There’s been a post going around on Tumblr asking people from outside the US to label a map of American states, to varying levels of hilarious result.
I’ve compiled the maps I found into this heatmap of state recognition.
Methodology: for each map, I noted down which states were correctly labeled, which were put in the wrong spot, which had the wrong label, and which were very close (within one state, usually). Then each state received a weighted score: 5 times the number of correct labels minus 3 times the amount put in the wrong place minus the number of wrong labels plus 3 times the number of close labels.
Red states represent a score of zero, then positive scores go towards green and negative scores towards purple.
Some interesting observations: pretty much everyone knew where Texas was, even more people than knew where California and Florida were; the Virginias were often misplaced, but people knew that they theoretically existed; most people knew New York was vaguely on the eastern seaboard, but very few knew exactly where; however, someone put New York in Arkansas; Kentucky was very mislabeled by pretty much everyone, and people put it just all over the place; same with Ohio; Alaska and Hawaii showed up on very few maps - where they did, Alaska was often correct and Hawaii was often left out.
Tumblr URLs of source maps: emoskeemo, commieochako, vampireshouta, momo-your-gay-is-showing, deepdarkfandom, lokigays, bucked-up, punkpipabeth, hopesscott, asamberg, multiple-non-alcoholic-dogs, whysodapper, wokeuponders, mjwillow, planeswalker-princess
