Most birds per square mile (ranking of the 50 states) (1 Viewer)

I was fairly bored at work today, so I made a little formula that takes the square miles of each state and the number of bird species in each state and then ranks the states in order of most bird species per square mile. Clearly I'm not claiming this is anything scientific or whether or not a higher ranking means there's better birding in that state. I just thought it was a fun little list to make up. The number to the right in parenthesis is the state's ranking in terms of least square miles. And the final number to the right is the difference between the state's size and the original ranking. A high positive number is good. A negative number is bad. New York finished with a 7 (the highest) and Wisconsin with a -7 (the lowest). Anyway, enough babbling. Here's the list:

1. Rhode Island (1) = 0
2. Delaware (2) = 0
3. Connecticut (3) = 0
4. New Jersey (4) = 0
5. Massachusetts (7) = 2
6. New Hampshire (5) = -1
7. Vermont (6) = -1
8. Maryland (9) = 1
9. Hawaii (8) = -1
10. West Virginia (10) = 0
11. South Carolina (11) = 0
12. Maine (12) = 0
13. Indiana (13) = 0
14. Virginia (16) = 2
15. Ohio (17) [t] = 2
16. Kentucky (14) [t] = -2
17. Tennessee (15) = -2
18. Louisiana (20) = 2
19. Pennsylvania (18) = -1
20. New York (27) = 7
21. Mississippi (19) = -2
22. North Carolina (28) = 6
23. Alabama (21) = -2
24. Florida (29) [t] = 5
25. Illinois (26) [t] = 1
26. Arkansas (22) = -4
27. Iowa (25) = -2
28. Georgia (24) = -4
29. Oklahoma (31) = 2
30. Wisconsin (23) = -7
31. Washington (33) = 2
32. Missouri (30) = -2
33. Nebraska (35) = 2
34. Kansas (36) = 2
35. North Dakota (32) = -3
36. South Dakota (34) = -2
37. Utah (38) = 1
38. Oregon (42) [t] = 4
39. Minnesota (39) [t] = 0
40. Arizona (45) = 5
41. Colorado (43) = 2
42. Idaho (37) = -5
43. New Mexico (46) = 3
44. Michigan (40) = -4
45. Nevada (44) = -1
46. Wyoming (41) = -5
47. California (48) = 1
48. Montana (47) = -1
49. Texas (49) = 0
50. Alaska (50) = 0

As most would have predicted, the smaller NE states along the Atlantic Flyway are all at the top.

Feel free to discuss, comment, or let me know that I really need to get more work done.

statistics

The problem here is that if the # of species is pretty well uniform across the states, then you will end up with a ranking of the states by land mass, which is close to what happened here.

If instead you ranked the overall bird population by state and then normalized the data by land mass, that would be very interesting..... and very difficult to validate.

You also need to consider seasonal variations due to migration.

Mike

Good Lord! Can I come to not work for you?

mike scott said:

The problem here is that if the # of species is pretty well uniform across the states, then you will end up with a ranking of the states by land mass, which is close to what happened here.

Click to expand...

Haha, I realized this before starting...however some states have had over 600 species while others have never hit 300. So it's not completely uniform. I was really just interested in seeing which states had the biggest difference between land mass and ranking (the positive/negative numbers on the right).