The Beer Belly of America

At FloatingSheep.org, they're willing to search for and analyze almost anything that falls within the realm of human experience. Here's their text:  Sometimes it's mundane (pizza) and sometimes it is contentious (abortion) but most of the time it falls somewhere in between. Such as, where can I get a drink?

Seems they were quite surprised, however, when they did a simple comparison between grocery stores and bars to discover a remarkable geographical phenomenon. They expected that grocery stores would outnumber bars and for most parts of North America that is the case.

But we could also clearly see the "beer belly of America" peeking out through the "t-shirt of data".

Starting in Illinois, the beer belly expands up into Wisconsin and first spreads westward through Iowa/Minnesota and then engulfs Nebraska, and the Dakotas before petering out (like a pair of love handles) in Wyoming and Montana.

The clustering was so apparent that they wanted to check how it compared to the "official" data on this activity. So they gathered 2007 Census Country Business Pattern on the number of establishments listed in NACIS code 722410 (Drinking places (alcoholic beverages)) and divided by Census estimates for state population totals for 2009 and found remarkable correspondence with their data.

On average there are 1.52 bars for every 10,000 people in the U.S. but the states that make up the beer belly of America are highly skewed from this average.

More interesting stats at Floating Sheep folks.