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Map: The most distinctive college major in your state

Libby Nelson is Vox's policy editor, leading coverage of how government action and inaction shape American life. Libby has more than a decade of policy journalism experience, including at Inside Higher Ed and Politico. She joined Vox in 2014.

Business Insider's Andy Kiersz looked at which college majors are disproportionately popular in every state. Most of them make intuitive sense. An unusually high proportion of film majors live in California, petroleum engineers live in Texas and Louisiana, and hospitality majors are more likely to live in Nevada:

(Andy Kiersz/Business Insider)

A few other interesting trends: Georgia might have a relatively high proportion of early childhood education majors because it also has universal pre-kindergarten. New Mexico, home of Los Alamos National Laboratory, has a high proportion of engineers. Florida, home of bizarre crimes, has an unusually high proportion of criminology majors.

Of course, if this map showed the most popular majors, rather than the most distinctive, there would be business majors everywhere. (Here's why viral maps use the techniques they do.) Business Insider made that map too:

(Andy Kiersz/Business Insider)

Vermont and Maine: last bastions of the English major.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misidentified Wyoming as Colorado.

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