25 Maps That Describe America 

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Despite being just one country, anyone who lives in the United States knows that no two states are alike. Here are 25 maps that show some of these regional differences.

\'s GovBeat uses data from the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies to pinpoint the second-most practiced religion in each state. (Christianity is first in each state.)

2. The Most Commonly Spoken Language in Each State Besides English and Spanish

Slate\'s Ben Blatt used data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. He created several other language maps, too, including each state\'s top Native American, Scandinavian, and African language.

3. The Most Famous Brand From Every State

Steve Lovelace tried to determine the corporation or brand that best represents each state. (He sells a poster version of this map.)

Geography professor Andrew Shears has made a couple versions of this map.

5. The Most Popular TV Show Set in Each State [Rebuttal]

And this version, from Business Insider, cuts out most of the reality shows.

6. The Most Iconic Food Chain in Each State

This map from Thrillist shows "the most noteworthy restaurant chain (with an emphasis on fast food where possible) associated with each state."

One of many maps examining regional dialect variation created by Joshua Katz.

8. The Greatest Sports Figure From Each State

ranked the 50 all-time greatest sports figures from every state. Here\'s a look at each state\'s best.

9. The Most Popular Baseball Team by County

In honor of 2014 Opening Day, Facebook released data on the most popular team in every county, based on the number of likes of team pages. As Darren Everson of

noted, three teams don\'t have a plurality of (Facebook) fans in any U.S. county: the New York Mets, Oakland A\'s, and Toronto Blue Jays. Here\'s a closer look at that key:

Over at Wonkblog, Roberto A. Ferdman and Christopher Ingraham set out to see where cats are more popular than dogs. The purplish states are dog country, while cats inhabit the greenish spaces.

The folks at social networking site MyLife created this map, which resizes the states based on their population. Look at poor Wyoming squeezed in there.

Using 2010 U.S. Census data, Nik Freeman highlighted the 47% of the country that remains unoccupied.

This map used Census data to determine that half the people in the United States live in these 146 shaded counties. You can see a list of those counties on the original Business Insider post.

Melissa Stanger, Melia Robinson & Mike Nudelman/Business Insider

16. The Most Popular Girls\' Names in Each State

Using Social Security Administration data on the top baby names of 2013.

17. The Most Popular Boys\' Names in Each State

18. The Largest Immigrant Population in Each State

Jens Manuel Krogstad and Michael Keegan at Pew Research Center

You can see the changing immigration patterns on Krogstad and Keegan\'s animated map.

19. The Most Common Cause of Death in Each State Besides Heart Disease and Cancer

One more from Ben Blatt. (Here\'s what the map looks like when you leave in heart disease and cancer, which lead to more deaths than the next eight causes of death combined.)

In 1973, California State University geography professor George Etzel Pearcy suggested that the U.S. redraw its antiquated state boundaries and narrow the overall number of states to 38.

21. The Most Iconic Soft Drink in Each State

Real estate site Movoto used data from Forbes to find the richest American in each state (see larger).

23. How Much Is $100 Really Worth in Each State?

How far does $100 go? This map, which comes from the Tax Foundation and uses data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, answers that question state by state.

We teamed up with CareerBuilder to find the "most unique" job in each state, using a measurement called location quotient (LQ).

The Afternoon Map is a semi-regular feature in which we post maps and infographics. In the afternoon. Semi-regularly. 

Man Buys Two Metric Tons of LEGO Bricks; Sorts Them Via Machine Learning

Jacques Mattheij made a small, but awesome, mistake. He went on eBay one evening and bid on a bunch of bulk LEGO brick auctions, then went to sleep. Upon waking, he discovered that he was the high bidder on many, and was now the proud owner of two tons of LEGO bricks. (This is about 4400 pounds.) He wrote, "[L]esson 1: if you win almost all bids you are bidding too high."

Mattheij had noticed that bulk, unsorted bricks sell for something like €10/kilogram, whereas sets are roughly €40/kg and rare parts go for up to €100/kg. Much of the value of the bricks is in their sorting. If he could reduce the entropy of these bins of unsorted bricks, he could make a tidy profit. While many people do this work by hand, the problem is enormous—just the kind of challenge for a computer. Mattheij writes:

There are 38000+ shapes and there are 100+ possible shades of color (you can roughly tell how old someone is by asking them what lego colors they remember from their youth).

In the following months, Mattheij built a proof-of-concept sorting system using, of course, LEGO. He broke the problem down into a series of sub-problems (including "feeding LEGO reliably from a hopper is surprisingly hard," one of those facts of nature that will stymie even the best system design). After tinkering with the prototype at length, he expanded the system to a surprisingly complex system of conveyer belts (powered by a home treadmill), various pieces of cabinetry, and "copious quantities of crazy glue."

Here\'s a video showing the current system running at low speed:

The key part of the system was running the bricks past a camera paired with a computer running a neural net-based image classifier. That allows the computer (when sufficiently trained on brick images) to recognize bricks and thus categorize them by color, shape, or other parameters. Remember that as bricks pass by, they can be in any orientation, can be dirty, can even be stuck to other pieces. So having a flexible software system is key to recognizing—in a fraction of a second—what a given brick is, in order to sort it out. When a match is found, a jet of compressed air pops the piece off the conveyer belt and into a waiting bin.

After much experimentation, Mattheij rewrote the software (several times in fact) to accomplish a variety of basic tasks. At its core, the system takes images from a webcam and feeds them to a neural network to do the classification. Of course, the neural net needs to be "trained" by showing it lots of images, and telling it what those images represent. Mattheij\'s breakthrough was allowing the machine to effectively train itself, with guidance: Running pieces through allows the system to take its own photos, make a guess, and build on that guess. As long as Mattheij corrects the incorrect guesses, he ends up with a decent (and self-reinforcing) corpus of training data. As the machine continues running, it can rack up more training, allowing it to recognize a broad variety of pieces on the fly.

