Map: The most distinctive college major in your state

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.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple reasons that we can't rely only on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on.

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. We can’t do that if we have a paywall.

That’s why we also turn to you, our readers, to help us keep Vox free. If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today?

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via