I think it is correct.

      Unless the real answer is, “Most pedestrians run into by bicycle commuters who fail to obey traffic laws.” Though Austin, TX would presumably be near the top of this list in that case.Report

      1. I’m a bit skeptical it’s bike-related. Too many year-round very hot climes listed that are not necessarily known for “enviro-consciousness”. I’m looking at LA and FL (x3) in particular. People who have to commute to office jobs in hot climes, and are not super-enviro-conscious as a rule, prefer A/C cars.Report

      2. I’m now certain that he’s correct, because I looked up Michael’s answer. I also know how Burt grouped them (I’m not sure if he’s waiting for that as part of the answer), but since I looked it up, I won’t say it out loud.Report

   3. Completely off topic, but two pieces of information for whoever is in charge of software quality control…

      Recently, when I follow a link from the main page to a specific article with comments, most everything shows up but the download eventually hangs waiting for fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net, the download icon on the Firefox tab spins forever, and something is using ~25% of a processor core worth of CPU. Mac OS X 10.9.2, Firefox 28.0. Problem doesn’t happen on Safari; visually the difference is that Safari actually shows something for the Tweets widget, Firefox doesn’t.

      Very recently, the collection of reply text entry widgets stays at the bottom of the page, even if I’m replying to an existing comment clear up at the top.Report

   4. This is the correct answer. I’m way busy today so… Get Chris to explain it further.Report

      1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_bicycle_commuters

         They’re grouped by cities within a single percentage point (that is, between 2.0 and 2.9%, 3.0 and 3.9%, and so on).

         I am still pretty sure that Austin would be #1 in pedestrians hit by bicycle commuters not obeying traffic laws, and perhaps just bicycle commuters not obeying traffic laws, because for the first, I would put us over the top, and for the second, that’s every bicycle commuter in Austin. Red light? That’s for cars! Cross walk with pedestrians crossing perpendicular to me? They’ll get out of the way! I need to get around some cars? That’s what the sidewalk filled with people walking is for!Report

      2. The only two things I remember about bicycle commuting in Austin 25+ years ago are (1) I didn’t ever hit a pedestrian and (2) the lights were timed going up Congress Avenue from the bridge to the Capitol grounds, and I could win beer bets by making it from a standing start at 1st Street when the light turned green and get across 11th onto the grounds before that light turned red. Of course, I was a whole lot lighter and fitter then, and there was probably a lot less traffic than today.Report

      3. They did a “study” a few years ago, timing how long it took to get from somewhere just south of the bridge to the capitol on Congress, either on a bike, in a car, on a bus, or walking, and the bikes beat the cars pretty handily.Report

      4. Wishful thinking there on my part. Make that 35+ years ago…Report

9. Yes, U. of Miami is in Coral Gables, but these are 3 different cities: Miami Beach, Miami, Coral Gables.
   I like the bicycle answer. Also, number of people wearing flip-flops as their preferred footwear.Report

10. percentage of students who smoke pot?Report

11. Percentage of residents who work for venture-funded start-ups.Report

12. Free trade coffee consumed per capita?

    Vegetarians/vegans per capita?

    Umm… protests on the quad per capita?Report

13. The groupings look like, but not quite, NCAA conferences. There are enough odd men in/out that I’m not exactly sure, but I’m leaning towards something college sports related.Report

    1. Assuming that you’re right, then since Davis is #1 I’m going to guess it has something to do with the ratio of NCAA championships and scholarships. (The Aggies are famous for not giving out sports scholarships.)Report

       1. Or maybe not ratios. Maybe it’s something simpler, like most NCAA championships won by teams without a scholarship player.Report

14. Percentage of residents who self-report engaging in behavior that qualifies as binge drinking.Report

15. Note that the items are grouped into distinct brackets. Unless that’s a red herring, which seems unlikely, the answer probably isn’t a continuous variable like “percentage of whatever that whatever.”Report

    1. If this were a list of the fifty largest cities grouped so, that would be one thing. But there are some pretty obscure cities on that list. It’s entirely probable that cities in the same brackets are tied by percentage.Report

    2. You can bracket continuous variables: 0-1% 1-5%, 5-10%, 10-20%,20-50%,50-75%, 75-100%
       Continuous and bracketed.Report

       1. Yeah, you can. It seems odd to me, though.

          I mean…I was trying to lead people astray because I thought it was so obvious.Report

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