Here\'s another video, focusing on how the pieces move on conveyer belts (running at slow speed so puny humans can follow). You can also see the air jets in action:

In an email interview, Mattheij told Mental Floss that the system currently sorts LEGO bricks into more than 50 categories. It can also be run in a color-sorting mode to bin the parts across 12 color groups. (Thus at present you\'d likely do a two-pass sort on the bricks: once for shape, then a separate pass for color.) He continues to refine the system, with a focus on making its recognition abilities faster. At some point down the line, he plans to make the software portion open source. You\'re on your own as far as building conveyer belts, bins, and so forth.

Check out Mattheij\'s writeup in two parts for more information. It starts with an overview of the story, followed up with a deep dive on the software. He\'s also tweeting about the project (among other things). And if you look around a bit, you\'ll find bulk LEGO brick auctions online—it\'s definitely a thing!

On Veterans Day, 1921, President Warren G. Harding presided over an interment ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery for an unknown soldier who died during World War I. Since then, three more soldiers have been added to the Tomb of the Unknowns (also known as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) memorial—and one has been disinterred. Below, a few things you might not know about the historic site and the rituals that surround it.

1. THERE WERE FOUR UNKNOWN SOLDIER CANDIDATES FOR THE WWI CRYPT. 

To ensure a truly random selection, four unknown soldiers were exhumed from four different WWI American cemeteries in France. U.S. Army Sgt. Edward F. Younger, who was wounded in combat and received the Distinguished Service Medal, was chosen to select a soldier for burial at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington. After the four identical caskets were lined up for his inspection, Younger chose the third casket from the left by placing a spray of white roses on it. The chosen soldier was transported to the U.S. on the USS

, while the other three were reburied at Meuse Argonne American Cemetery in France.

2. SIMILARLY, TWO UNKNOWN SOLDIERS WERE SELECTED AS POTENTIAL REPRESENTATIVES OF WWII.

One had served in the European Theater and the other served in the Pacific Theater. The Navy’s only active-duty Medal of Honor recipient, Hospitalman 1st Class William R. Charette, chose one of the identical caskets to go on to Arlington. The other was given a burial at sea.

3. THERE WERE FOUR POTENTIAL KOREAN WAR REPRESENTATIVES.

The soldiers were disinterred from the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. This time, Army Master Sgt. Ned Lyle was the one to choose the casket. Along with the unknown soldier from WWII, the unknown Korean War soldier lay in the Capitol Rotunda from May 28 to May 30, 1958.

Medal of Honor recipient U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Allan Jay Kellogg, Jr., selected the Vietnam War representative during a ceremony at Pearl Harbor.

Thanks to advances in mitochondrial DNA testing, scientists were eventually able to identify the remains of the Vietnam War soldier. On May 14, 1998, the remains were exhumed and tested, revealing the “unknown” soldier to be Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie (pictured). Blassie was shot down near An Loc, Vietnam, in 1972. After his identification, Blassie’s family had him moved to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis. Instead of adding another unknown soldier to the Vietnam War crypt, the crypt cover has been replaced with one bearing the inscription, “Honoring and Keeping Faith with America’s Missing Servicemen, 1958-1975.”

6. THE MARBLE SCULPTORS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR MANY OTHER U.S. MONUMENTS. 

The Tomb was designed by architect Lorimer Rich and sculptor Thomas Hudson Jones, but the actual carving was done by the Piccirilli Brothers. Even if you don’t know them, you know their work: The brothers carved the 19-foot statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial, the lions outside of the New York Public Library, the

in Central Park, the DuPont Circle Fountain in D.C., and much more.

7. THE TOMB HAS BEEN GUARDED 24/7 SINCE 1937. 

Tomb Guards come from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment "The Old Guard". Serving the U.S. since 1784, the Old Guard is the oldest active infantry unit in the military. They keep watch over the memorial every minute of every day, including when the cemetery is closed and in inclement weather.

Members of the Old Guard must apply for the position. If chosen, the applicant goes through an intense training period, in which they must pass tests on weapons, ceremonial steps, cadence, military bearing, uniform preparation, and orders. Although military members are known for their neat uniforms, it’s said that the Tomb Guards have the highest standards of them all. A knowledge test quizzes applicants on their memorization—including punctuation—of 35 pages on the history of the Tomb. Once they’re selected, Guards “walk the mat” in front of the Tomb for anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours, depending on the time of year and time of day. They work in 24-hour shifts, however, and when they aren’t walking the mat, they’re in the living quarters beneath it. This gives the sentinels time to complete training and prepare their uniforms, which can take up to eight hours.

The Tomb Guard badge is the least awarded badge in the Army, and the second least awarded badge in the overall military. (The first is the astronaut badge.) Tomb Guards are held to the highest standards of behavior, and can have their badge taken away for any action on or off duty that could bring disrespect to the Tomb. And that’s for the entire lifetime of the Tomb Guard, even well after his or her guarding duty is over. For the record, it seems that Tomb Guards are rarely female—only three women have held the post.

10. THE STEPS THE GUARDS PERFORM HAVE SPECIFIC MEANING.

Everything the guards do is a series of 21, which alludes to the 21-gun salute. According to TombGuard.org:

The Sentinel does not execute an about face, rather they stop on the 21st step, then turn and face the Tomb for 21 seconds. They then turn to face back down the mat, change the weapon to the outside shoulder, mentally count off 21 seconds, then step off for another 21 step walk down the mat. They face the Tomb at each end of the 21 step walk for 21 seconds. The Sentinel then repeats this over and over until the Guard Change ceremony begins.

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