I heard this story on NPR last week but forgot to link to it: "NH pop. exceeds Maine for 1st time since 1800".

Interesting.

Labels: Maine, New Hampshire, population, statistics

I love numbers. I’m weird, I know, but I love sifting through them, finding raw data, making connections.

Which is one of the reasons I love the decennial Census of Population and Housing.

Needless to say I’m eagerly anticipating the 2010 Census.

I was poking around on the website the other day and found an interesting report - the Frequently Occurring Surnames from Census 2000.

Apparently in the US there are seven last names that are held by a million or more people (Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Miller and Davis). They account for 4 percent of the population – one in every 25 people. The name “Smith” alone is held by 2.3 million people - .9 percent of the population.

So I had to look up names I am related to - “Hall” (one of my grandmothers’ maiden names) is number 30, and “Edwards” is number 53.

No other names in the immediate families make the cut, although following closely to “Edwards” is “Nguyen” at number 57.

Isn't this interesting? And just think about the changes that 2010 will bring ...

Labels: census, population, statistics