Pharyngula

Posted by: iGollum | June 19, 2007 11:08 AM

Would be interesting to see if there are any local correlations with lifestyle parameters like education, occupation and sexual orientation...

Posted by: Roy | June 19, 2007 11:12 AM

Okay, I'll say it. I'd rather be in Philadelphia.

Posted by: synthesist | June 19, 2007 11:17 AM

.... I don't care what the explanation is, I've got my bags packed, all I need now is an airline ticket - by the way what sort of weather do they have in Philadelphia ?

Posted by: Rey Fox | June 19, 2007 11:19 AM

Probably because the men move west to enjoy the outdoor recreation, while women just want to stay inside and powder their noses and buy shoes or whatever it is they do.

Posted by: Teresa | June 19, 2007 11:21 AM

The Mississippi River vwas designed by God to keep us apart to prevent fornicatin'

Posted by: ajay | June 19, 2007 11:23 AM

Prevailing winds. The prevailing winds blow (very roughly) southwest-to-northeast. Women, being on average slightly lighter than men, tend to be swept further downwind.
This, incidentally, is why the few remaining women in the western and southwestern states tend to be very large. Their lighter, more aerodynamic sisters are long gone.

Posted by: Blake Stacey, OM | June 19, 2007 11:25 AM

I think my presence in Boston is making women swear off men forever.

That has to be it.

I mean, correlation equals causation, right?

Posted by: Dutch Vigilante | June 19, 2007 11:39 AM

Maybe a lot of women who wsih to make carreers think the best place to do so is in the east near new ork and the like. The male dominance in the west might be because of the ironically seen was of los angeles. (Hot, lots of bikinis). The small male bump (no pun intended) in florida probably are old guys who's wives have died.

Maybe a corresponing birth rate statictic would shed further light on the situation.

Posted by: Coragyps | June 19, 2007 11:41 AM

Age related? Women outlive men by quite a big margin, so the norm should be to have more women in towns with old-ish populations. But the east/west divide is still a bit puzzling.

Posted by: Carlie | June 19, 2007 11:46 AM

Great. There's a big blue dot smack dab on top of my hometown of Austin

Hm, tonight's my last night near Austin on a research trip. Perhaps I need to go into town and hit the bars...

(married! kidding dear, if you see this)

Posted by: gwangung | June 19, 2007 11:47 AM

Uh, am I the only one noticing that by and large the big blue dots are in cities with exceptionally large gay male populations? seattle, san francisco, LA, houston...

hmmmm. Perhaps demographers need to think more carefully about how they define "single".

Or get gay marriage legalized to take care of this artifact...

Posted by: Jon Eccles | June 19, 2007 12:16 PM

It's a shame that the map shows the number differential rather than by percentage. That could be a simple explanation for many of the larger dots - they represent an unremarkable statistical tendency, in an area with lots of people. The famously male state of Alaska, on the other hand, looks more balanced than it actually is.

Posted by: Foxy | June 19, 2007 12:20 PM

The same sort of thing occurred in Africa. Going by the historical record then, clearly the gender divide is caused by the Europeans and English taking the men away to work in the fields, and the Chinese and the Russians taking away the women as harem girls and household slaves.

Only Texas comes out on top. Which is just the way we like it.

Posted by: Roy S | June 19, 2007 12:24 PM

The map would be more interesting if they scaled the dots relative to the total local population. Tens of thousands of excess single men in LA isn't necessarily as big a problem as a lower surplus in a smaller city. Looking at relative numbers would make it more obvious that the single men in Austin are screwed. Or not.

(yes, I'm a bitter single male in Austin)

(who got his last girlfriend by convincing her to move here from another state, appropriately enough...)

Posted by: Talapus | June 19, 2007 12:36 PM

I'm going to take a stab:
1) Predominance of women in aging populations, especially on the East Coast, noted by one of the commenters above
2) Relative willingness/propensity of men to relocate for employment (I'm going to get into trouble for this one.)
3) Prevalence of technology and new construction jobs in the larger blue dot cities, most of which seem to be relatively strong economic growth areas compared with the red dot locations.

I haven't seen the original article, but if you expand the map to read the fine print, these numbers appear to be absolute, not relative to population, so I'm not sure how meaningful they really are: 40,000 spare single males is only 0.33% out of a population of 12 million(? more?) in the Los Angeles conurbation.

