Happy Halloween!

Ah, Halloween. That special time of year (and my personal favorite holiday) where people don costumes and eat far more candy than they should. An occasion for spending time with friends and frightening off the evil spirits, and carving jack-o'-lanterns to remind us of the souls trapped in Purgatory. Or just because it's a fun tradition. 

In honor of Halloween tomorrow, here is a map created by Esri showing where the most money in America was spent on children's Halloween costumes last year.

Unsurprisingly, urban areas tend to spend more money, though sometimes they are outshone by the folk in suburban areas, which is shown by doughnut-like shapes of darker color-- for examples, look at the ones around Minneapolis, Minnesota, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Orlando, Floria.

I hope you all dress up and have a happy and safe Halloween!

Here is a larger version of the map.

Oil Spills by county

Since 1990, over 110 million gallons of crude oil and petroleum products have spilled from pipelines across America. The New York Times maps it all out by county here.

More than half of the spills occurred in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, where there are more pipelines and thus more potential for equipment failure and corrosion, two of the more prevalent causes for oil spills.

Pop vs. Soda

The eternal debate-- when it comes time to ask which flavors of carbonated beverage a restaurant or friend has on hand, do you ask what kind of pop they have, or do you ask if they have soda? Or perhaps you prefer to call it all coke?

Unsurprisingly, your word preference has a lot to do with your geographical location, as is shown with this map:

Personally, I call it 'pop,' and have been given much grief by a friend in Virginia about it for years. But my Michiganian (sorry, don't like the word Michigander. Makes me think of geese) pride forbids me from calling it anything else.

Cartogram from the 1930's

This map is from the 1930's and its form is based on the population according to the census of that year. The green areas indicate cities with greater than 50,000 people, and the size of the state is the amount of people living therein.

Michigan was a booming state in comparison in the 1930's!