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Comment by et2o | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly enough, the mean center of population for NY State is only about 9 miles from the NJ border. Given NYC's location, not suprising. I wonder if there are any states with centers of population closer to the border than that. Given NY's geometry, if NYC continues to grow relative to upstate, I could imagine the center of population of the state actually being outside of NY State boundaries.

It's also possible in the past the NJ's state center of population might have been in NY - if Newark and Northern NJ were more relatively populous, I think that the mean center of population might be in Staten Island or the NY-NJ harbor.

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After a brief search, Hawaii's is in the ocean between O'ahu and Moloka'i. DC's might be the closest to the state border (about 3.1 miles) but still just about directly in the center of the DC polygon.

Still feels like that's in Hawaii, though.

For Delaware, I eyeball the distance from the center of population to the nearest border (again NJ) at maybe three miles. But Delaware's so small that I feel like that doesn't count; something like (distance to border)/(square root of state area) might be worth looking at.

Definitely-would want to normalize distance by total state size, your formula works. I'm pretty sure NY would be the winner here, although Alaska might also be close by this metric.

Google Map's measurement tool is giving me a hair under 5 miles which beats out Rhode Island.

That's what I'm seeing too - can't believe I forgot there was a measurement tool.

I would randomly guess Portland, it's literally up against the WA border on the north, and most of the state lives in/around Portland.

For oregon the population center is almost exactly Detroit. There is a large population in the willamette valley south of portland (and bend is captured by this too).

Assuming this is true, and it makes sense that it would be; Detroit is in the north west corner of the state, up near the WA border.

Definitely is technically in the northwest part of the state, but I'm not sure I'd call it close to the Washington border.

It's much closer to Salem and Bend than it is Portland, for instance.

Rhode Island's is < 6.5 miles. Feels a bit like cheating though haha.

A fun project for your student(s):

Do an animated video of a US map, where the mean center of population for each state moves around every 10 years.

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