Posted by: Julie Stahlhut | June 19, 2007 12:40 PM

Well, you know the old saying: "Men are from Nebraska. Women are from Delaware."

Posted by: uncle frogy | June 19, 2007 12:50 PM

I think Reason is looking in the right direction along with age disparity.
more construction & gardening much less manufacturing in the west more work for males, many rental houses in my area are filled with single young men leaving the sex life aside who came here to work in mostly the construction industry.
how do the sats. break down with regards to other criteria, age, education, work life, imagration and migration statis. otherwise the stats are kind of a fun opener for humor but not a lot of usefull information, which is the point of the post right.

Posted by: alfred | June 19, 2007 1:08 PM

I'M WILLING TO BET...

That the reason why more single men are on the west coast is due to job market demands.

There are probably more men who hold applicable degrees to the tech sector and related fields that California would provide that the east coast does not.

Posted by: Mark T. | June 19, 2007 1:10 PM

"The Mississippi River vwas designed by God to keep us apart to prevent fornicatin'"

Just like Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn sang about, right?

Posted by: KevinD | June 19, 2007 1:21 PM

I think that the blue dominance in large western cities has been explained (lots of jobs in male-dominated fields like construction). It's still not clear to me why major urban areas east of the Mississipi should have more single women.

If you squint and look at the smaller population centers you will note that they don't seem to follow the same pattern. For example, here in central Illinois we have two little red dots and two little blue dots. This clearly supports the migration hypothesis (people do tend to migrate to big cities much more than to smaller communities) as an explanation for the urban east/west divide.

Posted by: Brian X | June 19, 2007 1:27 PM

I'd be interested to know if some of the red dots (at least the one around Boston) correlate with a particular area being a college town, since it's known that there are more women in higher ed than men. I know when I went to Boston College, the f/m ratio was around 55/45, and I don't know if it's changed much, but I doubt that's terribly non-representative.

Posted by: Thomas Robey | June 19, 2007 1:35 PM

A very detailed explanation of this phenomenon is offered in the February (Valentines Day) issue of National Geographic.

Posted by: MyaR | June 19, 2007 1:43 PM

Hmph. Largest female plurality area. No wonder I'm not meeting anyone. (Even if it is 185K from a population of what? 16 million? I wonder what it is for NYC itself.)

Posted by: RLaing | June 19, 2007 2:13 PM

Obviously, single men and single women are trying to get as far away from each other as they can. Perhaps, if you're single past a certain point in your life, there's a reason for it.

Posted by: Melusine | June 19, 2007 2:30 PM

A few years ago a magazine had an article on how Brazoria County (near Houston) had one of the largest single male populations in the country. It was because of the prisons - there are a bunch of them surrounding Houston. They said single, not single and available. Also, I don't know how those coming from Mexico affect the demographics, but I suspect they do, for California as well.

Posted by: Cyrus | June 19, 2007 2:38 PM

I like how many people are chiming in to say "my love life sucks, (despite/because) of what this map shows." And, well, I have to say the same thing. The only dots in New England are red, and the only dot not counting Boston itself is just a few miles north of me, and yet here I am, single.

Posted by: Jonathan Lubin | June 19, 2007 2:43 PM

Easy to explain the excess of men in LA: guys come up from Mexico to work, leaving their family behind. As a New Yorker, I can't imagine any reason for the excess of women in the East generally.

Posted by: Brandon | June 19, 2007 3:13 PM

There's a huge red dot right on top of my hometown.

...I know what I'm doing this summer.

Posted by: Rey Fox | June 19, 2007 3:31 PM

But, Kseniya, we set our clocks, and thus live our lives, to offset the difference. At best, the sun can be said to rise later in any area that's on the western edge of a time zone. Like Boise. If you travel to northern Idaho, where they live by Pacific time, the sunsets are about an hour earlier by their clocks than they are in Boise. I like it the Boise way. At this time of year, the sunset is still visible at 10 PM.

But you can also get this sort of effect in places like Indiana and even the central panhandle of Florida.

I didn't really think there was much difference in sleeping in patterns between men and women anyway. *shrug*

Posted by: VWXYNot? | June 19, 2007 3:55 PM

Someone should link that map to Expedia to help people plan their holidays. There seems to be enough demand just on this thread.

I don't seem to know any single people at all any more - maybe that's why Canada has apparently ceased to exist?

