It Sort of Makes Sense

[kevin_standlee]

Part of the work I'm doing on The Big Project involves plotting the geographic centroid of each US state and picking out a city to stand for that state's centroid. This doesn't always work well for odd sized states. It appears, for instance, that the geographic centroid of Maryland is Washington DC.

Comments

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Why would you be finding the center of each state and not of a population based region? A number of states (Colorado) aren't really well grounded in the behavior of the population or geography. Colorado, Washington, and Kansas/Missouri, frex.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Because we're in a hurry and location centroids are easier. We know they're terrible. I don't have to pick the exact centroid, but it's at least a notional center of the state. We hate doing this in states like California, which are really at least two "states" for logistical purposes; however, the client insists on us quoting a single rate good for anywhere in California to (say) anywhere in Florida.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Makes sense to me. Though a bit of a nightmare for you.