Posted by: John Bode | June 19, 2007 4:06 PM

Places like Houston are easy enough to explain -- big oil town, not many women are roughnecks.

Places like Austin and San Antonio are a little more puzzling, but someone else mentioned the possibility of counting migrant/undocumented workers, and that makes a little sense. Austin's been growing like a tick, meaning lots of construction, meaning lots of jobs for carpenters, masons, landscapers, etc., drawing them from nearby areas. That's probably not enough to account for the discrepancy, though.

Posted by: notthedroids | June 19, 2007 4:36 PM

A friend remarked that the map should be, of course, *pink* and blue.

Posted by: Jessica Guilford | June 19, 2007 4:51 PM

I was being too flip, probably, in suggesting that gay men are the only reason why the Bay Area would come up skewed to males, and I apologize for that. Though, for chrissakes, it's not like I meant it as though it were a bad thing.

I would be pretty damned surprised if the number of lesbians in the Bay Area were greater than or equal to the number of gay men. Gay men being more common to begin with.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 19, 2007 5:03 PM

Rey, your eminently reasonable and brazenly insightful analysis has knocked the wind completely out from under my deliberately inane theory! Whatever shall I do?!?

:-)

Posted by: Rey Fox | June 19, 2007 5:12 PM

Well, for starters, you could fetch me a Coke.

Posted by: JImC | June 19, 2007 5:25 PM

The chart doesn't say whether it defines "single" and "unmarried" as synonymous, which they aren't

Unmarried means single and fair game to me:-)

Posted by: LC | June 19, 2007 5:49 PM

Just another thank you for a couple of very big laughs - and a few smaller chuckles.

Posted by: Jeb, FCD | June 19, 2007 6:45 PM

I nominate Comments 1 & 10 for Mollies!

Posted by: False Prophet | June 19, 2007 6:54 PM

The "Duckman" animated series had an episode where the United States was divided in half between the sexes:

"The East, known for its culture, was given to the women. The West, known for its cattle, was given to the men."

Posted by: Ken Mareld | June 19, 2007 7:37 PM

Didn't somebody once say "Go west young man!"
Sam Clemens or PT Barnum. Census figures have probably
always shown this. I was offered a job in Alaska when I was single. Ugh, too many men, too few women. Santa Barbara was the place I chose to be. In the 70's a gold mine. Little makeup allowed prediction of what she looked like in the morning. I'm sorry if that sounds sexist but I always believed in WYSIWYG. I'm now in Washington state where pasty pale is back in vogue. I love it. I am now (rare in America) color blind as to race or ethnicity. When people complain about the browning of America I say Yahooo!

Posted by: kellbelle1020 | June 19, 2007 8:01 PM

Hmmm. I seem to have the opposite problem than most - I get more male attention than I'd like here in Chicago as it is. Maybe I should re-think my plan to move to Seattle...

Posted by: Keith Douglas | June 19, 2007 8:12 PM

Assuming that the eass/west distinction is significant (statistically) to any reasonable degree, I'd go with the immigration hypothesis. But that's what it is - a hypothesis.

Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | June 19, 2007 8:57 PM

For the record: Greeley's "west" was upstate New York.

Posted by: Leni | June 19, 2007 9:42 PM

ROFL at the unoficial Alaska state motto. That's hilarious.

I think it's a combination of the effect of women fleeing nerds and men fleeing from Sarah Jessica Parker.

Posted by: llewelly | June 19, 2007 10:12 PM

That big dot over Rochester, Minnesota is the Mayo Clinic. That means that there is a large collection of educated single women with high-income potential just waiting to be found. It's only about 85 miles south of Minneapolis.

Posted by: lawl | June 19, 2007 10:43 PM

Yes, at Caltech we said "the odds are good" etc about the guys (I never knew it had anything to do with Alaska). The ratio is down to 3:1 or better now, but still not great. The guys had another saying though- the odds are bad and the goods are worse. Made us women feel really loved.

Posted by: speedgraphic | June 20, 2007 12:14 AM

Why not try reading the actual National Geographic article for the most valid hypotheses about why this is the case?

The smart money is on the fact that the majority of illegal immigrants are male (and primary breadwinners for families residing in Mexico and beyond) and make their homes in the western states.

Posted by: Pymgy Loris | June 20, 2007 12:57 AM

@ speedgraphic,

ummm, because it's more fun to speculate about the reasons and make up funny explanations? Anyhow, I used to live under the red dot in St. Louis, but I never noticed a plethora of single women. That may be because I was on the lookout for single men though. :)

Posted by: OR | June 20, 2007 1:57 AM

Surfers on the west, women in finance on the east.

Posted by: eugene_X | June 20, 2007 2:09 AM

Well, as a single Seattleite male, I am finding this thoroughly depressing.

But I have to echo the sentiment of the poster above, that although some of the Western surplus male population may have something to do with the tech field, a larger factor is probably the presence of so many migrant workers in areas of the West, doing agriculture and construction work. There seems to be well-known pattern of young unmarried Mexican men coming up here to make some cash and build a nest egg.

Posted by: eugene | June 20, 2007 4:21 AM

Simple enough.. uptight women in the east coast can only be compared to geeks in the west coast. For eastern women no one is good enough; for the western boys, life in virtual reality and slavedom under tech companies are the reason. They all want to catch the next google and become millionaire! For Texas, everyone native is married by 21... who the heck is going to pick up the upsurge of men due to oil industry boom and war? So, they stay single. For east coast gals, west coast boys are too sensitive for their taste... so, they try to avoid moving west or move west only when they are married... wow... I am impressed by my own logic! Now it is time to provide a solution: guys in the west coast, it is time to declare your undying love for ps3, x-box and c++. They are your ideal mate... resposive and easy to score! Gals in New York, Boston... there is really no perfect man... read the statistics... you will only find single women around you... so quit searching or become... People in Florida, you should not check single when you are 80!

Posted by: Nance Confer | June 20, 2007 8:09 AM

It's because we have meetings. Geesh. You'd think the word would have gotten out by now.

We have meetings and decide what we want to do with our lives and then, when/if we need/want one of you, we let you know.

Nance

Posted by: kerry | June 20, 2007 10:15 AM

speaking from the inside (san francisco resident/gay), i think my crowd accounts for at least some of the split. it might also be interesting to consider how institutions of higher learning are focused east v west. we do not have large numbers of smaller liberal arts colleges out here.

Posted by: Greg Laden | June 20, 2007 6:40 PM

What I find interesting is that almost every explanation offered has to do with migration (or the effects of wind, etc.). AT this scale, I would think a very large number of people are pretty much where they were born. At the very least, one should consider the indigenous birth factors.

Clearly, the eastern half of the country has a lower condition and the western half a higher condition, thus Trivers-Willard causes more male births in the West and more female births in the East.

Posted by: ReRe | June 27, 2007 3:52 PM

I have to get the heck out of Philly and get over to LA!! ASAP!!

Posted by: ben | June 28, 2007 2:38 PM

posted: non-douchey single male on east coast who prefers salt water to styling gel. willing to travel. haha. i think the lack of blue dots on the e.c. is b/c we're a bit harder to find. and then once we are found, we can't seem to stay single. it's rough over here in charleston...sike. keep masturbating west coast. i'm sure that stripper at the club really did like you more than everyone else and wasn't just saying that for a benjamin...or a george in your case. wanker.

Posted by: Raymond A. Orr | July 3, 2007 9:03 PM

Here is a link showing hundreds of correlations with male/female ratios by state:

http://www.orderfromrandomness.com/usa360/?chart=mfmratio+aveelevate+srtclass=0

The ratio is greater in states with higher elevations and less rain. States with greater numbers of men also have higher suicide rates and for some reason, the women in those states tend to breastfeed their children more.

Posted by: DrFrank | July 20, 2007 9:54 AM

I'd be intrigued to get a similar plot for the UK - we're much tinier, so it'd be interesting to see if we have a vaguely comparable phenomenon.

Plus, I need to meet more single women.

Posted by: AKALucifer | September 5, 2008 3:39 PM

If you lay this over a map with the pH of rainwater across America you get an interesting correlation.

Posted by: Patricia | January 8, 2009 2:30 AM

There ARE lots of single guys here in the Bay Area. It's nice!!!

Posted by: Nom d'un chien | February 25, 2009 11:39 AM

So we'd better go to the east coast (I speak for us, men).

Posted by: Too Many Lesbos in NYC | August 22, 2009 4:01 PM

The single women in the NYC tri-state area are overwhelmingly gay. Don't come out here looking for straight single females. The gay women in NYC have stranded the straight guys with their reprobated decision making.